"People who own chimps rethink choice of pet"

I was confused for a moment until I saw how old this article is (2009) but I doubt things have improved much, there's a huge burden of cost in caring for these animals but it's nothing compared to the price paid by the poor chimps for people's stupidity/arrogance/selfishness.
 
Interesting how many pet Chimpanzees are kept in the USA. I think very few, if any, Chimps are in private hands in the UK nowadays. There are at least two monkey sanctuaries in the UK which do house large numbers of Chimps, both from zoos and ex-pets, but the pet ones have come from outside the UK.
 
There are a lot of chimps in the US, large numbers in medical research - still about 1000 I seem to remember reading, they bred loads for 'entertainment' so it's easy to see how private individuals can obtain them. I don't think there are a fraction of those numbers in the UK so I'm sure you could get one if you were determined but not your average idiot who sees one and just thinks it's a good idea. Hopefully the majority of those animals were bred in captivity and not smuggled with the consequent loss of whole families of wild chimps for one baby.

It's mind-blowing to think Save the Chimps have nearly 300 chimps in their sanctuary - Monkey World used to seem to be a place with a lot of chimps - but 300 :eek:
 
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