Twycross Zoo ITV Central News

J

Jane Doe

Well-Known Member
Did anyone see ITV Central News the BBC News and This Morning what Sharon Redrobe said about the chimps that were on the PG Tips Adverts some 30 years ago

It makes me sick how someone who didn't know Miss Badham and Miss Evans could speak the way she did OK it needed change but back in the day they were the only females to run a zoo successfully and it made money all of which got put back into the zoo.

If you missed it look on ITV player and you will find it and if you put tea chimps into google I am sure you will find it :mad:
 
I agree the chimps have paid for the way they were treated as babies, but as mentioned a couple of times in the article that sort of thing was of its time and i'd hope that now a lot more people are better educated and that sort of thing wouldn't happen now. Chimps are such amazing creatures as they are, they really do not need to be dressed up or playing the piano to prove that :)
 
If all the ex Tea Party chimps bar one are now dead, how do they manage to still have so many, approx 25, chimps, mostly elderly or at least fully adult. I know some were born there but how/why/what were the rest of them obtained for?

I quote; ' Nowadays the animals enclosures are matched as closely as possible to wild habitats'.

I don't think any of the current Ape enclosures at Twycoss could be described thus. Far from it.:(
 
There are no PG Tips chimps at the zoo now because choppers didn't do them I think. There are only 22 chimps now.

Unfortunately a lot of the females got pregnant before it was found that the human female contraceptive pill could be used on the female chimps successfully.

There was only 1 male chimp that was not born at the zoo and that is Benjie he was born at London Zoo and they sent him to Twycross.

I agree the new management have not made the enclosures look anything like the natural habitat.
 
Hi
Miss Redrobe put the information over wrong in the days they are talking about late 50's early 60's you could have a wild animal as a pet be it any of the big cats, chimps or anything. The chimps were donated by people e.g. the people who owned Tojo.

The chimps that were used were NOT Babies they were what I would call toddlers and as I have stated all of the chimps were donated it was a case of you found somewhere that could house a chimp or have them put to sleep, why do you think there are cases of big cats being seen in the wild.

The last adverts that featured chimps were played by the French and Italian chimps.

SmallestGiraffe said:
I agree the chimps have paid for the way they were treated as babies, but as mentioned a couple of times in the article that sort of thing was of its time and i'd hope that now a lot more people are better educated and that sort of thing wouldn't happen now. Chimps are such amazing creatures as they are, they really do not need to be dressed up or playing the piano to prove that :)
Click to expand...
 
The thing I object to is the fact that those chimps that were used were not babies they were what I would class as toddlers, plus all of those chimps that were used for the adverts had been donated to the zoo because their owners could not look after them any more.

If the adverts had not happened then there would be no Twycross Zoo read molly's zoo.

OrangePerson said:
I didn't see the news but I've read the articles eg

BBC News - PG Tips chimps: The last of the tea-advertising apes

Can you specify exactly what you object to, it certainly appears that those chimps have paid dearly for the way they were treated as babies.
Click to expand...
 
Jane Doe said:
Did anyone see ITV Central News the BBC News and This Morning what Sharon Redrobe said about the chimps that were on the PG Tips Adverts some 30 years ago

It makes me sick how someone who didn't know Miss Badham and Miss Evans could speak the way she did OK it needed change but back in the day they were the only females to run a zoo successfully and it made money all of which got put back into the zoo.

If you missed it look on ITV player and you will find it and if you put tea chimps into google I am sure you will find it :mad:
Click to expand...

Why? Do you disagree with her view that the way young chimpanzees were treated created later problems?
 
Why I disagree is because they were not damaged. Chimpanzees naturally like to get attention but they still new how to be chimps. Some of the chimps that came to the zoo had already got problems. Miss Redrobe didn't now enough about them and how they came to the zoo, I personally think she made a very big deal about it because she ended her interview with "we will be building a 3 million pound chimp complex If we can raise the money" so I think she made a big deal of it just to get people to come to the zoo and spend money.

If people want to have a go at anyone think about Monkey Word.

The apes that are damaged are those that are on holiday beaches abroad they have their teeth pulled out so they do not bit anyway the chimps at the zoo now how to be chimps.
 
Jane Doe said:
Why I disagree is because they were not damaged. Chimpanzees naturally like to get attention but they still new how to be chimps.
Click to expand...

No they didn't -they spent most of their days inactive with little interaction between Chimps. Also twos' and threes' is nowhere near a natural grouping for Chimps -how could they act like Chimps when they were not in group sizes big enough to encourage natural interactions and behaviour?

Jane Doe said:
Miss Redrobe made a very big deal about it because she ended her interview with "we will be building a 3 million pound chimp complex If we can raise the money" so I think she made a big deal of it just to get people to come to the zoo and spend money.
Click to expand...

