Sunday, December 10, 2006

Bedtime for Bonzo and co

A group in America has successfully campaigned for the retirement of two acting chimps (no, not Ben Stiller and Will Ferrell).

I think this is positive, as although apes have given us some great screen moments with California Republicans (Clint Eastwood, sometime Mayor of Carmel, with Clyde the orang-utan in Every Which Way But Loose, and the happy couple in the picture below), they can be at risk of being exploited for our amusement.



I'm a bit worried by this paragraph though:

The Animal Legal Defense Fund was set up by a group of primatologists, lawyers, scientists and actors who have started a campaign called No Reel Apes - to call for an end to the use of primates in entertainment.

Surely the someone at the BBC knows what a primate is? (the group actually campaigns against the use of non-human Great Apes, as do this lot)

From Wikipedia:
A primate (L. prima, first) is any member of the biological order Primates, the group that contains all the species commonly related to the lemurs, monkeys, and apes, with the latter category including humans.[1]

Obviously they're cutting back on their sub-editors. Still, if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys, I suppose.

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