In a scene once thought to be exclusive to "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" a chimp who escaped from a Japanese zoo mid-Thursday was found swinging along some power-lines of a nearby suburb, leading to a tense standoff before it was captured.
The escaped chimp, a male named ChaCha, was one of five chimpanzees that resided at the Yagiyama Zoological Park in the Miyagi Prefecture capital.
Thursday's sequence of events began around 1:20 p.m. when zoo staff noticed that ChaCha had disappeared, prompting the park to be closed as a precaution. He was soon spotted running rampant all over a nearby residential area, leading to a police chase, with ChaCha screaming at them all the while.
During this time, a local elementary school, which had about 400 pupils inside at the time, ordered the students not to leave campus grounds until the chimpanzee was caught.
"When I saw (the chimpanzee) on television, it was quite big, so we thought it was dangerous to let the children out," school Vice Principal Takashi Yamaguchi said.
In the meantime, ChaCha tried to take refuge on top of some electric wires but was soon followed up there by authorities who shot him with a tranquilizer, throwing him into a fit of rage. He hung on to the wires for awhile, but the sedative eventually put him to sleep, causing him to fall onto a blanket held by workers on the ground below at around 3:10 p.m.
While certainly an interesting story, the whole incident begs one serious question: What's up with Chacha's apparent invulnerability to electricity? Not only does the zoo have an electric fence, but the power lines that he took refuge on carry about 1,000 volts of electricity, as well. Both would have easily ruined Chacha's day, but the worst injury he suffered was the damage incurred from when he bounced off a building after falling from the suburban power lines.
At the very least, we know how the chimp managed to swing around the power lines. Here's how it works:
"The voltage difference is between the lines (e.g. in a 3-phase system) and between the line and ground," Physics Stack Exchange explains. "This voltage difference exists across the insulators and pole, as well as through the air to ground. These voltage differences are obviously small enough to avoid striking an arc, hence no current flows between the lines or between line and ground. If you are hanging from one line, there is no change in the separation between the lines (unless you are swinging wildly) and hence again no current flows between the lines. As the distance between the lines will usually be smaller than that between your feet and the ground, again no current will flow, and you will be safe. Note that, if this distance were too small, you would not be safe standing under the line either!"
The only difficulty in this scenario is getting down. Unless you can safely jump down, the only way to reach the ground would be to climb down the pole. At this point there are two scenarios that play out, either you make it down to the ground safely since the pole is made from wood, or you die since the pole is made from metal and your body is now being used as a path for the current to flow (from the wire, through your body, and to the mast).
Of course, that situation can be circumvented by simply turning off the power, though its unlikely that this was the case.
In the meantime, ChaCha is awake and recovering from the effects of sedation. Zoo officials note that the zoo is closed for inspection Friday so they can determine how the chimp escaped in the first place.
