Use of Chimpanzee in PUMA Ad Riles Animal Advocates

LONDON, UK, December 21, 2004 (ENS) - A new television commercial for PUMA sportswear that features a young chimpanzee dressed in a diaper, playing with a PUMA sports shoe has aroused the indignation of a coalition of animal protection groups and primate conservationists.

The ad, also featured on the PUMA website, shows the animal kissing the shoe, investigating it, and cuddling it. It is one of three new ads, the other two feature insects - ants and butterflies.

More than 30 international animal protection organizations and primate conservationists, including world famous primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall, have signed a letter to PUMA expressing their disapproval of the use of apes in commercials, and calling for the ad to be pulled.

The company apparently does not know that the animal in its ad is a chimpanzee - which is an ape and not a monkey. Announcing the ad campaign on its website, PUMA says, "One of the most playful spots features PUMA’s signature track training shoe, the Taper, being carefully inspected and handled by a curious monkey."

Dr. Jane Goodall shares a hoot with a wild chimpanzee friend. (Photo courtesy The Jane Goodall Institute)

Once these animals reach adolescence and become too strong and aggressive to be used, Goodall says they may spend the remaining 40 years of their lives in captive conditions that do not take their needs into account.

Goodall has joined other organizations, including the Captive Animals' Protection Society (CAPS), the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the Monkey Sanctuary Trust in calling for the PUMA commercial to be pulled.

CAPS campaigns officer Craig Redmond said, "Many companies have come to realize that exploiting great apes in commercials is not good for their corporate image. Over the past few years companies such as PG Tips, Grolsch and Halfords have stopped using chimpanzees in TV ads."

"Just six months ago," Redmond said, "a TV ad was pulled before broadcast because of a campaign by the Ape Alliance over its portrayal of chimpanzees drinking from beer bottles and feigning 'bad behavior' to mimic drunken people."

IFAW campaigner Nikki Kelly said, "Adverts, films and TV programs portraying chimps as cute and cuddly are extremely worrying, as they contribute to the public's misplaced desire to own such an animal. Chimps are highly intelligent animals and belong in the wild - not as pets or for human entertainment."

Chimpanzees are disappearing from the wild as they are taken for research, the zoo and pet trade, and the entertainment industry. (Photo credit unknown)

He observes, "Using chimps in commercials such as this just encourages poachers to think they can make money by selling baby chimps, which they capture by killing their parents. Each animal sold on the international market represents a fraction of those killed."

There is a clothing company ad campaign that Goodall supports. A new campaign by clothing manufacturer and retailer Benetton to raise awareness of the plight of great apes features striking close-ups of chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and bonobos by photographer James Mollison, who traveled to great ape sanctuaries Africa and Asia for the project. He has collected the portraits in a new book, "James & Other Apes," by British publisher Boot.

Goodall wrote the book's introduction. “If we don’t do anything to save them, in 10 to 15 years the great apes could disappear from the majority of the areas where they now live," she wrote.

"There were about 2 million chimps in Africa one hundred years ago, now there are little more than 150,000. They are dying out as a result of the expanding human population, deforestation, the destruction of their habitat, hunting and traps. The situation of mountain gorillas and orang-utans is even worse. The number of wild apes is falling while the number of orphans in sanctuaries is rising."

The great apes featured in the Mollison book were confiscated from illegal traders and placed in sanctuaries. Many had seen their mothers killed before their eyes. “Each individual ape has his or her own tragic story of pain and trauma. Each one is different. Look into the eyes of each one of them and you will sense their unique personality,” said Goodall.

The following organizations and individuals have all signed a letter to PUMA calling for their exploitive commercial to be scrapped:

• Advocates for Animals
• AESOP-Project [Allied Effort to Save Other Primates]
• Animal Aid
• Animal Concern
• Animal Defenders International
• Animal Protection Agency
• Bill Jordan Wildlife Defence Fund
• Born Free Foundation
• Captive Animals' Protection Society
• Care for the Wild International World Society for the Protection of Animals
• Chimpanzee Collaboratory (USA)
• Christophe Boesch, Professor and Director, Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany
• Dr Jane Goodall DBE, Founder - The Jane Goodall Institute & UN Messenger of Peace
• Filmmakers for Conservation Trust
• Friends of Conservation
• Galway Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
• Humane Society of Canada
• Ian Redmond, Chief Consultant to the UN Great Ape Survival Project
• International Fund for Animal Welfare
• International Primate Protection League
• Marine Connection Cetacea Defence
• Mona Foundation (UK)
• Monkey Sanctuary Trust
• Orangutan Foundation
• People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (UK)
• PETA-Deutschland e.V.
• Primate Conservation Inc
• Professor Vernon Reynolds, Emeritus Professor of Biological Anthropology, University of Oxford
• RSPCA Dr P.C. Lee, Department of Biological Anthropology, University of Cambridge
• Zoocheck Canada