More Horrors Revealed at Primarily Primates

The Texas attorney general filed a complaint against Primarily Primates alleging cruel conditions, including raw sewage and open cesspools, neglect and mistreatment of animals, substandard caging, cruel confinement, failure to promote the animals’ psychological well-being, and hoarding. Patricia Mercer, head of the Houston SPCA, provided an affidavit of what she found at Primarily Primates in August, including inadequate, unsafe, and unsanitary enclosures and chronic understaffing. On October 13, animal care and financial operations were turned over to a court-appointed receiver.

What’s Happening Now

At this very moment, the court-appointed receiver, Lee Theisen-Watt, who has more than 20 years of primate and rehabilitation experience, is assessing the animals’ medical conditions and seeking reputable zoos and true sanctuaries to help provide care and new homes for the animals.

Animal Hell at Primarily Primates

Animals were found in desperate straits:

• Chimpanzees had classic symptoms of stress, constantly pacing and circling; some had pulled out patches of their own hair.
• Chimpanzee Darrell was imprisoned in a cramped, dark cell.
• There was no heat in many primates’ indoor enclosures despite the onset of cold weather.
• There was no waste-removal system; feces and garbage were being hosed out of the enclosures and into canals of stinking sewage.

What a Difference Now!

Off to new, GOOD homes: two olive baboons, one bonnet macaque, three elderly and underweight capuchins, an Egyptian goose with a bad leg, and two macaws who had plucked out nearly all their own feathers while cooped up in a cage in a small windowless closet for more than a year!

The dogs were given straw after being forced to sleep on cold concrete for such a long time. The primates have been overjoyed to receive treats, fresh hay, their first-ever bedding, and comfort. They have been housed in barren conditions for so long that a simple blanket makes a huge difference to them. The chimpanzees snuggled and played with blankets, clothes, and shoes obtained by PETA from Goodwill. The OSU chimpanzees put on the socks, Sarah played with a crayon, and Darrell grabbed a toothbrush and worked on his teeth.

Fresh produce—berries, bananas, apples, romaine lettuce—and fresh bamboo was cut for the Patagonian hares and other animals. The primates went crazy for the nuts and seeds scattered in the fresh hay, immediately asking for more after eating up the delicious foods they hadn’t tasted in a long, long time.

'Before' Photos

Two macaws see the sunlight for the first time after spending two years in the dark, trapped inside a closet. They have pulled out their own feathers, a form of self-mutilation caused by extreme stress.

“This place is not a sanctuary, and it hasn’t been for a long time. It’s really an animal warehouse.” —PETA attorney Leana Stormont

Volunteers were horrified to find animals living in extreme filth with large cockroach colonies. There was a “river of chimpanzee feces” seeping into the ground and making the water there unsafe.

'After' Photos

Happy chimpanzees enjoy fresh produce and mental stimulation, two things denied them for years.

Baboons Hank and Maggie have gone from their feces-encrusted, roach-filled cages to a true sanctuary.

 

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