: Cruelty at "animal actors" training facility.
Animal training of any kind for any purpose is 99% cruel, preposterous,
cold...and ONLY for the beneift of
humans!!!!!!!=A0 The article writer, Sarah Baeckler, offers very well
organized, easy, and useful suggestions to help these
chimpanzees.=A0=A0=A0=A0
Thank you. I hope you'll choose to help us.
Sincerely, Adela
For information on what you can do to help, go to:
www.chimpcollaboratory.org/you/index.asp
The Chimpanzee Collaboratory
http://www.chimpcollaboratory.org/news/testimony.asp
by Sarah Baeckler
"My name is Sarah Baeckler, and for a little more than a year =96 from
June 2002 to July 2003 =96 I worked as a volunteer at Amazing Animal
Actors, a chimpanzee training compound that supplies performers for film
and television productions, possibly including some of yours.=A0
There are about five major chimpanzee training facilities supplying the
industry, and Amazing Animal Actors is one of them.=A0
The director of Amazing Animal Actors has been in this business for over
30
years.=A0
Over the course of my 14 months working there, I spent approximately
1000 hours at the training compound. The events I witnessed horrified
me.=A0
I am not exaggerating when I tell you that I saw sickening acts of
emotional, psychological, and physical abuse every single day on the
job.
Before I tell you exactly what I saw, I want to share a little of my
background so you can understand the experience I brought to this
assignment.
I hold undergraduate degrees in Primate Behavior and Anthropology and a
Master's degree in Primatology. Chimpanzees are my specialty.
Prior to my work at the Amazing Animals compound, I spent five years
working with captive chimpanzees in zoo and sanctuary settings.=A0
My graduate research focused on studying the interactions between
chimpanzees and their caregivers.
In short, I have a very solid scientific understanding of both
chimpanzee behavior and the nature of chimpanzee - human relation****ps.
When something is wrong with a chimpanzee, I can see it, even while
casual observers may note
nothing unusual.
And from the first moment I set foot inside the Amazing Animal Actors
compound, I knew a lot of things had gone wrong.
The compound is located in north Malibu and hosts an assortment of
exotic animals including 5 chimpanzees, a Harris hawk, a Bengal tiger,
and a lion.=A0
The larger ranch on which the compound sits is also home to horses,
goats, alpacas, long horn steer, and a buffalo,
and I worked with all of these animals during my time there.
Inside the compound, the chimpanzees are housed in two groups, each
group
living in a fenced-in cage roughly 10 feet square and 8 feet tall.
One group consists of the three younger chimpanzees, Cody, Sable, and
Te=E1, all of whom are three years old. The other group consists of the
two older chimpanzees: Angel, a six-year-old female, and Apollo, a
four-year-old male.=A0=A0
The trainers physically abuse the chimpanzees for various reasons, but
often for no reason at all.=A0
If the chimpanzees try to run away from a trainer, they are beaten.=A0
If they
bite someone, they are beaten.=A0 If they don't pay attention, they are
beaten.=A0 Sometimes they are beaten without any provocation or for
things that are completely out of their control.=A0
I never abused any of the chimpanzees myself, but I was specifically
instructed to hit or kick them at the first sign of any aggression or
misbehavior.=A0
Since I wanted to learn how severe the abuse could get, I asked for
advice on how hard the chimpanzees should be hit or kicked, and I got
answers like these =96 and what you're about to hear
are verbatim quotes.
One trainer told me, quote, "Hard enough that they know you mean
business but not so hard that you do permanent
damage."=A0
Another said, "Aim for her head because it's really sturdy."
And I heard the director of the compound say, "Kick her in the face as
hard as you can. You can't hurt her."=A0
When I expressed nervousness one day about being bitten, a trainer
handed me a hammer and said, "If you need to hit her, use this," and he
pointed to the handle end of the hammer.
As you just heard from Dr. Goodall, normal, healthy, young
chimpanzees are playful, curious, energetic, and mischievous, but
these traits don't serve them well when training begins, so one of the
things that chimpanzees in the entertainment industry have to endure is
an initial 'breaking of the spirit.' In other words, they
have to learn how NOT to act like normal chimpanzees.
On my first visit to Amazing Animal Actors, I met Te=E1, one of the
three younger chimpanzees and a fiery independent spirit. She was the
most recent arrival and hadn't fully adjusted to her new surroundings.
At only two years old, an age when she would still be riding on her
mother's
back in the wild, she refused to allow anyone to pick her up or hold
her.
