Keepers at a Zoo in Indonesia are planning to help an orang-utan named Tori give up smoking.
The animal started ten years ago after visitors to the Zoo on the island of Java began throwing him cigarettes, reports the Jakarta Globe newspaper.
"It is very common in Indonesian zoos for people to throw cigarettes or food into animals’ cages even though there are signs to not feed or give cigarettes,” Hardi Baktiantoro from the Center for Orang-utan Protection says.
The female orang-utan learned to signal to the people around her that she wouldn’t mind to smoke by holding two fingers to her mouth.
However zoo employees, who look after Tori, say she gets annoyed and sometimes even aggressive if she doesn’t get a cigarette whenever she wants.
The zoo management and the representatives of the Center for Orang-utan Protection believe the only way to help Tori quit is to cut her loose from the visitors’ reach. Tori and her partner will be moved to a small island in the zoo’s lake out of harms way.
Tori’s minders hope that isolation will help her break the addiction.
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