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entertainment

The Tough Questions

January 5, 2020 by Anthony

The common phrase “sharing is caring” doesn’t always ring true.

Those of us who work with wildlife in any capacity have to be cautious about the ways in which we publicize our work. In the modern age of consumerism and social media, organizations need to share compelling content to generate financial support and advocate for their respective causes. Although they can inspire people to take action, pieces of visual media can easily be taken out of context and may contribute to the suffering and exploitation of nonhuman animals elsewhere. This is one of the greatest challenges facing organizations like ours as we advance further into the 21st century.

Jamie

A new piece co-authored by a diverse group of esteemed scientists and conservationists is making waves for attempting to address this issue. The commentary, published last month in the American Journal of Primatology, urges researchers to be selective and judicious when sharing images and locations of the nonhuman individuals that they study.

This piece was spurred by emerging findings that irresponsible or inaccurate representations of nonhuman primates provide fuel for the wildlife trade. For example, Dr. Anna Nekaris and the Little Fireface Project have found strong links between viral videos featuring endangered slow lorises and the popularity of that species in the global wildlife trade. Contemporary organizations around the world have also uncovered similar links between social media content and the trafficking of wild primates. Notably, images featuring celebrities posing with primates (like this one of pop star Rihanna) wrongfully propagate their perceived value as pets. It seems likely that a selfie taken by a common researcher or tourist with a wild animal would have a smaller but similar effect. With so many of these images being circulated by well-meaning individuals and organizations, it is difficult to quantify just how big of an impact they have. Given that so many of the world’s primate species are at risk of extinction due to human activity, it is critical that those who study and protect wild primates do not accidentally create additional demand for their exploitation.

Burrito (foreground), Missy (center), and Annie (rear)

For those of us who advocate and care for captive primates, however, the relationships between shared images and potential outcomes are not as clear. Within the community of North American primate sanctuaries and zoos, sharing visuals that showcase the value of our work is part of our strategic plan. For example, our team at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest inspires compassion for chimpanzees by writing and sharing daily blog posts that portray the lives of the chimpanzee residents. The goal is to highlight their emotions, intelligence, and social relationships. This collection of images and stories has, over time, amassed a tremendous community of supporters that directly benefits the chimpanzees.

However, we simultaneously take care to only share content that positively impacts primate individuals, populations, and species. Social media is truly a double-edged sword, and those who wield it carelessly may cause more harm than good. A video of Foxie playing with dolls, for example, could be woefully misunderstood if the provided contextual details are removed or ignored. An uninformed viewer may begin to wonder: Is she a trained performer? Does she have access to the outdoors? Does she have other chimps to play with? Is she privately owned and being bred for human entertainment? In the absence of critical information, such misconceptions may become widespread attitudes and beliefs.

Foxie

As a true sanctuary, we attempt to combat harmful misinformation. One of our objectives is to demonstrate that chimpanzees, as individuals and as a species, suffer immeasurably from exploitation. This claim sharply contrasts how nonhuman apes have been utilized and portrayed in recent decades. Thousands of chimps were housed in menageries, shot into outer space, dressed up as human children, infected with diseases and coerced to perform for our amusement. Thankfully, this pattern of abuse seems to be ending. With public opinion now favoring chimps, the last chimpanzee actor, an adolescent male named Eli, recently retired and will soon be transferred to an accredited facility. (Eli is the subject of an upcoming documentary.)

Even though the era of chimpanzees on the big screen seems to be over, the myth that chimpanzees belong in captivity is likely to perpetuate as long as people see chimpanzees in captivity. For example, seeing performing chimps on greeting cards, in commercials, or interacting closely with humans can shape how the public perceives them. Researchers affiliated with North American zoological parks have even found evidence that viewing images of nonhuman primates in humanized settings can influence how people interpret their conservation status, suitability as pets, and well-being. From this evident pattern emerges a multi-faceted dilemma.

The most difficult of these questions, in my opinion, is whether we can accurately tell the stories of captive chimpanzees without showing the less natural aspects of their daily lives. Should we use Photoshop to remove the electrified barriers on Young’s Hill, which are necessary to keep humans and chimpanzees safe? Should we hide that the chimpanzees prefer to nest with blankets or sleep on cement floors because that’s all they had access to during the decades that they spent in laboratories? Should we ignore that Jamie has fascinations with cowboy boots and various human accessories, likely shaped by her background as a performer? Sure, we attempt to focus or crop out the steel caging because it ruins our photographs, but should we be avoiding the same metal bars because they send the wrong message about chimps? On the other hand, if we only show photos of chimps frolicking outside in a green meadow, will people start to believe that keeping chimps in captivity is good for them? Are we on the verge of whitewashing the history of our relationship with chimpanzees?

