Controversy Turns Spotlight on the Lives of Simian Stars

‘In zoos, animals get bored to death. But these guys love working--it makes them twice as smart. They get to go places and see things.’

The way Bob Dunn sees it, the chimpanzees born at his house last month have a charmed life ahead of them. For one thing, they were born into a trade that some people spend a lifetime trying to enter.

In about a year and a half, the chimps will start basic acting training--they will learn “no,” “sit” and “stand”--and in a couple of years, they will be landing roles in movies and television. Around age 8, they will retire, and spend the rest of their lives mating and socializing with other chimps in Dunn’s 1-acre animal training complex in Sylmar.

Dunn believes that the chimps, with an agenda that includes carving out a career, will be happier than those born in zoos and even some who live in the wild. “They’re better off because their minds are working all the time,” he said. “In zoos, animals get bored to death. But these guys love working--it makes them twice as smart. They get to go places and see things.”

Dunn’s attitude makes many animal rights activists and zoo officials irate. They say trained chimps live stressful, unhappy lives and often get sold to researchers for as much as $20,000 when they’re too old to act. Even if some chimps can adjust to that life style, many won’t, they say, and furthermore, breeding endangered animals for profit is just plain wrong.

‘Absolutely Disgusting’

“For an animal to be born to work in show business, it is better for it not to be born at all,” says Ed Stewart, co-director of the Sacramento-based Performing Animals Welfare Society, a nonprofit organization that seeks to protect animals from abuse in the entertainment industry. “It’s absolutely disgusting. It’s not what chimps are made for.”

Disputes between animal trainers and animal rights activists go back decades, and several Southern Californians are in Dunn’s business of training animals for the entertainment industry. But Dunn’s situation is unique because he is the only private individual in the area who breeds chimpanzees at home, according to trainers and zoo experts.

In response to criticism, Dunn says his chimps lead very happy lives, and he would never sell them for research. In fact, he says, he retrieved Bubbles--a chimp owned by singer Michael Jackson that stays with Dunn when Jackson is out of town--from a cancer research lab.

At his training complex--which also houses a zebra, a 20-foot python and an alligator--Dunn has 12 chimpanzees, including three born in the last year and one who is pregnant. Getting adults to mate, he says, isn’t too difficult. “You just put them together. They’re just like humans.”

Dunn has been in the animal training business for 20 years. He said he first became fascinated with breeding primates when a monkey he bought in high school gave birth.

He said he monitors the birthing process closely, cutting the babies’ umbilical cords, taking their temperatures, removing the fathers from the cages so the babies don’t get hurt. About three times a day, Dunn says, the males throw loud and violent tantrums, “and they don’t see everything in their way.”

The mothers, Dunn says, are very proud of the babies. “They talk to you and show you them, make happy sounds. Some of them will stick it right in your face, to say, ‘Look what I got.’ ”

It is when Dunn begins teaching the young chimpanzees in preparation for movie or television roles that many zoo officials take issue with the practice of home-breeding for profit. The training degrades chimps, and the result presents an inaccurate picture of animals to the film or TV viewing public, they say.

“Private breeders think zoo people are so pious, and that’s not true,” said Palmer Krantz, president-elect of the West Virginia-based American Assn. of Zoological Parks and Aquariums.

“But it really burns me up to see a chimpanzee dressed in tennis shoes and shorts and dribbling a basketball,” Krantz said. “It gives the wrong impression to children and perpetuates the myth that chimps make good pets.”

Krantz said that because chimpanzees are members of an endangered species, anyone breeding the primates should work in concert with his association, which coordinates captive breeding programs for endangered species in North American zoos. The programs try to ensure genetic diversity and closely monitor breeding.

To that end, program coordinators decide who should mate with whom, how many times and at what age the mating should occur, and how many offspring should be produced.

Krantz said his association is establishing a captive breeding program for chimpanzees and would like to involve private breeders who meet certain specifications. Dunn has said he would be happy to participate in such a breeding program, but has always believed they weren’t open to private breeders. Because the zoological park association is only now forming such a program for chimpanzees, it remains to be seen whether Dunn would be invited, or would agree, to participate.

Many animal rights activists find private breeders offensive simply because they are breeding animals for the purpose of training them. And training, they say, often results in miserable lives for animals, if not abuse.

“These trainers are not the good guys they claim to be,” says Nancy Burnet, founder of the Coalition to Protect Animals in Entertainment, a nationwide coalition of animal rights groups trying to educate the public about animal abuse in entertainment. “They’re going to milk the animals for every dime they can get. The old excuse is, ‘We love our animals, we’d never abuse them.’ ”

Dunn maintains that his training, which begins at age 18 months, in no way harms the chimps. He says he would never use force--rewards come in the forms of bananas and hugs--and he makes sure his chimps socialize with other chimps so they eventually will be able to breed. Unlike old circus chimpanzees who lived without other chimps all their lives, Dunn says, his animals are very well-adjusted.

“These guys definitely know what humans are and what chimps are,” he says. “It’s like a split family.”

Dunn says he takes care not to overload them with information. “We don’t go ahead and put all kinds of maneuvers in them,” he says. “We don’t teach them tricks.”

Instead, Dunn says, he and the other trainers at his compound teach the animals to respond to simple human commands, so they can learn their parts easily.

More Skill, Better Roles

The more his chimps can do, the better parts they can get, Dunn said. So far, they have steered a motor boat, roller-skated and performed sign language on television and in the movies.

It is important the chimps are taught to be civilized around humans, Dunn said. “We teach them to become humanized and not to be aggressive and mean to people. We try to take the wilderness out of them while they’re working in the movie industry.”

To some, breeding and training animals to do things they don’t naturally do is unacceptable, no matter what the conditions. Says Bob Barker, game show host and member of the Coalition to Protect Animals in Entertainment: “I feel precisely as I would if they were breeding them for slavery. It’s outrageous.”