NAMES IN THE NEWS : Bardot Urges Chimp’s Return

Brigitte Bardot is demanding that Japan return a chimpanzee that a French zoo traded to a Japanese research institute for 10 monkeys.

The former film star said during a meeting with Japanese Ambassador Akitani Kiuchi that the 10-year-old chimpanzee named Chloe was living “worse than badly, in a frozen universe” at the University of Kyoto’s Primate Research Institute.

Chloe was traded along with an orangutan by the Zoo de Vincennes in Paris for 10 macaque monkeys in 1984. The orangutan died earlier this year in a concrete cage, Bardot’s Society for the Protection of Animals claimed.

“Chloe is in a basement, lacking sunlight, space, contact and especially lacks affection, like all laboratory subjects,” it said in a statement. The type of research was not specified.

The Japanese government will investigate Bardot’s claims, a spokesman said. But he noted that the animal trade was made between private institutions.

Bardot, 55, who rose to world fame in the 1956 movie “And God Created Women,” gave up her film career in 1973 and has since worked to protect animals.