From a speech delivered October 14, 2003 in Los Angeles,
California at a briefing co-hosted by the Chimpanzee Collaboratory and the
Environmental Media Association
My name is Sarah Baeckler, and for a little more than a
year � from June 2002 to July 2003 � 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. There
are about five major chimpanzee training facilities supplying the
industry, and Amazing Animal Actors is one of them. The director of
Amazing Animal Actors has been in this business for over 30 years. Over
the course of my 14 months working there, I spent approximately 1000 hours
at the training compound. The events I witnessed horrified me. 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. 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 relationships. 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. 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�, 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. The
trainers physically abuse the chimpanzees for various reasons, but often
for no reason at all. If the chimpanzees try to run away from a trainer,
they are beaten. If they bite someone, they are beaten. If they don�t pay
attention, they are beaten. Sometimes they are beaten without any
provocation or for things that are completely out of their control.
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. 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 � 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.� 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.� 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�, 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.
For most of my second day at the compound, Te� wasn�t
there. 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� �hitting her head,� he said, which
resulted in a big gash that required stitches. So I presumed that Te� was
missing because she was receiving care for her injuries.
When I saw Te� 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. I believe she had been beaten,
and there was no spark at all in her eyes � 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�. That�s
how different Te� was.
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� instantly became rigid and alert and started howling at him � �threat
barking� is the technical term, but I think you get the picture. Today,
over a year later, Te� 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.� 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 � 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. While Te� was determined not to let anyone
hold her or pick her up, Cody is the opposite. 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. 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. 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.� None
of this is necessary.
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 shirts up and explore what�s underneath. He
tries to get people�s attention by throwing pieces of food at them through
the bars of his cage. He loves to be tickled and chased. All this is
entirely normal for a young male chimpanzee. 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.
By now you are probably wondering how this type of abuse
can go on. Isn�t it illegal? 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. The reality is
that very few offenders are ever prosecuted, and even fewer actually serve
time for their crimes.
You may also be wondering if what I observed at Amazing
Animal Actors is simply an exception � 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 fashion. I don�t
think so. While I have not worked at other facilities, I did visit another
and heard about several more. 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. 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.
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. 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.� This
professor, who had worked for yet another chimpanzee trainer in the
industry, 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.� 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 reports you�ve just received, it
is na�ve 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. 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. 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.
Thank you. I hope you�ll choose to help us.
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For information on what you can do to help, go to:
www.chimpcollaboratory.org/you/index.asp