You heard that right. Azalea, a 19-year-old female chimpanzee in North Korea zoo, is addicted to smoking and puffs up to 20 cigarettes a day. The chimp can even light her own cigarette using a lighter, and has already been attracting a lot of visitors to the zoo.

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Animal rights activists are fuming at the zoo authorities over the chain smoker chimpanzee. PETA president told ‘TIME’, "How cruel to willfully addict a chimpanzee to tobacco for human amusement. Gradually, zoos are learning that spectacles like chimpanzee tea parties, elephant rides and photo ops with tiger cubs are inappropriate and exploitive, with the big question now being, why are we keeping wild animals behind bars at all?"

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But the zoo authorities claim that the chimp doesn’t really inhale the smoke, so it’s not as harmful for her. Guess they’ve never heard of passive smoking.  

We all know how chimps replicate human behaviour closely, but this went a tad too far. Clearly, we humans are a bad influence.

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