3-yo Chimpanzee, Janet, Rescued from Pet Trade

An orthopaedic surgeon at the University of Liverpool has performed a groundbreaking operation on a chimp in Cameroon to decorous a deformity more commonly seen in dogs.

The three year-beloved chimp called Janet was rescued from the Cameroon pet trade model year and now lives in a chimpanzee reserve supported by the Cameroon Wildlife Aid Fund. Janet was powerless to climb and had difficulty walking because a bone in her forearm - the ulna - had stopped growing.

It is idea that her modify, known as angular limb deformity, is a congenital problem, but could also have been caused or aggravated by being chained at the wrist by traders. This forced the arm’s radius to increase in a circular manner making her arm coolly perverse. Vets have seen the deformity in dogs before but never in chimpanzees and were called in to assess Janet’s condition.

Rip off Pettitt, orthopaedic surgeon at the University’s Small Animal Teaching Convalescent home, said: “Surgery to correct the modify in dogs is less complex than the procedure in chimps. In dogs bone network stops growing at in life, so once the limb is straightened there is little time since the deformity to recur and kibitz with bone development. In chimps and humans however, the areas of spread at the end of great bones can freeze open concerning years, so there is loads of time for the condition to re-emergence. We therefore sought the advice of specialists at Robert Jones and Agnes Scour orthopaedic hospital at Oswestry - to make sure we protected any growth left in Janet’s limb.

“The earliest step was to undo the far stop of the ulna, which had befit compacted adequate to the continued wart of the radius. A 14mm triangular section of bone was then removed from the radius in order to straighten the limb and a bone plate was inserted into the radius to obvious the two ends of the bone.”

Selling chimps as pets is illegal but rife on the black market in Cameroon. Of age chimpanzees are slaughtered for their meat and the young chimps are then bewitched away and sold as pets.

Rachel Hogan, manager of the chimpanzee reserve in Cameroon, said: “Janet is recovering grammatically and has up to date rejoined her group at the reserve. She has been undergoing physiotherapy so that she can learn how to work the limb suitably. She is made to grip a ball a hardly times a day and cancel cut off tops to exercise her wrist. The X-rays show the surgery was a ended success.”

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Article adapted by Medical News Today from novel press report.
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1. Suited for more intelligence about the chimpanzee reserve log onto the Cameroon Wildlife Grant-in-aid Fund’s website at: http://www.cwaf.org/index.html

2. The University of Liverpool is a member of the Russell Group of best research-intensive institutions in the UK. It attracts collaborative and contract research commissions from a wide range of national and international organisations valued at more than £108 million annually.

Begetter: Samantha Martin

University of Liverpool
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