Macaco Tião
Brazilian chimpanzee (1963–1996)
Macaco Tião ("Tião the Monkey") (January 16, 1963 – December 23, 1996) was a chimpanzee of the Rio de Janeiro Zoological Garden who was very popular with children and visitors.
His name ("Tião", a nickname for "Sebastião") is in memory of Rio de Janeiro's patron saint, Saint Sebastian (São Sebastião). He was 1.52 metres (5 ft 0 in) tall and weighed 70 kilograms (150 lb).
History
Tião started to become popular in the 1980s for his temperament, regarded as constant "bad mood" and having the habit of throwing mud and feces on the visitors of the zoo, especially politicians such as Marcello Alencar.
Tião became a celebrity in Brazil, when in 1988, the comedians who ran newspapers Casseta Popular and Planeta Diário (who would later join forces as Casseta & Planeta), jokingly created his extra official candidature for mayor as a protest in defence of null voting. At the time, voting was written on papers instead of registered using voting machines. It is estimated that more than 400,000 ballots were cast for him, and he reached third place in an election with 12 candidates. Because of that, he is now on the Guinness World Records as the most voted chimpanzee in the world. As Tião was not a registered candidate, all his ballots were considered as null. In 1996, the voting system in Brazil was changed to electronic machines, so votes could no longer be cast for non-registered candidates.
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This entry incorporates text from “Macaco Tião” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.