Why Chimpanzees and Bonobos?
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Chimpanzees and bonobos (sometimes referred to as ""pygmy chimpanzees") are kidnapped for use as biomedical research subjects or as pets or in entertainment. They are massacred for their meat to feed "the growing fad for 'bush meat' on the tables of the elite in Cameroon, Gabon, the Congo, the Central African Republic, and other countries," so that their hands, feet, and skulls can be displayed as trophies, and for their babies. Thousands are jailed around the world in biomedical research institutions like Yerkes or are imprisoned in decrepit roadside zoos or chained alone and lonely in private dwellings. When the last century turned, there were 5 million wild chimpanzees in Africa. We don't know the number of bonobos because they weren't then considered a species separate from chimpanzees. But it was probably about half a million. By 1998, only 200,000 chimpanzees remained, perhaps as few as 120,000, and. maybe 20,000 bonobos. One of the world's most prominent bonobo experts, Takayoshi Kano, believes that less than 10,000 bonobos may have survived. Thousands of. chimpanzees and bonobos are slaughtered every year. They are nearing annihilation. In Chapters 9 and 10, you will get a close look at the kinds of creatures these apes are and how similar their genes and brain structures are to ours. You will learn about the scientific revolt that has broken out as an increasing number of scientists demand they be tucked into the genus Homo with us. We will peel back the layers of their minds and try to understand what is known about how they feel and what they think; why they are conscious and selfconscious; how they understand cause, and effect, relationships among objects, and even relationships among relationships; how they use and make tools; how they can live in societies so complex and fluid that they have been dubbed "Machiavellian"; how they deceive and empathize, count simple numbers and add fractions, treat their illnesses with medicinal plants, communicate with symbols, understand English and use sign or lexigram languages, and how they might know what others think. We will compare what we think we know about their minds with what we think we know about ours.

I didn't choose to describe the plights of Jerom and Nathan and the rest of the Yerkes chimpanzees because they are not the worst known examples of legal chimpanzee abuse. That dubious prize probably goes to the notorious SEMA, Inc, renamed Diagnon, located in Rockville, Maryland. Sometime in 1986, a nauseated employee tipped off the True Friends, a band of animal-rights activists, who broke into the lab and videotaped what was happening inside. AIDS-infected baby chimpanzees were housed alone in what SEMA called "isolettes," metal cubes 40 inches high, 31 inches deep, and 26 inches wide, each of which contained a small window. Inside, the babies rocked and rocked as would the emotionally starved or the mentally ill.

 

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