News
posted in 30 Oct 2017
All zoos should be closed – other species have rights
By Philipe Hoare (The Guardian) When nearly 500 animals die in less than four years in one zoo, surely it’s time to reconsider this anachronistic way of showing our children that the world is full of beautiful animals What does it take to close down a zoo? The death of
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posted in 01 Oct 2017
Uganda’s mountain gorillas come far closer than we expect. And that’s a good thing
BY JANE WOOLDRIDGE (Miami Herald) IMPENETRABLE NATIONAL FOREST, UGANDA The gorillas ignore us so completely that if one hadn’t brushed against my leg on her way to a new perch, we might have been invisible. We’re trying to keep the proscribed distance of 20 feet, but the family of 15
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posted in 15 Sep 2017
GAP BRAZIL: Check new photos of Cecília and Marcelino
Chimpanzee Cecília arrived, in April, at Great Apes Sanctuary of Sorocaba, in Brazil, affiliated to GAP Project, e since then is experience a quality of life in captivity she had never sensed, because she only knew her tiny cage in Mendoza zoo, in Argentina. The case of Cecília
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posted in 15 Sep 2017
Pushed to the brink of extinction
By Abhijit Mohanty /Down to the Earth Chimpanzees, who share about 98 per cent of their genes with humans, are fast heading towards extinction. Among the rarest subspecies is the Nigeria-Cameroon Chimpanzee—less than 6,000 are left in the forests north of the Sanga River in Cameroon and in southwestern Nigeria. It
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posted in 14 Sep 2017
GAP has a new representative in the UK
Great Ape Project – GAP is an international movement created in 1994 whose purpose is to spread information on the basic rights to life, freedom and non-torture of the non-human great apes – Chimpanzees, Gorillas, Orangutans and Bonobos. For that, the project created the World Declaration on Great Primates, document that aims to
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posted in 05 Sep 2017
Marcelino, new mate for Argentine chimpanzee Cecilia in Brazil
EFE/EPA - São Paulo Cecilia, a chimpanzee living in a Brazilian animal refuge since arriving from Argentina in April, now has a new "companion." For a week, Cecilia has been sharing her habitat at the refuge with Marcelino, a 10-year-old chimp born at the Sorocaba nature preserve in
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posted in 28 Aug 2017
Cecília is not alone anymore
Loneliness for a chimpanzee is the main torture that can exist. Cecilia was desperately searching for a company. It did not work with Billy, he is not interested in chimpanzees, only humans. A product of the life in a circus, which has accustomed him to this kind of fake company.
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posted in 22 Aug 2017
Love beckons for recovering monkey in chimp refuge
Marcelino is calling to her, but Cecilia cannot be with him. Not yet. He may be handsome, but she has suffered a lot and isn't ready for a relationship. This is not a soap opera. It is just the way things go in a Brazilian refuge for abused and depressed
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posted in 09 Aug 2017
Mona: a 57 year old surviver
It is estimated that she was born in Africa in 1960. In the first record, in the United States, she appeared as a resident for 22 years at the Oklahoma Institute of Primate Studies, where she must have learned to communicate by signals. In 1982, she was sent to the Medical Torture Center
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posted in 09 Aug 2017
Chantek, the orangutan who used sign language, dies at 39
An orangutan who was one of the first apes to learn sign language has died in Atlanta, Georgia, aged 39. Chantek lived with an anthropologist in Tennessee for about nine years and learned to clean his room, make and use tools and memorise the route to a fast-food restaurant. He spent
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posted in 01 Aug 2017
The intelligence of Great Apes
Now that I have just read this excellent article by the biologist Fernando Reinach, in newspaper O Estado de São Paulo, last July 29, which is reproduced here, I understand how the Great Apes are smart in their survival. Something I did not understand was the reason why Carol, Guga,
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posted in 18 Jul 2017
Argentine judge refuses to transfer orangutan Sandra to Great Apes Sanctuary of Sorocaba, Brazil
After several months of management, and in view of the documentation required for the transfer of the orangutan Sandra to the Great Primates Sanctuary of Sorocaba (Brazil), on July 10, 2017, Dr. Elena Liberatori, the Judge of Litigation, Administrative and Tax No. 4 of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires (Argentina), "momentarily" rejected
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posted in 12 Jul 2017
Nemley Jr.’s Life Was Saved in a Daring Raid. Why Did He Die Just a Few Months Later?
Dear friends, I wrote to you a few months ago about Nemley Jr., a baby chimpanzee in Ivory Coast. After being confiscated from an international smuggling ring because of the BBC’s undercover operation, he was sent to a dilapidated, underfunded city zoo. The zoo still hasn’t fully recovered
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posted in 04 Jul 2017
Chimps’ strength secrets explained
By Paul Rincon (Science Editor - BBC News) The greater strength of chimpanzees, relative to humans, may have been explained by American scientists. A study suggests the difference is mostly due to a higher proportion in chimps of a muscle fibre type involved in powerful, rapid movements. The findings do
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posted in 15 Jun 2017
We need to talk about spending time with our families in zoos…
The force of events brings me back to this subject: why, in 2017, do we still take our families to spend a good time in zoos? I was struck by the news of the death of a keeper (one more) by one of the tigers she used to take care of
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