Johannesburg

Johannesburg - South African zoo is trying to persuade its star chimpanzee to kick a bad habit of smoking.

Charlie, a grown male chimp and the Bloemfontein Zoo, has been picking up cigarettes thrown to his visitors, and their smoking - a habit he probably

took the people watching, zoo officials told the Sapa news agency on Thursday.

"Baby chimpanzee picked habits by mimicking adults and we think he started mimicking smokers at his body, which is probably

led to smokers throwing him cigarettes, "the press-Daryl Barnes told Sapa.

Barnes said Charlie already showing the signs of a true nicotine addict.

"He still acts as a naughty schoolboy by hiding the cigarette when staff approach the area," Barnes said, adding that the zoo was

determined to help him quit.

Barnes said that the most important thing was that people stop providing Charlie with cigarettes or any other treats, noting the chimp already

three bad teeth because all the banks of sweet soft drinks that people are throwing at him.

Charlie not only smoking chimpanzee. In a zoo in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou in the past year that one of her chimpanzees have a smoke, and desperately

cadging cigarette butts from visitors