[url]http://www.news24.com/City_Press/City_Press_News/0,,186-187_1370662,00.html[/url]

A YOUNG mother this week watched helplessly as a baboon snatched and ripped open the skull of her only child and ate his brain.

The mother of the dead child, Lettie Goitsimang Tukane (34), told City Press the baboon sank its powerful canines into the skull of her three-month-old son, removed the brain, climbed up a high telephone pole and ate the brain before fleeing into nearby bush.

The bizarre and tragic incident occurred at a cattle post in the remote North West village of Madipelesa outside Pampierstad, where Tukane and fiancé Oupa Goeiman live.

Tukane said her son Neo was sleeping in a bed in one of the rooms while she was busy washing dishes in another room when she heard his screams.

She said when she rushed outside she saw a huge baboon carrying Neo under one of its arms. She tried to scare it off, but the baboon was aggressive and it wanted to attack her too.

"It happened so quickly that by the time neighbours came and threw stones and set dogs on it, it had already eaten the brain and scuttled into the bush. I could not believe my eyes when I picked up Neo.

"He was still breathing and his skull was opened and he was bleeding profusely," said Tukane.

She said Neo was her only child and she hoped he would live because her other children died of natural causes before they reached one year.

She said after the funeral they would contact a sangoma to check if the incident was not witchcraft related.

The incident, the first of its kind in the area, has shocked people in the North West, especially in the areas of Seoding, Sekhing, Madipelesa and Pampierstad.

Petrus Malgas, who tried to help rescue little Neo, told City Press that when he and other neighbours threw stones at the baboon, it climbed up the telephone pole and nonchalantly devoured the child's brain before it fled into the bush.

Saomeng Phalatse of Sekhing said the whole episode boiled down to witchcraft, because it was unheard of that a baboon would eat a human being.

Africa.
Go figure.

Shit like that happens everywhere people mingle with critters.

Remember the story last summer about the bear and kid?

Or the mountain lions in CA eating peeps.

Granted the whole 'witchcraft' thing is a bit odd.  But not really much different than the 'it is god's will' that you hear here about bad shit happening

"at least, without a brain, he could have been a Democrat politician."

Call me cold but, why should I give a crap.

I guess this kinda disproves the herbivore theory for primates.....I mean someone on here said that monkeys and baboons prefer to eat vegetation.

Well I don't know about you but I have a small child so shit like this strikes a little closer to home. Granted I don't live in africa and there are no baboons around here, but there are plenty of things that can happen to a child. I feel sorry for the lady.

This is why people should be ARMED.  In the US, that baboon would have been down in the first couple of minutes from a 30-30.

[:(!]

Definitely witchcraft!

If she had a gun.......The Baboon would be dead and her child would be alive.

Dude, I want a platoon af trained attack Baboons wearing old WWII Nazi Fritz Helmets like in Heavy Metal. Baboons are rad. If you live in the wilderness and have no weapons you are food. This story proves it. Witchcraft. "Um I was a dumbass that left my kid unattended in an area that has animals that will eat small children, say like baboons, leopards, lions, and pythons, but it must be witchcraft. Defintely a Democrat. Ban animals! It's for the children.

Damn,  I was hoping this would be another story about someone getting to close to the primate cage at the zoo....

oh well


-HS

Well, maybe he was The [i]Other[/i] One.

Bad stuff. If it happened to me I would hunt down and kill every baboon I could find. I am not one for wholesale animal slaughter, but baboons are nasty creatures.

I hunted in Africa several years ago- in eastern Zambia. The natives begged us to shoot the baboons whenever we could. The big males were almost four foot tall and very nasty.

We would shoot them in the chest with a 22 Magnum. I once popped one with a 375 H&H magnum 300 gr. solid. Probably ten feet of intestines spilled out and the big bastard scooped it up in his arms and climbed up a tree. I head shot him with the 22 and down he came. Still have the skull.

Excellent logic! This man should be out solving crimes....

Clearly these people need the steady guiding hand of a colonial power.
We should really look into acquiring a portion of that continent.

Yeah...
...well having your child's brains eaten by a baboon, and then blaming it on "witchcraft" strikes me as a distinctly African phenomenon.
Don't you think?

You mean baboons arent nice shamans like in the lion king?

payback is a bitch aint it?
Lebrew

ps: I hear Leo is doing just fine.

[size=4]PICS??[/size=4][shock]

Here's the rest of the article:

"Although some people with western beliefs do not believe it, we know for a fact that African chemistry works in these areas.

"A few years ago in Taung an inyanga, through her medicines, caused a young man to find himself with his bed and all on the top of his roof.

"The incident was even shown on Bop TV. Why should we not believe Tukane was bewitched?" said Gomotseng Badirwang, clutching her two-month-old baby.

North West senior environmental officer Richard Gasealahwe said chacma baboons were prevalent in the area, including at the Blue Pool heritage site near Buxton in Taung.

Gasealahwe dismissed suggestions of witchcraft, saying the baboon might have thought the child was one of the small goats which Goeiman kept in one of the rooms at the cattle post.

"The area is teeming with chacma baboons, which are normally tame. However, when they are very hungry they become aggressive and they eat small goats, starting with the brain.

"They also rip off and eat the goats' udders and would also go to residential areas looking for food," Gasealahwe.

William Mekgwe of Nature Conservation said the baboon that killed little Neo was an old male, "Rotwe", which had been rejected by the troop.

He said they had arranged with their problem animal control unit to trap the baboon because it would go back to the house again, hoping to get small goats.

Not of the shoot but I'll take one of the skull when I get a chance. Also have a pic of three native skinners standing thigh deep in a hippo carcass. Hippos are BIG bastards...

That would rock![headbang]

[puke]

bump

Ah, see... the baby-killer was a [b]victim[/b] of a mean, cold-hearted, JUDGEMENTAL baboon society which has no regards for other baboon's [i]feeeeeeeelings[/i].

It's society's fault - baboon society that is.

In my best Sam Kinnison:

What do you expect.....YOU LIVE IN A F-CKING JUNGLE!

You stole my thunder.

Africa, the tropic paradise that brought us AIDS, killer bees and MONKEY POX!  [:O]

How many thermonuclear devices, detonated at what altitude, would it take to sterilize that continent so it would be less of a hazard to the rest of the world?

What if the Baboon had a gun?  It would be like the old west with people and baboons unable to control themselves.....or at least that is what the Brady Campaign would lead you to believe.

ok, I gotta say it,

THE DINGO ATE MY BABY!

[LOL]

Be careful.  It's a jungle out there.

I can just see it now....Chief, this is patrolman Malgas.  You better get the witchcraft squad down here on the double.  Yeah, a baboon just ate a baby.

I read the whole article out loud.  Not the excerpt, the whole story from the link.  

Try it.  

Zombie baboons ---- brains hmmmmm, more brains.[:)]

ROTFLMAO!!!!

[ROFL][ROFL][ROFL][ROFL][ROFL][ROFL]

where do i sign up, and do you take people with vision not correctable to 20/20?