Kidnapped from his family as an infant, then raised by a drug lord before ending up in a Colombian zoo, Yoko the chimpanzee has lived the last two years of his life alone.

He lost his last friend, Chita, in 2023 when she escaped from the zoo with Pancho – Yoko’s rival – and the pair was shot dead by soldiers out of human safety concerns.

On Sunday, 38-year-old Yoko was flown to Brazil to finally join others of his kind at a sanctuary there. But will he make friends?

Yoko is in many ways more human than chimp, his caregivers say. He uses a knife and fork, plays ball, watches television and makes artwork with crayons on paper and canvas.

Fed junk food by his captor – a narco trafficker whose name has not been divulged – Yoko has only four of his teeth left. Chimps, like humans, are meant to have 32. Yoko was taught to smoke and dress up in human clothes – causing him to develop a skin disease and lose part of his fur.

“Yoko… is a highly humanised chimpanzee, the degree of tameness is very high… He basically behaves like a child,” said veterinarian Javier Guerrero.

The vet accompanied Yoko on the first part of his journey, dubbed “Operation Noah’s Ark,” from Ukumari Biopark, a zoo in the Colombian city of Pereira.

Experts fear Yoko may find it hard to adapt to life with other chimpanzees at Sorocaba in the Brazilian state of Sao Paolo – the largest great ape sanctuary in Latin America.

“Yoko… is not a chimpanzee in the strict sense… he is an animal that identifies much more with human beings,” said Cesar Gomez, Ukumari’s animal training coordinator.

“To give you an example, a smile is something positive” for humans, “but for chimpanzees, it is something negative and Yoko does not understand these types of communication,” he said. AFP