Shame on Universal Studios Hollywood, Juvenile Orangutan

Orangutan @ Universal Studios Hollywood

He was in the "Animal Actors" show. What a clown!

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redapes says:

This picture is so sad. Shame on Universal Studios for continuing to abuse orangutans like this...

These intelligent, gentle creatures don't belong in entertainment. It's cruel and needs to be stopped. The orangutans are beaten when they are young in order to learn to do these stupid performances. And when they get too big, they're locked up in metal cages where they spend their days and nights alone and depressed.

The lucky ones make it to sanctuaries like the Center for Great Apes. Learn more here: http://www.centerforgreatapes.org/

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Exploitation of an Endangered Species, The Orangutan

Pictured: The orangutan who just loves to jet ski

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 12:25 PM on 03rd January 2009

While most orangutans have to make do with swinging from the trees, cheeky Surya just loves aping about on a jet ski.

The four-year-old orangutan is given a child's jet ski to play on as part of his activities at The Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species (TIGER) in Miami, Florida.

Surya is allowed to play in the water on the motorised water bike as part of TIGER's weekly enrichment activities for the orangutans living there.

The ape is dressed in a child's wetsuit and jets around the swimming pool before waving at onlookers.

Water baby: Surya the jet-skiing ape waves to onlookers

The jet skiing is part of activities to teach orangutans how to swim

He also loves swimming while wearing a red life jacket with his trainers.

Animal expert Dr Bhagavan Antle said: 'Suyra loves playing in the water. But he doesn't like getting his head wet, so he wears a life jacket so he doesn't go underneath.

'He is quite content when he's bobbing around on the top. And he loves the jet ski because he can look down on all of us.'

Helping hand: Surya with his trainer

Dr Antle and his team of handlers introduced Surya and other orangutans to water when they were just babies and played in a large bath.

'The orangutans love playing in the bath. But they don't swim naturally and so if you introduce them to the pool, they'd sink to the bottom,' he added.

'So we discovered wearing children's lifejackets helps to give them confidence. Now some of them can even swim without their life jackets.

'But Surya prefers the jet ski and he'll always head for it as soon as we get into the pool.'

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Environmentalists Argue, No Way to Treat Wild Animals Facing Extinction

PRIMATE ATTRACTION: Visitors look at April, a 9-month-old female orang utan at Orang Utan Island, in Bukit Merah Laketown Resort, Perak. PICTURE: REUTERS

THEY are pampered with attention round the clock. But such mollycoddling of orang utans are against the order of nature, say enviromentalists.

They are outraged by what is going on a Malaysian island.

There, baby orang utans wear diapers, sleep in cots and are cared for by nurses dressed in masks and starched uniforms.

At Orang Utan Island, which is part of Bukit Merah Laketown Resort in Perak, tourists snap photos as they file past large windows that look onto a facility billed as the world's only rehabilitation and preservation facility for the endangered primates.

Baby orang utans like 2-month-old Tuah lie swaddled in nursery sheets and hold baby rattles, reported AFP.

Although fed every two hours by a staff of seven nurses on duty round the clock, environmentalists argue this is no way to treat wild animals facing extinction.

Managers of the 14-hectare island said they will return the animals to their natural jungle habitat.

So far none has been released.

Senior wildlife veterinarian Roy Sirimanne said: 'It is ridiculous to have orang utans in nappies and hand-raised in a nursery. How are they going to reintroduce the primates back in the wild?'

Dr Sirimanne, who has worked in zoos in South-east Asia and the Middle East over the past four decades, said baby orang utans need to be with their mothers to learn survival skills.

He said: 'Keeping the orangutans in captivity on an island is not a conservation programme. It amounts to desecration (of the species) as it is nearly impossible to reintroduce them back to the forest.'

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Show Business Not for Orangutans

Singer Fergie poses with an orangutan friend during a photo shoot for Elle magazine in 2007.

Dr. Robert Shumaker, of the Great Ape Trust of Iowa, is in Toronto to discuss ending the use of the great apes in the entertainment industry. He makes his case to the Star's San Grewal

Apr 15, 2009 04:30 AM

San Grewal

With the recent retirement of eight hairy Hollywood stars Dr. Robert Shumaker can rest easy.

The eight orangutans came from a California-based trainer who, for the past three decades, provided the animals for feature films, TV shows, commercials and magazine shoots.

But the great apes are also an endangered species, with about 55,000 remaining in the wild, compared to 225,000 at the start of the 20th century on the island of Borneo alone.

Shumaker is a scientist and director of the orangutan research program at the Great Ape Trust of Iowa, where the retired orangutans will eventually call home. He talked to the Star yesterday before his Toronto presentation tonight of The Show Must Not Go On: Ending Orangutans in Entertainment.

Q: Most of us have seen the now-retired orangutans in movies, shows or commercials. What misperceptions did their presence in Hollywood create?

A: People want to focus on the question, `Was an ape physically abused?' That's not really the question.... All of these orangutans are in very good health ... The bigger questions are about conservation and public perception. The reality is we could easily see the end of orangutans in my lifetime.

Q: Is physical treatment not an issue?

A: Within any industry there's a range of behaviour. In the treatment of apes it varies from trainer to trainer. I want to be careful not to paint everyone who works with apes in entertainment with the same brush. Having said that, I don't agree with apes in entertainment. ...It's not just their physical welfare we're concerned about. There are questions of infants being taken from their mother. Mother apes have an incredibly strong bond with their infants.

Q: When did you become so passionate about great apes?

A: I honestly do not remember a time when I was not completely passionate about apes. From earliest childhood, it's all I wanted to do. I have a vivid memory at 3 or 4 being at the National Zoo in Washington where I grew up. I remember it very clearly, seeing the gorillas and orangutans. It was not their size or their power, it was their faces. Even as a child I knew I was looking at an intelligent individual looking back at me.

Q: And while growing up did you like King Kong?

A: I'm no different than anyone else, I used to love seeing apes in entertainment as a kid, like most kids. My exposure to some of the controversy of apes in entertainment was when I started to work with the zoo community. I have two children, 7 and 3. I hope as adults they'll be able to say there's still orangutans living in the wild.

Q: What does the retirement of the eight orangutans mean for that wish?

A: As far as changing the perceptions and using them for our amusement, I know of no more trainers that are active with orangutans in the entertainment industry. That chapter is now closing.

Shumaker's lecture is tonight at 7 p.m. at the University of Toronto's George Ignatieff Theatre."

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