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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/21/opinion/21ross.html

July 21, 2008

Op-Ed Contributor

Chimps Aren't Chumps

By STEVE ROSS

YOU see it on greeting cards and in countless TV programs and
commercials: the exaggerated grin on the face of a young chimpanzee,
often one that's wearing sunglasses or a grass skirt. It's about as
common a ploy for laughs as a pie in the face. Generations have been
amused by the antics of Bonzo, J. Fred Muggs, Zippy and, more
recently, the business-suited chimps of Careerbuilder.com. A
chimpanzee covering its eyes in embarrassment? What's not to love?

But this picture, harmless as it might appear, is giving the public
the mistaken and even dangerous impression that chimpanzees have a
safe and comfortable existence — and nothing could be further from the
truth.

A survey that I and several colleagues conducted in 2005 found that
one in three visitors to the Lincoln Park Zoo assumed that chimpanzees
are not endangered. Yet more than 90 percent of these same visitors
understood that gorillas and orangutans face serious threats to their
survival. And many of those who imagined chimpanzees to be safe
reported that they based their thinking on the prevalence of chimps in
advertisements, on television and in the movies.

In reality, chimpanzees face a severe threat in the wild: their
numbers have dropped to about 20 percent of what they were a century
ago, as their habitat in equatorial Africa is deforested and they are
hunted as bushmeat. And once you know this, it can become more
difficult to view chimpanzees as silly subhuman caricatures. Consider
that chimpanzees share as much as 98 percent of our genetic makeup.
They make and use tools, recognize and identify hundreds of
individuals in their groups and learn from others skills like termite
fishing. Of course, the reverse is also true: we are 98 percent
chimpanzee. Would we condone putting funny clothes on human children
so that we could laugh at the way they look like subhuman buffoons?

A progressive society should weigh the moral costs and benefits of
practices like these. Misrepresentations of chimpanzees may not be as
repugnant as racism, bigotry or sexism. But they can still serve as a
benchmark for our society's moral progress.

The good news is that a growing number of companies, including Honda,
Puma and Subaru, have pledged to stop the use of primates in
advertisements. The journal Science recently stopped its promotional
campaign featuring chimpanzees in hats reading the magazine. That two
consecutive Super Bowls have gone by without a major ad campaign
featuring a chimpanzee is reason for optimism. Sometimes, success has
to be measured in small increments.

Steve Ross is the supervisor of behavioral and cognitive research at
the Lester Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes at the
Lincoln Park Zoo.