Cameron Crowe Should Fire Ape Actors

Experts are calling on director Cameron Crowe to stop using primates as props in his films, like his upcoming We Bought a Zoo:

• World-renowned primatologist Dr. Shirley McGreal, chairperson of the International Primate Protection League, has written to Crowe asking him to leave primates out of the picture, saying, “Capuchin monkeys belong in the rain-forests of South America, not in Hollywood studios.”
• Kari Bagnall, director of Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary, asked Crowe to consider “the horror both mother and baby must feel” when they are forcibly separated so that the babies can “get used to” human contact.
• Born Free USA‘s executive vice president, Adam Roberts, told Crowe that using primates in movies “helps support a false assumption that capuchins are not endangered and that wild populations do not require our attention in order to survive.”
• Primatologist Bob Ingersoll, president of Mindy’s Memory Primate Sanctuary as well as the central figure in the new documentary Project Nim, pointed out that “computer-generated imaging has made using live animals entirely unnecessary and hopefully soon obsolete.”
• The North American Primate Sanctuary Alliance, a coalition of primate experts, unanimously agreed that Crowe should stop using these animals in films.

If you see an animal in a movie, commercial, or print advertisement, please let us know [email protected] so that we can take action.

Written by Jennifer O’Connor