She played fairly roughly with me but stopped short of hurting me. If I
put my hands anywhere near her armpits or waist, however, she would run
away, clearly thinking that I was going to try to pick her up.=A0=A0
For most of my second day at the compound, Te=E1 wasn't there.=A0 One of
the trainers said that he and the others had recently had a day-long
"battle" with her, and that they were now able to pick her up.
Part of this battle involved Te=E1 "hitting her head," he said, which
resulted in a big gash that required stitches. So I presumed that Te=E1
was missing because she was receiving care for her injuries.=A0
When I saw Te=E1 again shortly after this, I was shocked. I felt like I
was looking at a completely different chimpanzee. A large swatch of the
hair around her left eyebrow had been shaved off and a cut from
the so-called "battle" was visible.=A0
I believe she had been beaten,
and there was no spark at all in her eyes
=96 no evidence of her previous high spirits. Seeing her reminded me of
Jessica Lange's character in "Frances" or Jack Nicholson's in "One Flew
Over the
Cuckoo's Nest".=A0 That's how different Te=E1 was.=A0
Her eyes darted around checking out everything that was going on, but
from my training I was able to recognize this activity not as healthy
curiosity, but fear. When the head trainer returned from lunch, Te=E1
instantly became rigid and alert and started howling at him =96 "threat
barking" is the technical term, but I think you get the picture.
Today, over a year later, Te=E1 is still reserved and untrusting.
Sable is another of the younger chimpanzees. She is very inquisitive
and is always watching what you are doing, taking it all in. I was
warned that she would not hesitate to bite me if she thought she could
get away with it, and that I should feel free to "clock" her if
she did.
I played with Sable fairly easily inside the cage and didn't have any
major problems with her, but when I took her out to change her diaper, I
had very little control over her.
One day in August 2002, a female trainer who was watching me said,
"Don't be afraid to just hit her."=A0 I hesitated, so the trainer
demonstrated for me: she made a fist and punched Sable in the head with
her right hand, just above her left eye. Sable screamed and jumped
tighter into my arms, no longer squirming.
The trainer had to wave her hand like this to shake off the pain =96 she
had hit Sable that hard.
Because Sable has such a curious nature, she continued to test her
limits, and she continued to suffer for it. Over several months between
September 2002 and June 2003, I witnessed trainers punching
her in the back, kicking her in the head, and throwing objects at her
including a rock, a mallet, and a sawed-off broom handle.
Cody, the third of the young chimpanzees, is much more timid than his
two cage mates.=A0 While Te=E1 was determined not to let anyone hold her
or pick her up, Cody is the opposite.=A0 He is very clingy and is
always seeking out someone to pick him up.
If he is put down inside his enclosure and he thinks you are going to
leave, he becomes extremely upset, screaming loudly and nervously
seeking reassurance
from both his cage mates and any humans in the vicinity.
Scientifically speaking, he is an anxious, fearful individual, and his
insecurity probably stems from the trauma he has experienced so far in
his three years of life.=A0
On several occasions, I saw Cody abused for no reason at all.
In September 2002, I saw a volunteer ask the compound director how to
get Cody to stand up, and the director grabbed Cody's ear and forced him
to stand by pulling his ear sharply until Cody screamed in pain.
A month later, when another volunteer was trying to change Cody's
diaper, she asked the director how to get Cody to lie down. This time
the director grabbed Cody by his lower lip, pulled him forward, and then
pushed him down until he was lying on his back.=A0
Again, Cody screamed and whimpered in response. I saw volunteers and
trainers hit Cody on the head with a lock, take a full windup and punch
him in the
back, kick him in the head, and hit him with a blunt instrument known
as "the ugly stick."=A0 None of this is necessary.=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0
The two older chimpanzees, Apollo and Angel, are four and six years old,
respectively. Because they are older, bigger, and stronger than the
others, the trainers react much more strenuously to any behavior they
consider aggressive or out-of-line, which means, in plain
English, that Apollo and Angel receive the worst beatings of all the
chimpanzees within the compound.
>From the interactions that I had with Apollo, I can tell you that he is
definitely a mischievous fellow. When he greets his human friends he
likes to pull their ****rts up and explore what's underneath.=A0 He
tries to get people's attention by throwing pieces of food at them
through the bars of his cage.=A0 He loves to be tickled and chased.=A0
All this is entirely normal for a young male chimpanzee.=A0 He does seem
to test his limits with the people around him, but he was never anything
other than playful and friendly with me.
Nevertheless, I watched him suffer brutal beatings at the hands of the
other
trainers. On one occasion, I watched as the compound director started
punching Apollo repeatedly with all his strength, throwing his whole
body into each punch.
