Serving a life sentence

I received an email from the Jane Goodall Institute couple of days ago talking about the use of chimpanzees and other great apes in the entertainment industry. This has come to surface now because one of the advertisers on this year's Super Bowl, the most important advertisement event of the year, used chimpanzees in their ad. This ad was immensly popular and not only is the company, CareerBuilder.com (and if you really want to, you can see those disgusting ads on their site), planning a campaign using chimps, now several other big companies are considering using chipms, orangutans and other primates.

People who know me better know how close to my heart chimps, apes and all primates are. I've been known to rant about the subject and get angry. But the thing is - I believe this most horrid animal abuse only happens because people are ignorant of the subject. There are cruel and heartless people who make this happen, but if general public really knew what was going on they wouldn't stand for it. So, if you don't know about the abuse, here are some facts - if you do, it's good to keep it in fresh memory.

First consider this: if we continue to kill great apes and distroy their habitats the speed we're doing now, in 20 years there won't be any great apes left in the wild. Some animals will remain in the zoos around the world, but for example highland gorillas will be gone forever. But if people see apes on TV every day, it gives them not only the impression that these animals are plentiful, but that this is how they behave. Dressing up chimps is not cute, it's degrading and if they got the chance they would never wear anyting - and did you know that the "toothy chimp smile" you see on those ads is actually a fear grin?

All the chimps you see used in commercials, movies and TV are young animals who have been forcefully taken from their mothers. Typically they have been taken from the wild, and as chimps are social animals and babies and in the core of their society, this means not only killing the mother but other members of the group too who try to save the baby. This is very traumatic to the young animal, and most of them die before they reach the buyer which only creates more need for chimp babies.

When they do get to the trainers, the trainers don't have time or patience to train the animals gently - the methods most trainers use are harsh and include beating, electrocuting, removing teeth and using sedatives. It's not uncommon for the animals to severly injure themselves or even die in the hands of their trainers. Chimps have minds of their own, and when they come to puberty they want to strech their powers just like a human teenager. But because your average chimp is 5 to 6 times stronger than a human it means that they become extremely dangerous not only to their trainers but everyone - and lets face it, the only language they have been taught is violence.

And when this happens, the only way out is to get rid of the animal - it is impossible to let animals like that to interact with people. The lucky ones are killed - reputable zoos refuse to take these animals, because the chimps haven't grown up with their kind and haven't been socialised they can't be introduced into eshtablished groups. So they end up in dodgy roadside zoos where their conditions are horrific - small concrete cages, alone, no stimulation and garbabe for food. Some end up in foreign zoos where conditions can be even worse, or sold to suspicious medical laboratories. In the end they end up dying terrible deaths anyway.

If a company uses apes or other primates in their ads, I refuse to shop there. If a movie uses them as actors, I won't go and see the film. For futher reading on the subject I suggest you see the short film produced by The Chimpanzee Collaboratory called Serving a Life Sentence, check out Jane Goodall Institute and read the article Primates in Peril from PETAs web site.

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