When I was young, Jane Goodall was a hero of mine.
During inside recesses and reading periods throughout elementary school, I would read about her work with chimpanzees in National Geographic and books in the classroom and our little library. This began a lifelong love of monkeys and apes, inspired by what Goodall reported about the intelligence, playfulness, love, in the highly intelligent chimpanzees she observed.
Recently, PBS aired a Nature episode, “Chimpanzees: An Unnatural History,” and Animal Planet aired a documentary, “Michael Jackson and Bubble: The Untold Story.”
Each of these documentaries show the egregious abuses of chimpanzees allowed in our country.
According to “Chimpanzees: An Unnatural History,” 169 countries recognize chimpanzees as an endangered species, but our country has legal loopholes that allow chimpanzees to be used in the entertainment industry, as pets or in scientific testing.
This documentary deals with the ethical questions involving the uses of an endangered species in these manners.
Chimpanzees have been known to live as old as sixty. In the entertainment industry and as pets, chimpanzees tend to become difficult to manage as well as too strong to work or play with as young as four years old.
When chimpanzees are still kept on as pets as they reach adulthood, it often becomes a dangerous situation for both chimpanzees and human beings.
Some of you might recall in 2009 when a woman, Charla Nash, was attacked by her friend’s 14-year-old chimpanzee, Travis. Her face was mutilated severely in that attack.
Once chimpanzees reach the age of four, they become difficult to handle, often changing from animals that seem like quiet toddlers almost overnight into wild animals. Once these chimpanzees are no longer usable in circuses, films, television or as pets, they often wind up in laboratories and are subjected to caged lives full of painful testing.
Luckily, Jackson’s former pet chimpanzee, Bubbles, went to a rescue for chimpanzees rather than a laboratory.
As more scientists move to better testing practices, more chimpanzees are given to rescue organizations.
However, there are too many chimpanzees and not enough room. Chimpanzees at these sanctuaries may have HIV, missing body parts and/or even fragments from bullets in their skulls from their capture in the wild.
Why do we let this brutality happen to chimpanzees, especially when they are an endangered species?
I do not have a good answer for that question. I do know that this country needs to change the laws.
Chimpanzees, unlike cats, dogs and horses, have not been domesticated, so they don’t make good pets. Domestication does not take place overnight; it takes generations.
Additionally, we should not be doing any sort of scientific research or testing on animals that are part of an endangered species.
It is morally irresponsible to aid the extinction of chimpanzees regardless of the cause.