12-year Old Smoking Chimp Taken to Rehab

A chimpanzee hooked on smoking has been given a second chance at a healthier life in a Brazilian sanctuary, after animal rights workers rescued him from a zoo in Lebanon.

The 12-year-old Omega was welcomed last week to a 108,000-square-foot ranch in the southern state of Parana -- a home much more spacious than the cage where he spent the past eight years.

Members of the non-governmental organization Animals Lebanon found him at a 430-square-foot cage puffing on cigarettes to entertain visitors at a zoo in Ansar.
Activists negotiated the chimp's release from the now defunct zoo and transferred him to a sanctuary in the capital Curitiba, where 23 other chimps and dozens of animals, including monkeys, deers, flamingos and several birds already live.

Omega, who weighs around 132 pounds, developed a nicotine addiction after picking up cigarettes apparently thrown by visitors. In his early years, he also served water pipes and entertained customers at a restaurant.

Sanctuary founder Anita Starostik said Omega was adapting well and was enjoying a healthy diet.

"Omega is very well, very calm, he is not asking for cigarettes. We are not giving him any medications for now because we don't think he needs it. He is being fed basically with fruits and juices and everything he needs to remain calm," she said.

Oatmeal and fresh fruits and vegetables harvested in the sanctuary are the main items in Omega's menu.

He is being quarantined in a house while veterinarians test him for several diseases and give him treatments for his addiction and his teeth, which have turned yellow and accumulated tartar due to years of smoking.

Veterinarian Paulo Diniz Basteane said Omega will no longer be given any cigarettes.

"We are doing treatments for his (cigarette) abstinence, but we are not using nicotine patches or anything that would simply motivate him to (cut off his addiction), or ease his condition. He is just not going to receive cigarettes anymore," he said.

Omega's integration with other chimps will be carried out slowly, since he has never interacted with fellow chimps before. Once ready, he will be taken to a large area mimicking his natural environment and equipped with toys such as trampolines.

Starostik and her husband, Milan Starostik, both refugees from the Czech Republic, founded the sanctuary called Instituto Anami some 35 years ago. There, they house ill-treated and abandoned chimp, brought in from circuses and illegal zoos around the country.

The haven is one of the four in Brazil which is associated with the Great Ape Project (GAP) that was founded in the United States in 1993, under the principle that "non-human hominids" like chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and bonobos should enjoy the right to life, freedom and not to be tortured.

NGO Animals Lebanon is now urging the country, which has very limited animal protection laws, to adopt the 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

Criminal goat...lol.