I don't think that's really a bad objective really, have you seen the Chimp enclosures at Twycross recently? There's nothing particularly good or modern about them, though it's great to see the Chimps finally in larger groups and good to know the zoo is trying to improve things.

Whilst not denigrating Molly & Natalie's achievements in anyway it's wrong to look at everything they did as beyond criticism. Quite plainly, what was acceptable in the 1970's was, with hindsight, not in the Chimps best long term interests.
 
Jane Doe said:
I personally think she made a very big deal about it because she ended her interview with "we will be building a 3 million pound chimp complex If we can raise the money"
Click to expand...

Thanks for the information on the existing Chimps at Twycross. I hadn't realised that a large proportion of those they still have were actually born there. I guess quite a lot of them would have been handraised though, as I've very rarely seen a mother Chimp with baby on many visits there over the years.

The new Chimp complex is still/back on the cards then, at some time in the future. This wasn't mentioned in the above article, only in the interview I guess- which I didn't see. I really hope they can raise the funds for it- IMO it would be the single most important new build the Zoo could undertake and its still of maximum priority. I'm quite confident virtually all of the existing Chimps could be brought together as a single large 'clan' - the relative(I do say relative) ease with which they amalgamated some of them into somewhat larger groupings virtually proves that.
 
Jane Doe said:
The thing I object to is the fact that those chimps that were used were not babies they were what I would class as toddlers, plus all of those chimps that were used for the adverts had been donated to the zoo because their owners could not look after them any more.

If the adverts had not happened then there would be no Twycross Zoo read molly's zoo.
Click to expand...
I'm pretty sure that many of the chimps (and certainly most of the other primates at the zoo) were bought directly by the zoo owners from dealers and pet-shops. There's nothing wrong with that -- that is the only way things worked back then -- but it would be incorrect to try and say that Twycross only got chimps through "donation".

And for my edification, who is Sharon Redrobe?
 
Chlidonias said:
I'm pretty sure that many of the chimps (and certainly most of the other primates at the zoo) were bought directly by the zoo owners from dealers and pet-shops.

And for my edification, who is Sharon Redrobe?
Click to expand...

Some of Twycross' early Primate species would certainly have come from animal dealers- a number of their early Monkey species and the initial pairs(1.1.) of Gorillas and Orangutans(2.3) would have been from those sources as were two (0.2) of the later Gorillas also. Probably some of the original Chimps too. Very few primates were available in Petshops even in those days, a few of the commoner monkey species, the odd chimp and even a young Gorilla and Orangutan in Tysley's Pet Stores in Birmingham- though close to Twycross, neither of these went there.

Sharon Redrobe is a vet and the new CEO at Twycross, replacing the previous(former) Director who was hired by the original owners but who 'resigned' a year or so ago after what appeared to be inside pressure.
 
Pertinax said:
Sharon Redrobe is a vet and the new CEO at Twycross, replacing the previous(former) Director who was hired by the original owners but who 'resigned' a year or so ago after what appeared to be inside pressure.
Click to expand...
I thought she might be the CEO but couldn't remember. What I'm getting from this thread is that she has said (in summary) "Hand-raising chimps as humans for entertainment purposes was a bad idea and the result was many individual misfit adult chimps. This is not something which would be done nowadays. We would like to get all these chimps together and socialised, and we would like to raise enough money to build an actual proper chimp enclosure at Twycross". Is that about right? I'm not sure what the fuss is if that is the case.
 
Shorts said:
No they didn't -they spent most of their days inactive with little interaction between Chimps. Also twos' and threes' is nowhere near a natural grouping for Chimps -how could they act like Chimps when they were not in group sizes big enough to encourage natural interactions and behaviour?



I don't think that's really a bad objective really, have you seen the Chimp enclosures at Twycross recently? There's nothing particularly good or modern about them, though it's great to see the Chimps finally in larger groups and good to know the zoo is trying to improve things.

Whilst not denigrating Molly & Natalie's achievements in anyway it's wrong to look at everything they did as beyond criticism. Quite plainly, what was acceptable in the 1970's was, with hindsight, not in the Chimps best long term interests.
Click to expand...

Miss Badham & Miss Evans did what they thought best built up Twycross on a shoe string, there is still 1 original house and that is the old giraffe house. The Amazon house which was the Reptile house was the first house to be purposely built Mrs Boardman new the roof was knackered but no she still spent a fortune on it and now the roof has finally given up that is why it is closed until further notice. I feel everyone just wants to call Miss Badham & Miss Evans there are things I have been told that don't sit right with me that the new team have done, all Miss Redrobe wanted was to make it look bad on Miss Badham for what she did years ago and we all know that wouldn't happen now, she only did it to get the 3 million that is needed. It was always Miss Badhams wish and intention to build a purpose built chimp complex but it never happened because 1 was her age and finally it was decided she should retire and let someone bring it up to date, so what happened Mrs Boardman was brought in and what did she do spend, spend, spend, and now there is Miss Redrobe and all she wants to do is slag Miss B off.
There is no point me sticking up for Miss Badham because everyone has already made up their minds.
 