There are no easy answers.

Burrito

Organizations are each free to respond to these new challenges in their own way. To lessen the risk of misinterpretation, we try our best to create content that prioritizes education and empathy over aesthetics and humor. We’ve found that most of our followers are invested in the chimpanzees’ well-being and, fortunately, thoroughly read and understand our captions. This gives us confidence that we can maintain transparency, and even occasionally be brutally honest, regarding the challenges of providing sanctuary care for chimpanzees. We caregivers remain impressed by how aware and understanding our supporters have been despite our sanctuary’s recent growing pains. Rather than just respond with emojis and ‘likes,’ our followers weigh in on the management of our social groups, suggest new enrichment ideas, and comment on the health of the individual chimps. This degree of engagement and awareness tells us that it is possible to share revealing content without necessarily spreading the wrong ideas.

That does not mean that we are all blameless. I recently went through my personal Facebook profile and erased many photos of me interacting with captive wildlife (including some of orphaned spider and howler monkeys using me as a climbing structure). It’s not that my actions were inherently irresponsible; in most cases, I was serving as a trained caregiver and the interactions were a necessary aspect of each individual’s rehabilitation and development. The real problem is that these photos are difficult to explain and the chances of them sending the wrong message are too high. If someone was scrolling too fast to read my captions, all they would see is a naive white backpacker holding a baby monkey. Some would even comment that they wanted me to bring one home so they could play with it. I have gladly hidden these photos  No amount of attention is worth putting an animal or human in danger.

Jamie

With this new paradigm in mind, please continue to enjoy and share our frequent and intimate portraits of the chimpanzee residents. We hope that they inspire you to care about and act on behalf of disadvantaged nonhuman primates. They need advocates, now, more than ever.

However, never forget that all chimpanzees are strong, intelligent, emotional, and adapted for their ancestral homes and complex societies. They do not belong in captivity and they do not thrive here. Sanctuaries like this one were created to mitigate the errors of the past and provide a better alternative for retired chimps, but they are not designed to exist indefinitely. All chimpanzees are unique individuals and valuable members of an endangered species that may be gone within the next century, and their exploitation takes more away from them than it gives to us.

Please share responsibly.

Missy

Filed Under: Advocacy, Apes in Entertainment, Chimp histories, Free-living chimps, News, Sanctuary Tagged With: Animal Welfare, apes in entertainment, chimpanzee actors, chimpanzees, chimps, entertainment, great apes, large apes, performing chimps, pet trade, pets, primate conservation, Primates, primatology, public perception, social media, wildlife trade, wildlife trafficking

Being Social

February 2, 2018 by J.B.

Like us, chimpanzees are social primates. We look to our friends and family for comfort and companionship. We rely on our communities for protection. Our cultures provide us with the knowledge we need to survive.

The desire to be with others is so essential that it is hardwired in apes like us. Without social contact we literally go insane.

But it’s not always easy being social. It comes with a host of trade offs, where individual interests must be compromised for the good of the relationship. It brings with it opportunities for miscommunication and misinterpretation. It leads to jealousy. Cheating, stealing, and deception are all par for the course. And it almost invariably leads to conflict.

All of which are difficult waters to navigate for even the most experienced and even-tempered individual.

Now imagine being Burrito.

Taken from his mother and raised in a lab nursery. Sent to live in a human home for his most formative years. Leased to a circus. And then returned to the lab, where he would live much of his life alone or with only one other individual in a cage barely big enough to walk in.

Or imagine being Jamie.

For nine years she struggled to master the human environment, a world in which she was rewarded for mastering tricks and likely punished for failing to understand or comply. Then, like Burrito, she was ripped from that world and placed in a laboratory with her own kind – a kind that she might not have even recognized as her own – where she would remain for two decades.

It’s common knowledge in the sanctuary community that ex-pet and ex-performer primates are the most difficult to integrate. Many people think the laboratory environment is the most damaging, but at least lab chimps tend to live with other chimps when they’re not on protocol. Being raised by humans is a kind of damage they don’t recover from. It actually deprives them of resiliency. It permeates the way they think and they way they react. You can see it in the way they relate to other chimps,  and it even has a measurable physiological effect – the more time chimps spend with humans during childhood, the greater their cortisol (stress hormone) levels as adults.

