Another Celebrity, Another Exploited Primate

It has been a while, and for that I apologise. I have found myself at a time in my life where it has not been possible to write everything that I would like to. Earlier in the year I met up with several amazing people who brought this blog back into the forefront of my mind, so I've dusted off the keyboard (with thanks to Haji for all of her technical help and guidance), oiled the cogs and wound up the starting handle to resurrect the writing machine.

The picture that caught my attention on social media this week was of Gordon Ramsay (British Celebrity Chef) with his daughter, holding a young chimpanzee with the caption "Someone's been very naughty".
View One of the pictures here

Well yes, Gordon, yes they have, and it is certainly not the chimpanzee. We see so many images of celebrities posing with exotic animals at the moment that if you didn't know better you could be forgiven for starting to think 'it's not too bad'. But we do know better, and it is. When you're aware of how damaging it can be for these animals to grow up as a pet or in the entertainment industry, it's frustrating to see. When you've seen the physical and behavioural effects of enduring this sort of existance first hand, in animals that have later escaped the exploitation, it is heart breaking.

Chimpanzees are intelligent, sociable animals. They have the mind and the instincts of a chimpanzee, not a human, and they are best off living with other chimpanzees to express themselves as just that, a chimpanzee, not a human in Gordon Ramsay's kitchen. When celebrities pick up a cute baby animal and hire them for a photo shoot, or 'have them round for dinner', they not only have an effect on that individual but on the trade in exotics on a broader scale. It's easy for those of us who can see the damage it does to the individual to get angry and mutter about how stupid people are for keeping pet primates, but if you don't know the dangers to the animal (and the owners) and you see public figures parading around with their menagerie in public, it probably seems reasonable to do so. They have been set an example. Celebrities that have photo shoots with these animals are setting examples, bad ones. These examples are adding fuel to the fire that is the primate pet trade, encouraging people to get hold of these animals and bring them into a life that isn't suitable for them, a life that for a chimp can lead to fifty years of solitary confinement when they're no longer cute and cuddly ad no longer safe to visit Gordon for tea. And if a chimpanzee is too expensive, well that's when the little guys are targeted. The smaller primates like the monkeys and prosimians that end up neglected and isolated in someone's spare room when the novelty wears off, or the starstruck slow loris who'll never know what it is to forage at night in a rainforest, but has sure got a lot of YouTube hits for his owner.

There are plenty of celebrities who use their popularity to do wonderful things and promote worthwhile causes, and there are others who really need to do better.

The Run!

So, did I do it?

Yes!

Somehow, despite a road closure adding an extra kilometre to the route, I completed the Great Gorilla Run 2011!

I won't lie, it wasn't easy. There is definitely not enough room for a human head and sufficient oxygen to run five miles in a gorilla mask. It is also nearly impossible to run up and down stairs when the eye holes are so small that you can't even see the stairs until your big furry feet are tripping down them. In addition, it's very difficult to drink the bottle of water kindly placed into your enormous gorilla hands when you have a plastic gorilla face plastered over your own. If I've learned anything from this experience it is never to entertain the possibility of running the London Marathon in a gorilla costume. Or even a half marathon, or a less than half marathon, for that matter.

That said, it was quite a lot of fun careering around the posh business bit of London with hundreds of gorillas in fancy dress. My gorilla pirate received huge amounts of attention from passing children, many of whom seemed to think I was the real Captain Jack Sparrow (the fact that I was a gorilla seemed to go un-noticed). Something else I had to get my head around was that there will undoubtedly be hundreds of photographs of me-dressed-as-a-gorilla-dressed-as-a-pirate in Facebook albums of people I don't know, all over the world. The tourists at Tower Bridge seemed to find the peculiar British past-time of running in gorilla costumes more interesting than the architecture!

But most importantly, we helped raise lots of cash to help The Gorilla Organization with their work to protect the gorillas and support sustainable development in their last remaining strongholds. I do not yet have a final total, but I will let you know when I do. In the meantime if you would still like to sponsor me retrospectively, you can do so at This Address!

If you have been kind enough to sponsor me already, thank you very much!


^ Me!

^ Fellow Gorillas

^ Lonely Gorilla

Six Weeks To Go!

With only five weeks and six days left to go until The Great Gorilla Run I still have work to do. In the last month I have acquired my gorilla costume and begun a (small) amount of training, but it's not going to be enough! So this week I need to amp up my running/jogging/flailing about, make my gorilla into a pirate and step up the fundraising efforts! I currently have a long way to go to meet my target of £400, but thanks to the people who have already sponsored me I'm off to a flying start!

But I've decided it's time for an incentive, so if we can make it past the £100 mark then I'll post something a bit more exciting on here, in the form of a video message from your very own pirate gorilla... Still not convinced? Read on to find out about what your kindly donated cash is going to help towards.

The Gorilla Organisation in Uganda
The Gorilla Organisation currently has projects in Cameroon, Gabon, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Rwanda.

In Uganda the projects involve supporting Ugandan rangers, investing in wildlife clubs to encourage conservation awareness from a young age, farmer training, mushroom growing, beekeeping and supporting the indiginous communities living in the Mgahinga National Park, home to remaining populations of the Mountain Gorilla, by supporting the education and health facilities available to them.

Growing mushrooms provides a source of protein for local people and reduces the likelihood of harvesting wild mushrooms in the gorilla habitat which causes damage to the area. Beekeeping also generates income for people and apiculture workshops are run for people wishing to keep bees and sell honey!

