Airline Horror Story: Baby Gorilla Survives Hell in a Cargo Hold
Turkish authorities sparked outrage when they discovered a baby gorilla languishing in the cargo hold of an airplane from Nigeria. On December 22, officials inspected a Turkish Airlines flight bound for Thailand and found a five-month-old gorilla—later nicknamed “Olive” in Turkish—crammed into a crude box barely bigger than his body.
A Gorilla in a Filthy Shirt and Tiny Crate
If you think economy class is hell, Olive faced a far more nightmarish ordeal. When authorities opened the makeshift box, they found Olive wearing a filthy shirt with only a small dish and banana peels scattered across the box’s floor. He endured nearly seven hours of terror and discomfort—over 3,000 miles—sitting in his waste, isolated and exposed to deafening engine noise.
Where Was Olive’s Mother?
In nature, gorillas nurture their young, and infants depend on their mother’s milk for the first few years. Gorillas, who are endangered, live in tight-knit family groups and fiercely protect their babies. But Olive’s mother was nowhere to be found on his flight to Thailand. Who snatched him from his mother’s side to fly halfway around the world, and why did no one at the airport in Nigeria intervene?
Although his final destination is unclear, according to the Bangkok Post, an animal importer and breeder in Bangkok is allegedly linked to the shipment.
Where Is Olive the Gorilla Now?
We don’t know whether Olive was going to be a ‘pet’ or used for entertainment in Thailand, but he’s safe and recovering from his stressful journey in Istanbul. In a statement this week, the regional director of Istanbul Nature Conservation and National Parks suggested that Olive may return to his homeland in Africa.
This Horror Happens All the Time
What happened to Olive is likely illegal, but shipping monkeys to laboratories is LEGAL! PETA has uncovered evidence that Africa’s largest airline, Ethiopian Airlines, has shipped thousands of endangered monkeys halfway around the world for use in cruel and deadly experiments.
These monkeys are packed into tiny wooden shipping crates—like the one that Olive flew in—and forced to sit in their own feces, urine, and blood before they are trucked to laboratories and killed.
Federal authorities have alleged that a Southeast Asian black-market monkey-smuggling ring abducts wild-caught monkeys from their natural habitat and falsely labels them as “captive-bred” before they’re flown to the U.S. A federal trial revealed that Ethiopian Airlines flew hundreds of these allegedly laundered monkeys from Cambodia into the hands of a U.S. laboratory supplier.
Will You Help?
When we consider the individuals around us—whether they’re a baby gorilla named Olive or a frightened macaque ripped from their home—we can recognize that everyone is someone who feels love, grief, joy, pain, fear, and hope.
Please take a few seconds today to urge Ethiopian Airlines to stop shipping monkeys to laboratories for use in cruel and deadly experiments.
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