Nearly every conflict at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest is instigated or at the very least amplified by Burrito or Jamie – Burrito, through his undirected and ungoverned aggression and Jamie, through her intense need to dominate, manipulate, and control. For both, their worst tendencies seem to be chronically stoked by insecurity. Granted, chimpanzees personalities are complex and influenced by many factors, but it’s hard not to see their extremes as a direct product of their histories.

Just today, a conflict broke out at lunch. It began when Jody calmly took Foxie’s lettuce. Not a nice thing to do, of course, but given their friendly and trusting relationship it would have ended there without incident. But Jamie saw it happen. And Jamie couldn’t stand the fact that Jody was getting away with it. Jamie began screaming from the playroom, which in turn got Burrito riled up. Burrito then launched himself around the room in a frenzied display, eventually slamming into Jody. For the next five minutes, all of the chimps ran throughout the playroom, front rooms, and greenhouse screaming (with the exception of Negra, who took the opportunity to eat her lettuce by herself). It was hard to tell who was chasing who near the end. Exhausted but uninjured, they finally returned to the front rooms and finished lunch.

We often talk about chimpanzee conflicts in Machiavellian terms, as though each move is premeditated and calculated to maximally derive some social gain. This kind of social behavior does occur in chimps, but many fights are about nothing of substance, as best as we can tell. Put simply, it’s hard to be social, and even harder for those whose social lives didn’t even begin until they were young adults.

Fortunately for Burrito and Jamie, the benefit of their presence in the group far outweighs the stress they cause, and the group in turn gives them something they deserved but never had: a messy, loving, quarreling, comforting chimpanzee family.

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Burrito, Fights, Jamie Tagged With: atypical rearing, chimpanzee, conflict, entertainment, fight, histories, humans, northwest, rescue, Sanctuary, social

Chimpanzees in Circuses

September 14, 2017 by Diana

An eight-year-old chimpanzee named Chance has been in the news lately. Chance is owned by the Rosaire family and has been used in entertainment for his entire life. He has appeared in commercials, television shows and movies, including The Wolf of Wall Street.

The reason Chance and the Rosaires have been in the news recently is due to this footage that PETA obtained of Chance performing with a leash around his neck.

Thirty years ago, it wasn’t uncommon for chimpanzees to appear in circuses and roadside zoo performances. In fact, Jamie, Burrito, and possibly Jody were all used as performers before their years as biomedical research subjects. They lived with trainers and were made to perform in order to entertain people.

Thankfully, we have learned a lot about the nature of chimpanzees over the years and, as a society, we’ve begun to question the appropriateness of using intelligent, social animals in this way. More and more people agree that whales belong in the ocean, not in small aquariums, that elephants shouldn’t be used as props for people to sit on, and that chimpanzees should not be raised by humans and taught to perform tricks just to amuse us.

The Rosaire family has been in the circus business for multiple generations, so it’s understandable that they are stubbornly holding on to their way of life and their views of exotic animals that many, if not most, people have reconsidered.

They argue that they are providing sanctuary for the animals in their care, and they even have legal nonprofit status and the word “sanctuary” in their name Big Cat Habitat and Gulf Coast Sanctuary.

Certainly, anyone who is familiar with true sanctuaries would immediately realize that putting a chimpanzee on a leash and having people pay to view him perform an act is a circus, not a charitable sanctuary, and that those entities have very different missions. But for those not as familiar, I’m not surprised that the Rosaires have their defenders.

It may be true that the Rosaires feel love for the animals in their care, but that doesn’t mean the animals are being afforded the life that they should or could have in an accredited sanctuary.

For information on how to distinguish between roadside zoos and sanctuaries, read this from CSNW and this from the North American Primate Sanctuary Alliance and share with others.

When you see chimpanzees on television, in movies, or pictured on greeting cards, stop to consider what kind of a life that chimpanzee has. Exotic animal circuses survive only because people continue to pay to see animal performances. There are fewer and fewer chimpanzees being used in entertainment because fewer and fewer people think that they should be used in this way.

We hope the chimpanzees who remain in the entertainment business in the U.S. will be able to experience a different way of life someday, like Jamie, Burrito, and Jody, where the focus is on providing them with hundreds of choices that allow them to be who they are as chimpanzees and where their best interests are the top priority.

