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http://www.mercurynews.com/top-stories/ci_15892550

Oakland Zoo home to former movie star chimpanzees

By Kristin Bender
Oakland Tribune
Posted: 08/25/2010 04:10:21 PM PDT

OAKLAND -- Before they started swinging from ropes and munching on
popcorn and raisins at the Oakland Zoo, Bernie and Eddie had careers
in television and movies.
They are still stars at the zoo, but now they are starting to mingle
with five new chimps, playing hide-and-seek inside their leafy,
expansive glass-enclosed home and entertaining thousands of zoo
visitors each week.
Steve Ross, chairman of the Chimpanzee Species Survival Plan and
director of Project ChimpCARE, which helped direct the move to the
zoo, said brothers Bernie and Eddie were owned by Greg and Carol
Lille, who live near Sacramento and trained chimpanzees for films,
advertisements and print media, such as greeting cards, for more than
30
years.
"The Lilles worked cooperatively with all the zoos to place the chimps
and were instrumental in ensuring these chimps were provided the
opportunity to live out their lives in long-term sustainable housing
such as at the Oakland Zoo," Ross said.
Greg Lille said he was under contract not to talk about the
chimpanzee's past work history and declined to comment Wednesday.
According to published reports, Bernie was the star of a hockey team
in the 2000 movie "MVP: Most Valuable Primate," and its 2001 sequel
"MVP2: Most Vertical Primate," where he plays hockey and rides
skateboards.
The Chimpanzee Species Survival Plan, an organization that serves 37
zoos nationwide in managing the chimpanzee population, helped
facilitate moving 14 chimps from the couple to zoos in Oakland,
Houston and Maryland.
Oakland Zoo lead keeper Margaret Rousser said she was pleased the
chimpanzees have a new home.
"We try to avoid having animals used in entertainment because the
babies are pulled from their mothers at a very young age and retired
(from entertainment work) at 8 or 9," she said. "Sometimes they don't
learn socialization and they can live up to 60 years. So you might
have 40 or 50 years that they may have to live (in) solitary."
This was not the case with Bernie and Eddie, Ross said.
"The chimpanzees were in excellent health when they came to the zoos,"
she said. "Socializing chimps with unusual histories can be difficult.
Pet chimpanzees, in particular, can be difficult as they are often
taken from their mothers after just a few days, then raised without
appropriate social contact with other chimps for many years. But this
is not the case with these chimps. They all have (had) extensive
social contact throughout their lives."
Bernie, 16, and Eddie, 20, have over the past few months been
integrated with Oakland's one male and four females. Eddie has become
the peacekeeper in the group; Bernie had a little trouble with the
lone male, Moses, at the beginning; the two now seem to be warming up
to each other, zoo officials said.
"They have to work things out," Rousser said. "You'll see some cuts
and scraps just like kids on the playground."
The process started in May when the two new chimps were introduced
one-on-one with each residing chimp. Zookeepers then put them all
together.
"It was a very long process," Rousser said. "You can't just throw them
in and assure they'll get along. Chimps in the wild can be aggressive.
It's critical for the males to get along because they have more
(one-on-one) interactions than males and females or females and
females."
A few zookeepers camped overnight outside the chimp enclosures to make
sure there weren't any nighttime antics. The chimps have now been seen
grooming each other, "displaying together" -- showing off, basically
-- and running around together.
"They are really, really smart," Rousser said, adding that she once
witnessed a few chimps figure out how to strip away twigs and leaves
from a branch for use in removing raisins and popcorn from inside a
small hole in a wooden pole. "Chimps really deserve a lot of respect.
A lot of times people come up and say, 'Look at the funny monkey,' but
they are amazing animals and should have a lot of respect."
Chimpanzees are most closely related to humans with 98 to 99 percent
identical DNA, zoo officials said. To that end, zookeepers do as much
as they can to keep the animals stimulated. Zookeepers set up their
food inside devices that take a little figuring out, and they give
them everything from magazines to stuffed animals to play with.
"Anything they will interact with we are going to give them, as long
as it's safe," Rousser said.