Gaming company Sega has just earned the good graces of the international animal rights group PETA after it pulled out an ad for Samba de Amigo upon request of stated organization. The ad in question features a young chimpanzee barging in on a family playing the Wii and waving with him a pair of maracas.
Seeing the ad, the keen folks at PETA saw that something was wrong. No, they didn’t see the cute chimpanzee smartly doing tricks for the camera, instead, they saw a young, exploited animal separated from its mom and trained in order to perform. So they wrote to Sega, and this is how it all went down:
We explained how involuntary chimpanzee “actors” are taken away from their mothers when they’re just a year or so old and forced to perform confusing and repetitious tricks. We also explained some of the horrible methods that chimpanzee “trainers” use, such as electric shocks with shock collars and prods, isolation, beatings with sawed-off pool cues and slapjacks, and food deprivation. Then, at the ripe old age of just 8, the chimpanzees reach puberty and their showbiz careers are over?and they end up being dumped at dismal roadside zoos or sold to laboratories for experimentation.
And because Sega adhered to the polite request of PETA (which wasn’t much of a fuss, really, seeing as how the ad is five months old), they’re getting a thank-you card from them, complete with little vegan monkey-shaped chocolates.
So next time you see a cute tiny chimpanzee doing tricks on Television, know that they came from a horrid past and will be headed to a bleak future inside experimental labs and roadside zoos.
In the meantime, here’s the contested video. Have a banana while you’re at it.
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