If you've never listened to comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan, he loves talking about animal attacks. Specifically, he loves talking about bear attacks. You can probably find hours of him just riffing and examining the intricacies of bear attacks. But when he's not talking about bear attacks, he's talking about chimps and their hostile nature. While we don't know if Joe Rogan has seen this video, it's bound to scare the crap out of him.
Charlie the Chimp who knows karate
The viral video surfaced earlier this month showing a chimpanzee hitting the pads with a karate master. "When I got Charlie, I used to bring him to the dojo and within like an hour, I taught this chimp how to throw a left punch and a right punch," said the karate master. "And it just sort of mushroomed from there."
In the video, Charlie the Chimp does a lot more than throw solid one-two-punch combinations. He also throws spin kicks and breaks boards. "What he's known for mostly is a jump spinning heel kick, which is an unbelievable kick," said the master. "He could probably throw it better than most humans could."
The clip came from the 2009 documentary Chimps on the Edge. The film explores the lives of multiple captive chimps and asks whether or not they can adapt outside of their cages.
What inspired the film was an incident earlier that year in which a 13-year-old captive chimp attacked and mauled its owner. Although the woman survived, she was left blind, severely disfigured, and missing multiple body parts. She died a year later. As for the chimp, police officers had to shoot it to death.
Charlie the Chimp, on the other hand, led a presumably happy and healthy life. Although he ultimately earned himself a black belt in karate, he never attacked a person. Unfortunately, Charlie died in 2014 at the age of 27.