On another day, a trainer punched Apollo in the face and then pinned him
against the fence with his knee.
What was Apollo's offense, you may be wondering? Apparently, he had
reached out to try and touch Angel, his cage-mate, as she passed by. In
the wild, this kind of
touching would simply be a greeting, but I guess the trainer chose that
moment to assert his dominance and remind Apollo to whom he should be
paying complete attention.
And on a third occasion, the director hit Apollo three times with a
broom handle, first winding up and hitting him with something akin to a
baseball swing, and then whacking Apollo twice at close range and really
hard.
Finally, once, when I was unpacking a bag that had gone with Apollo on a
television commercial shoot, I found an electric cattle prod inside.=A0
By now you are probably wondering how this type of abuse can go on.=A0
Isn't it illegal?=A0 Unfortunately, while there are laws strict enough
to prohibit this type of abuse in California, they are hard to
enforce. California's state penal code prohibits "cruelly beating" an
animal, but law enforcement agencies are usually reluctant to pursue
these charges. Also, most of this abuse goes on behind closed doors
where no witnesses can see it, making it even harder to prosecute.=A0
The reality is that very few offenders are ever prosecuted, and even
fewer actually serve time for their crimes.
=A0
You may also be wondering if what I observed at Amazing Animal Actors
is simply an exception =96 that the problem there is really just a few
"bad apple" trainers, while their counterparts at other training
facilities are working in a much more humane fa****on. I don't think
so.=A0
While I have not worked at other facilities, I did visit another and
heard about several more.=A0 At the facility I visited, I saw the
same kinds of signs that were evident at Amazing Animal Actors.
The older chimpanzees watched the trainers very carefully as they went
by, signaling that they knew to keep their attention on them.=A0 I heard
threat barks oriented toward the trainers. The younger
chimpanzees were timid and hesitant with their trainers and appeared
traumatized and fearful of what was going to happen next.
I even saw one of the trainers start to hit one of the young chimpanzees
and
then stop because she realized that a number of people were watching.=A0
Finally, a confidential source described her experiences at another
chimpanzee training facility in California. She said that the trainers
there commonly "thumped" the chimpanzees to keep them in
line, and also "flicked" them in the ears or face.=A0
Interestingly, at Moorpark College, where I took courses in Exotic
Animal Training and Management, a professor once told me that they would
never consider
having chimpanzees in the college's zoo because they were, and I quote,
"not willing to inflict the kind and amount of punishment required to
train them."=A0
This professor, who had worked for yet
another chimpanzee trainer in theindustry, said that "people beat them
with baseball bats to control them." He also said "some trainers will
whack a chimp if it doesn't do a small behavior, like a smile,
because later the chimp might think it can get away with more."=A0
In short, abuse and physical violence are seemingly commonplace in this
industry, and it's not even a secret. In fact, it's taught in a training
school that is currently producing many future animal trainers and zoo
workers.
And as you'll read in the re****ts you've just received, it is na=EFve to
assume that chimpanzees can be compelled to perform complex tricks with
simple positive reinforcement such as a jellybean or other treat.
As a primatologist, I agree.=A0 The tricks are just too complex, and the
rewards are just too small to hold their interest. The plain
truth is this: the only thing that will make them stop behaving like
curious, rambunctious chimpanzees and, instead, routinely perform
mundane tasks over and over again on cue is abject fear of physical
pain.
Three months ago, I left Amazing Animal Actors. As I drove away after my
last day there, I was relieved that I would not have to witness such
horrendous abuse anymore, but at the same time I had a sickening
feeling, knowing that these chimpanzees I had spent over a year
getting to know would still be there tomorrow, and for a long time to
come, enduring the kind of abuse I saw there every day.
I can only hope that some day in the not too distant future, perhaps
with the
help of this campaign, these individuals up here, and your help as
well, the chimpanzees at Amazing Animal Actors and all the others
like them in the industry can retire to good, safe, loving
sanctuaries.=A0
If the market for chimpanzees in entertainment no longer exists, these
chimpanzees will have a chance at living out the rest of their lives in
peace. And those yet to be born will never know the pain and suffering
endured by those who came before them."
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AnimalProgress/
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D
the above x-posted as a public service by the holder of the .sig-file
below.
Bad Monkey Business In Deed. I'd be scared to work with an abused monkey
that can tear my arm off if he/she felt fed up with the abuse at any
time (which often happens to people who go postal)
much like governors on steroids.
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
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