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Advocacy, Apes in Entertainment Tagged With: chance, chimpanzee, circus, entertainment, rosaire, Sanctuary, wolf of wall street

Take Action: Trunk Monkey Ads

November 24, 2015 by Diana

Take Action Tuesday banner

 

Today, we’re asking for your help. We’ve reached out to the Suburban Auto Group multiple times over the years about their “Trunk Monkey” ads using chimpanzees who were abused during their years in entertainment.

 

web_chimp-driving-car-trunk-monkey-no-sign copy     No Trunk Monkey

 

Instead of listening to our concerns, retiring the old and tired campaign, and coming up with more creative advertising, the car dealership outside of Portland, Oregon keeps bringing the Trunk Monkey ads back.

Please help us in continuing to reach out to them today by learning more and sending a polite email to Erinn Sowle, Suburban Auto Group’s general manager, via this page.

Thank you for speaking out and sharing the action alert with your contacts. Your voice makes a difference!

 

Filed Under: Advocacy, Apes in Entertainment Tagged With: action alert, ad, advertisement, chimp, chimpanzee, entertainment, eyes on apes, suburban auto group, trunk monkey, video

Primate Patrol alert – Capital One

March 4, 2011 by Diana

Join Primate Patrol: www.primatepatrol.org/join

 

Capital One exploits chimpanzees (again!)

Primate Patrol has received the disappointing news that Capital One is currently running a commercial featuring a young chimpanzee “actor.” This is NOT the first time Capital One has had a chimpanzee in their advertising. Despite a growing public awareness about the ethical problems with using chimpanzee “actors” in entertainment, Capital One still chose to make another chimpanzee commercial.

Please send a polite letter to Capital One asking them not to air this commercial. Your letters can make a difference – just this year, two large companies, Dodge and Pfizer, chose to alter their commercials that featured live ape “actors” and pledged to never use primates in advertising again after hearing from concerned advocates.

Let them know that chimpanzees cannot be trained for entertainment by positive reinforcement alone, and brutal training practices in the entertainment industry are well documented. Remind them that in addition to welfare concerns, using chimpanzees in the media seriously hinders conservation efforts of free-living chimpanzees.

You may send your letter to the CEO of Capital One, Richard Fairbank at [email protected]

You can also view this alert on PETA’s action webpage.

Sample Letter to Capital One:

[Date]
Dear Mr. Fairbank:

I was extremely disappointed to hear that Capital One has chosen to air a commercial featuring a young chimpanzee. You should know that great apes used in entertainment are torn away from their mothers as infants, often repeatedly beaten during training, and then discarded when they become too strong to be managed.

Using a chimpanzee for a cheap laugh sends the message that these amazing beings are simply props. Surely you are aware that chimpanzees are endangered species in critical need of protection? You are exploiting chimpanzees for your own profits and this is an unacceptable business practice.

Please make the compassionate decision to remove the commercial from the air, and please consider to never exploit great apes for entertainment purposes again. Thank you for your consideration of my comments on this urgent matter.

Sincerely,
[Your name here]
[Your city & state]

If you send an e-mail to Capital One, please remember to BCC Primate Patrol at [email protected] for tracking purposes. Thank you!

Filed Under: Apes in Entertainment Tagged With: capital one, chimp, chimp actors, chimpanzee, chimpanzees, entertainment, exploitation, exploits, primate patrol, richard fairbank

Newly designed Primate Patrol site! + great post about chimps in entertainment.

January 23, 2010 by Diana

Clocktower Media, Seattle’s leading web design agency, has done it again! First, they redesigned our main website, and yesterday they just completed the redesign of our Primate Patrol site!

Primate Patrol is a program of Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest committed to end the use of great apes in entertainment. Now that our site has an updated look and is integrated with the sanctuary website (it’s under “How You Can Help” on the navigation of our main website), we’ll be updating information and getting more alerts out.

The redesign coincided with an excellent blog posted yesterday by Patrick Battuello about the use of chimpanzees in entertainment aptly titled Shame. Rather than quoting from the post, I encourage you to read it in full here. Thank you, Patrick, for taking the time to write about this subject. And thank all of you for writing letters to producers and directors who have used chimpanzees trained for the entertainment industry. Many people simply need to be informed.

And a big thank you to Clocktower Media for the donated design services. Thanks to you, we’re reaching more people!

Filed Under: Apes in Entertainment, News Tagged With: animal protection, animal rights, Animal Welfare, chimpanzee, chimpanzee retirement, chimpanzee sanctuary, Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, chimpanzees in entertainment, entertainment, primate patrol, Primates, Sanctuary

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