Loving chimps to death

MH By MH Staten Island Advance
on February 26, 2009 at 7:08 AM, updated February 26, 2009 at 7:10 AM

The chimpanzee lived with a widow, eating lobster and ice cream at the table, wearing human clothes and entertaining himself with a computer and television. But as the tragedy made clear, a chimpanzee can never be totally domesticated.

The human brain is more highly developed than that of any other living creature. So why can't we learn that wild animals simply do not make good "pets"? I believe it has a great deal to do with the fact that chimpanzees are so frequently used in entertainment and advertising.



Zoos don't want them because they have not learned to interact with others. So most of them spend the rest of their lives -- as much as 50 years or more -- in small cages in circuses, roadside attractions and, yes, even in the homes of individuals who lack the means to provide for them.
Meanwhile, more infant chimpanzees are bred to maintain the supply for the entertainment industry. The use of chimpanzees in entertainment and advertising not only condemns chimpanzees to lives they were not meant to live, it makes it hard for people to believe that these apes actually are endangered in the wild.
But they are. Chimpanzees are losing habitat, in part because of commercial logging and because of encroachment by ever-growing human populations who live in poverty and cut down the forest to grow crops and graze cattle. This deforestation also contributes significantly to climate change. And sometimes chimpanzees are caught up in ethnic conflicts or killed for their meat, a practice that is believed to have led to the human strains of HIV.

Jane Goodall is founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and a U.N. Messenger of Peace. Information about her work can be found at Los Angeles Times Syndicate.