MF Doom Speaks Up for Animals in Entertainment October 20, 2009

Posted by Megan Rondeau at October 20, 2009 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBack

I'm sure you all remember a few months back when a chimp named Travis was stabbed and shot to death after badly attacking a Connecticut woman. Travis was just one of countless animals used in entertainment who spend their lives being forced to perform and end up suffering terribly for it. In this case, one animal lost his life, and an innocent woman was seriously injured. When this story broke a lot of people looked at Travis as a monster who was out of control. The truth behind the story though is that animals like chimpanzees should not be kept as pets, or in shady road-side "zoos" or Hollywood film studios for that matter.

It caught our attention when we saw that infamous hip-hop artist MF Doom (a.k.a. Danger Doom) spoke out about the tragedy in a recent interview with The New Yorker. He apparently wrote a song about the incident from the chimp's perspective, and said "It's still the fact of shooting a monkey. What is this disrespect for life?"

You can speak up for animals used in entertainment by spreading the message to your friends and family not to support companies, movies, or TV shows that think animals are ours to exploit.

R.I.P Travis: Another Victim of the Spotlight February 18, 2009

Posted by Rachel-O at February 18, 2009 4:24 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 17 ) | TrackBack

On Monday, a 15 year old chimpanzee named Travis snapped after spending his entire short life in captivity and mauled a woman. Travis was stabbed multiple times, "pounded" with a shovel, and eventually shot to death.

The former "star" of Coca Cola and Old Navy commercials and an episode of "The Maury Povich Show", Travis was, according to Police Captain Conklin, "raised almost like a child by this family ... He rides in a car every day, he opens doors, he's a very unique animal in that aspect. We have no indication of what provoked this behavior at all." Great—except for the fact that 200lb chimpanzees aren't children.

Although Travis was raised in captivity since birth, taking great apes and other animals out of the wild and away from everything that is natural to them and forcing them to live lives in the spotlight while being beaten and forced to perform tricks, or putting them in other unnatural situations—even when they can seem loving—can cause stress and end up violent and deadly for both human and non-human primates alike.

These former "celeb" chimpanzees, like Travis, were kept in unnatural habitats and were photographed in filthy conditions in a PETA undercover investigation.

Travis was so agitated the day of the attack that his companion, a 70 year old woman named Sandra Herold, gave him the drug Xanax in some tea to calm him down. Travis wanted to go for one of those rides in Herold's car and took her keys and when Herold didn't know what to do, she called her friend Charla Nash, who rushed over to help—and ended up being attacked.

Herold reportedly also had a "large cage" built in her home for Travis.

This whole situation is sad but honestly, writing this blog is hard for me to do. A "large cage"? As if a house isn't a small enough cage, there has to be an even smaller one built inside for this chimp to be trapped in? It's no wonder that after so long Travis just couldn't take it any longer. And giving him Xanax? This whole thing was entirely preventable.

Travis, nor any other great ape or animal, belongs in entertainment or captivity. Who ends up happy in this story? Was the thirty seconds in those commercials really worth a lifetime of distress and eventual slaughter of Travis, and now also a possible death of a woman trying to calm a miserable, enraged animal down?

Please never support companies, movies or TV shows that continue to use animals for entertainment. You can catch PETA's Lisa Lange on Bill O'Reilly tonight at 8pm on Fox News for more on Travis and this sad story.

BP Lubricant: Leave Chimps Out of Commercials February 4, 2009

Posted by Marta at February 4, 2009 5:07 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 5 ) | TrackBack

If you're one of the millions of people who watched the Super Bowl on Sunday, you likely saw BP Lubricant USA's commercial, "Castrol Oil: Edge Monkeys," which featured multiple chimpanzees. Ugh—way to put a damper on things.

In addition to portraying the animals in a demeaning way, using chimpanzees in advertisements is just plain cruel:

• Great apes used in advertisements are often very young. They are taken from their families and beaten to ensure that they do as the trainer demands.
• Once they are too old and no longer considered "useful," many primates are discarded in hideous roadside zoos or are warehoused in appalling conditions. PETA investigations have revealed that former "celebrity" apes were living in small, filthy cages littered with garbage and feces and were denied basic necessities (like wholesome food and adequate veterinary care).
• Chimps are known for their wide, toothy grins—what most people don't realize, though, is that "smile" is actually a grimace of fear.

Many companies are deceived by the American Humane Association's "no animals were harmed" label. The AHA does not monitor maternal separation, living conditions, or pre-production training sessions, which is where most of the abuse occurs. Click here to read more.

Remember, just because animals used in ads may look like they're fine, it doesn't mean they were always treated well—no one's going to use footage of a terrified animal to try to sell their product, right?

We've already contacted the company to request that it pull the commercial and pledge never to use great apes in advertisements again. They haven't agreed to do so yet, so we want them to hear from you, too.

BP Lubricant should follow in the compassionate footsteps of Sega, Yahoo!, PUMA, Honda, and Subaru (to name a few), by pledging never to use great apes in advertisements again. After all, there are many alternatives to using live animals—such as animatronics, animation, and CGI.

Did you guys see the commercial?



P.S. On a pleasant note, check out a former laboratory chimpanzee seeing snow for the first time. So cute!

Nickelodeon, How Could You? December 24, 2008

Posted by Rachel-O at December 24, 2008 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 23 ) | TrackBack

So, I'm not going to lie. As a little girl, growing up as an animal lover—I loved TV shows, movies and basically anything that involved animals. Naively, that included movies with live animals. I just didn't know any better.

Just like a lot of other industries—I soon learned just how horribly animals were treated behind the scenes for our entertainment. Just learning the fact that, well you know that "cute" face that chimpanzees make in any movie you see them in, where it looks like they're smiling? Well, chimpanzees actually make that face out of terror— and that made me change my mind. Animals like tigers, monkeys, and other wild animals are often torn from their mothers arms in the wild to be forced to live lives of confinement and abuse to be trained to end up on the big screen. When animals get too big to be portrayed as cute in movies or are too large to control, they are often abandoned at roadside zoos or makeshift "sanctuaries" like the one pictured below. Please help us put an end to using animals in TV shows and movies.

Chubbs, who loved to blow kisses to our investigator at the Amarillio Wildlife Refuge, was often sad and depressed. He reportedly appeared in several episodes of Monkey Movies, on Animal Planet, and in the remake of Planet of the Apes.
We recently learned that Nickelodeon's new holiday film, Merry Christmas, Drake & Josh, features a live chimpanzee. In the film, the chimpanzee is portrayed in a demeaning way, and this teaches not only disrespect for animals, but continues to perpetuate the idea that ripping animals from the wild, where they belong, and forcing them to play ridiculous parts in movies is entertaining. Honestly, who thinks a chimpanzee riding a tricycle is entertaining? Especially knowing he's doing it because he was beaten?

Please write to Nickelodeon Executive Vice President of Programming and Planning Peter Danielsen. Ask Nickelodeon to pledge never to use great apes in any of its programs again.