With regards to the aquisition of chimps by Twycross in the early days , there is a lot of information available in the recent Chimpanzee studbooks . From memory , Twycross received many wild-caught baby chimps , a lot of them were moved on to other zoos after a relatively short period .

MY INTERPRETATION of this is the tractable ones that could be worked with were kept , whilst the others were moved on . I could be totally wrong here I admit .

I am not necessarily condemning this . As others have said , what was acceptable practice was very different then . Even Gerald Durrel purchased wild-caught baby apes for Jersey and collected chimps in West Africa .
 
Jane Doe said:
There is no point me sticking up for Miss Badham because everyone has already made up their minds.
Click to expand...
you're being a bit over-dramatic. Nobody on here, as far as I can tell, hates Miss Badham or Evans, or thinks badly of them as such. It is just that what was done forty years ago in the zoo world isn't what would be done today. It's as simple as that. It is the same for any older zoo in the world.

I found the news video (here: Chimps were 'damaged' by TV adverts | Central - ITV News) and there's nothing even remotely bad in it. The CEO is simply saying that chimps wouldn't be used like that by Twycross today, that they end up "damaged" as she put it, and that they want to get all the chimps together into social groups which is the way chimps should be, and for which they need to raise money to build a proper facility.

On a side note, the piece showed clips from the PG Tips adverts. I hadn't realised those are the exact same adverts that I used to watch as a kid on tv in New Zealand! I loved those ads!! The nature of the times indeed.
 
Last edited:
Well I knew Molly Badham all of the chimps in the early days were given to them because the owns could not handle them, because they were pets it was not against the law for people to have tropical animals like a cat or a dog. You are making Miss Badham sound like Mary Chipperfield

Bele said:
With regards to the aquisition of chimps by Twycross in the early days , there is a lot of information available in the recent Chimpanzee studbooks . From memory , Twycross received many wild-caught baby chimps , a lot of them were moved on to other zoos after a relatively short period .

MY INTERPRETATION of this is the tractable ones that could be worked with were kept , whilst the others were moved on . I could be totally wrong here I admit .

I am not necessarily condemning this . As others have said , what was acceptable practice was very different then . Even Gerald Durrel purchased wild-caught baby apes for Jersey and collected chimps in West Africa .
Click to expand...
 
Chlidonias said:
The CEO is simply saying that chimps wouldn't be used like that by Twycross today, that they end up "damaged" as she put it, and that they want to get all the chimps together into social groups which is the way chimps should be, and for which they need to raise money to build a proper facility.

I am not clear why her statement/interview/article about the past of Twycross' chimps should be made now, unless it is a way of highlighting the need for a proper Chimpanzee complex to house them altogether in one large group.( they are currently living in 3-4 smaller subgroups) This has been talked about for many years now but still nothing has happened so far, presumably due to lack of finance. One map even marks a possible site for it in a central location in the Zoo. A positive drive toward this, even if it involves negative references to the past by way of introduction, has to be good.

Its also worth remembering most other Zoos also humanised their apes to some degree during this era- if not to the same financial gain as Twycross did- you only have to see old postcards and photos of dressed chimps 'gardening', Orangutans wearing a keeper's cap, and the ZSL chimps teaparties to realise that. And Bristol were still taking one or two young apes into the T.V. studios into the mid-1970's.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
If people read her books they would see. Where are they thinking of putting it all ? It is common sense chimps would not be used like that now so she was just having a dig.
I know a lot of things that have happened under the new management that would never have happened in Miss B & Miss E's Day.
There was plenty of money until the previous director used it all.:mad:
Chlidonias said:
you're being a bit over-dramatic. Nobody on here, as far as I can tell, hates Miss Badham or Evans, or thinks badly of them as such. It is just that what was done forty years ago in the zoo world isn't what would be done today. It's as simple as that. It is the same for any older zoo in the world.

I found the news video (here: Chimps were 'damaged' by TV adverts | Central - ITV News) and there's nothing even remotely bad in it. The CEO is simply saying that chimps wouldn't be used like that by Twycross today, that they end up "damaged" as she put it, and that they want to get all the chimps together into social groups which is the way chimps should be, and for which they need to raise money to build a proper facility.

On a side note, the piece showed clips from the PG Tips adverts. I hadn't realised those are the exact same adverts that I used to watch as a kid on tv in New Zealand! I loved those ads!! The nature of the times indeed.
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top