The #1 source for news about monkeys and apes

[Carrie McLaren <carrie AT stayfreemagazine.org>]

The Houston Chronicle
April 13, 2002, Saturday 2 STAR EDITION
HEADLINE: TV Shows put spotlight on chimps

SOURCE: Staff

BYLINE: ANN HODGES, Houston Chronicle TV Critic


* * * "Jane Goodall: Chimps in Crisis," 7 p.m. Sunday on MSNBC. Grade: A-.
Chimps in Crisis begins with Goodall's considerable credentials: "At 
age 26, she walked into the forest," the narrator reminds, "and now, 
40 years later, she's emerged a legend."  African forests that chimps 
call home are "under siege from timber cutting, slash-and-burn 
agriculture and illegal hunting," she warns. Chimps are disappearing, 
and nobody knows how many are left - possibly as few as 150,000.



* * * "Keeli and Ivy: Chimps Like Us," 7 p.m. Sunday on Discovery 
Channel. Grade: A for animal lovers.
Keeli and Ivy: Chimps Like Us is about two apes the Discovery Channel 
has followed for the past four years. "And after you see their 
story," narrator Kelsey Grammer says, "you'll never look the same way 
at our 'next of kin.' "
Sally Boysen, a psychology professor at Ohio State University, heads 
the OSU Chimpanzee Center, and she's been a surrogate mother and 
teacher to Keeli and Ivy since they were babies. This is as much 
Boysen's story as it is the chimps'.
Others have taught chimps how to communicate with sign language and 
symbols. Boysen's goal is teaching these two to read and possibly 
write, and, she hopes, to progress from one-word responses to full 
sentences. Here, they're already reading - and spelling - a few 
three-letter words. But as Boysen's lessons get harder, her students 
get restless. They'd rather play than read. Patience is the tool most 
required to teach chimps, and Boysen is impressively patient.



* * * "Going Ape," 7 p.m. Tuesday, on Animal Planet. Grade: A.
The stars of Going Ape are two foolish humans who go into West 
Africa's Thai Forest with no food, no water, not even a change of 
clothes or a can of mosquito repellent. Alastair Fothergill, producer 
of Discovery's Blue Planet series, and conservationist Saba 
Douglas-Hamilton plan to live, eat, drink and sleep like chimps in 
the wild. And with BBC/Animal Planet cameras recording every 
miserable moment of it, they do. But not for long. They hadn't 
considered torrid temperatures, torrential downpours, or what chimps 
consider drinkable and edible. While "our chimp relatives" were 
swinging through trees, covering 10 miles per day and dining on raw 
monkey, these two were on foot, fighting their way through a dense 
jungle teeming with snakes, leopards and things that scream in the 
night.