Friday 4 November, 2005

Low blow

Friday night, peace and quiet... ah, episode of Law and Order, episode of ER that I recorded earlier this week. And then, shock and disgust.

ER's latest episode, called Dream House, features two chimpanzees.

I can't believe it, of one of my very favourite TV series gives me a low blow like this. You know my thoughts about the subject - I absolutely abhor this kind of behaviour, and this is the worst thing that can happen. A hugely popular prime time TV series like ER is showing the cutest baby chimpanzee as someone's pet... it can't be excused in any way. It is of no consolation that the episode wanted to show how like humans chimps are - a baby chimp dies and the mother wants to be by it's side... yet they got nothing right. How unnatural behaviour - that a chimp mother would look at her baby by the bedside like a human instead of clinging into it, or then kissing Abby in a very human-like way as a thank you as if she realised what she was trying to do for her baby... All for just some cheap laughs. Can't they see it's just making it worse - now people will think that it's true that chimps are so like us they would be happy to live with us.

What can I do. I immediately emailed NBC to express my horror and I can only hope that other people do the same... it makes me extremely sad and angry and frustrated that this is still happening.

Posted by kolibri at 4 November 20:39, 2005
Comments
# 1 - Dragon (on November 4, 2005 09:56 PM):

For me, it means no ER or NBC programming until they apologise publicly and donate significantly to one of the great ape funds. As remote chance as that is.

This was an awful thing to do. Similar TV shows in Turkey and Taiwan with great apes led into a massive increase of illegal chimpanzee and orang-utan pet trade, where the parents of the ape are killed before the eyes of the infant, and the babe is smuggled into the black market. Once the great ape grows up it is discarded like an old toy (as chimps and orangs get to be 6-10 times as strong as humans are therefore extremely dangerous when they reach puberty). As a consequence of these TV shows, great apes were decimated in the wild.

Now every spoiled brat in western world will want a "cute" chimp baby for Christmas, and the sheeple parents will pay whatever it takes to do this.


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