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Watch video: This chimp with OCD is always cleaning the windows

Updated on: 10 November,2016 07:00 AM IST  | 
mid-day online correspondent |

House-proud Russian chimpanzee with obsessive compulsive disorder wakes up every morning to scrub the windows of her glass enclosure spotless with a discarded rag... and she also sweeps her enclosure

Watch video: This chimp with OCD is always cleaning the windows

Watch video: Elya, the chimp with OCD, is always cleaning the windows

Elya, the chimp, with her cleaning equipment
Elya, the chimp, with her cleaning equipment


A chimpanzee, obsessed with keeping her enclosure spick and span, spends most of her day wiping her windows.


The chimp named Elya, who lives at a zoo in the city of Rostov on Don in south-western Russia’s Rostov Oblast region, is said to have developed the habit after watching the zoo keepers.


Zoo officials had recently replaced the old metal bars of Elya’s enclosure with new windows so that visitors get a better view of the chimps. But, after watching human maintenance workers clean the windows, Elya probably thought that she could do just as good a job with a discarded cloth that she found, according to a Daily Mail report.

A footage, which was filmed by a zookeeper, shows Elya trying to clean the windows every day. In the video, she is also seen trying to grab a keeper’s brush to sweep the floor clean, but breaks it trying to pull it into the enclosure. 

Keeper Polina Fishmanm said she started showing difference in behaviour after moving into the new enclosure.

Zoologist Olga Streltsova said that Elya's actions were more than just copying human behaviour and that she really did want to improve her environment.

The footage has proved to be highly popular with animal lovers after it was posted on video-sharing websites.

HERE'S THE VIDEO:

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