Supporting the rangers is also a very important part of the Gorilla Organisation's work in Uganda. The rangers collect information on the local gorilla populations, remove dangerous traps that can cause horrific injuries to the animals and monitor their health and progress.

And these are just some examples of the work The Gorilla Organisation does in central Africa! Please donate to my fundraising appeal and help protect the last remaining gorillas. Anything you can spare to contribute to the future of these magnificent animals and their forest homes will be greatly appreciated (and it also means that I won't be dressing up as a gorilla and hauling myself around London for no reason)!

Thankyou

Click here to donate (or check my progress)!

(Image courtesy of The Gorilla Organisation)

A New Mission

Hello! First of all, thanks to those of you who have loyally followed the Monkey Mission Blog since it first appeared in 2008, your support is very much appreciated. If you've noticed a 'radio silence' recently it's because I have been lacking in interesting primate related adventures, or at least ones I'm allowed to write about! However, all of that is about to change as I present to you:

The Great Gorilla Run

On Saturday 24th September I will be running through London in a gorilla suit. I will not be alone, there will be 799 other Gorilla Runners with me. All 800 Gorilla Runners are doing so to raise funds for The Gorilla Organisation, who work internationally to help protect the last remaining wild populations of gorillas and their habitats. They do this in several ways: By undertaking research and implementing conservation measures, educating local people and the wider public, and funding development projects including microcredit schemes, bee-keeping and agricultural training.

The route is only 7 km long, but in light of the facts that:
a) I don't run
b) I will be wearing a gorilla suit and
c) I don't run
it actually seems like quite a challenge (If you have, for example, climbed Everest or run the London Marathon dressed as an otter for charity please refrain from commenting!!!)

Over the next couple of months I will use this blog to keep track of my fundraising efforts and preparation for running in a gorilla suit. I'll also be exploring the work of The Gorilla Organisation.

If you would like to sponsor me, then you can do so at: http://events.gorillas.org/gorillapirate
If not, perhaps I can persuade you over the next month or two... watch this space!

Much love,
Rach x

"I'm sorry, I got it wrong."

An earlier post ('What are our woodlands worth?) will leave you in no surprise to hear that I couldn't help but breathe a huge sigh of relief as the Environment Secretary, Caroline Spelman, doubled back on herself today. She said that the obvious displeasure of the general public and some politicians require a different approach to the proposals to sell off a huge amount of land managed by the state.

I see this as quite a victory in the eternal battle to protect biodiversity and maintain public access to an important array of habitats in this country.

As I'm not a politician, or a 'real' journalist, I won't attempt to fill in the gaps for you (they can be found online here). There are still big changes ahead for the management of our forests and the future role, if any, the Forestry Commission will play in it. But whatever the future of our forests turns out to be, today's triumph has lit a small glimmer of hope in another way. It's not often you get a satisfactory apology in the House of Commons these days, which is a step up from the days of "You turn if you want to; the lady's not for turning". It takes more moral fibre to change your mind, especially when everybody's watching, than it would have done to plough ahead in fear of a dented sense of pride.

Orangutan Genome Sequenced

Nature has published an article detailing the draft sequence of a Sumatran orang-utan genome. Unravelling an organism's genome reveals its complete DNA sequence, allowing us access to all of its hereditary information.

The paper (Locke et al., 2011) indicates that the genome of the Sumatran orang-utan has evolved more slowly than that of the other great apes. Geneticists can determine this sort of thing by looking at gene arrangement and, for example, whether or not individual sequences are duplicated or repeated. It also gives an estimate of the speciation time for the two orang-utan species, and suggests that they split from each other as recently as 400,000 years ago.

The team also studied short read sequence data, from both Sumatran and Bornean orang-utans, and found the Sumatran species to be more genetically diverse than the Bornean orang-utan. In a hypothetical situation where human impact couldn't influence the survival prospects of either species, this higher genetic diversity would give the Sumatran orangutan an advantage over the Bornean orangutan. This is because more genetically diverse populations are generally more able to adapt to a changing environment and better equipped to survive disease outbreaks. However, Sumatran orang-utan populations are suffering, with numbers thought to be as low as 7,000 indivuals, whereas the IUCN Red List website offers estimates of 45,000 - 69,000 for the Bornean orang-utan. Both species remain threatened by habitat loss and fragmentation, fires and poaching for the pet trade. Unfortuantely for the Sumatran orang-utan, these are things that are unlikely to be dodged by having a high genetic diversity, which means it's down to us to make sure we don't force the orang-utan into the dark depths of extinction.

(For more technical information, see the full paper: Locke et al., (2011)Comparative and demographic analysis of orang-utan genomes. Nature 469, 529–533.

Spying Monkeys?

I don't know how this tale has escaped my notice for so long!

The story goes that during the Napoleonic Wars a ship came into difficulty near the coast at Hartlepool. The ship turned out to be French and had a mascot on board: A monkey.

Local men found the monkey, dressed in French military uniform, washed up on the beach and apparently took the monkey to trial for being a French spy! The monkey was then hung to death from the mast of a nearby fishing boat.

Supporters of the legend claimed that a bone washed up in 2005 once belonged to The Monkey. A closer look identified it as a bone of a red deer.

And it gets more bizarre... In 2002, the Hartlepool United Football Club mascot (yes, it was a monkey) was elected mayor of Hartlepool. His election campaign slogan was 'Free bananas for schoolchildren'.