Travis had gotten free of his cage and was loose in the yard of his owner, who called a friend to ask for help in recaging him. How dangerous became clear in a widely publicized incident in February 2009, when Travis, a 14-year-old, 200-pound pet chimp, mutilated a Connecticut woman. "An adolescent or adult chimp is a very dangerous animal that poses serious public safety concerns if they are not properly housed and managed." "That is fine when they are babies and tykes, but by the time they reach puberty at 7 or 8 years old, taking them through the drive-through window at a fast-food restaurant might not be such a pleasant experience, anymore. "You might think: What's wrong with that if the chimp enjoys it?" Ross said. They grow up thinking they are human, Ross said, often eating human diets, dressing in clothes, learning to use toilets, playing video games, enjoying rides in the family car. Anybody who can afford the going price can have one - $50,000 for a baby boy, $65,000 for a girl.īreeders separate baby chimps soon after birth so that instead of bonding with their mothers, they bond with their trainers and owners. But, to accommodate biomedical laboratories that do invasive research on chimpanzees, it is legal to own captive chimps bred here. it is illegal to privately own gorillas, orangs and bonobos. ChimpCARE, Ross said, is most concerned about the latter three categories that operate without oversight or standards. That covers 272 living in accredited zoos, 999 in biomedical research labs, 586 in sanctuaries, 84 in unaccredited facilities like roadside zoos, 19 "actor" animals and 113 with private owners and breeders. But surveys show the public thinks chimpanzees remain plentiful, with respondents citing their constant presence in films and ads.Īfter a year of traveling and investigating, Ross and his zoo colleague, Vivian Vreeman, believe they have come up with the first accurate census count of chimps in the U.S.: 2,073. When they reach puberty, they become dangerously unpredictable and aggressive, a tendency that resulted in tragedy last year when one retired chimp attacked and severely injured a woman in Connecticut.Ĭhimpanzees, like other great apes - gorillas, orangutans and bonobos - are endangered species facing extinction in the wild, Ross added. He sent them to three zoos.įor Ross, the ChimpCARE project is about protecting chimps and people from a dangerous public misperception that chimps are safe, people-friendly animals, which makes him opposed in particular to using chimps as actors.Ĭhimps seen on screen are babies or prepubescent youngsters, never adults, Ross said. They asked Ross, who also heads the Association of Zoos and Aquarium's chimpanzee Species Survival Program, to find places for their chimps to live. This year, owners of a California colony of 14 "actor" chimps trained for work in film, television and advertising closed their business.
Their move is not the only success of ChimpCARE. "We bumped heads at first," said Rizzotto, 56.īut their meeting soon turned into a friendship and a long-running conversation, culminating in June, with Rizzotto very tearfully leaving Connor and Kramer at a Florida chimpanzee sanctuary. Rizzotto, a direct, hard-charging businesswoman, believed the 7-year-old chimps she bought for $50,000 each were none of Ross' business because what she was doing was legal. He was astonished to see Rizzotto's chimps - Connor and Kramer - living in the lap of luxury, eating pizzas and hot wings and quaffing bottled mineral water. Ross, a soft-spoken Chicago scientist, had just founded Project ChimpCARE to locate every chimpanzee in North America and assess its level of care. CHICAGO - Dead set against people keeping chimpanzees as pets, Lincoln Park Zoo primatologist Steve Ross flew to Montana last year to face Jeanne Rizzotto, a wealthy Realtor who had declared on national television that somebody would have to step "over my dead body" to take her two pet chimps away.
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