Happy Ending for OSU Chimpanzees!

Update!
Seven friends are loaded up and head for a safe haven.

On November 16, 2006, Sarah, Sheba, Darrell, Keeli, Ivy, Emma, and Harper were carefully loaded onto a special temperature-controlled truck for their trip to Chimp Haven, a beautiful, natural-setting sanctuary located in Shreveport, Louisiana. Darrell, who had spent the last nine months in a dark cinderblock bunker, was the first to be taken from his cement isolation cell and put on the truck. He was overjoyed to see the sun and sky for the first time in nine months but was even more overjoyed when he saw his old friends entering the truck one by one. Many thanks to the volunteers who’ve made this victory possible and to Chimp Haven for taking the OSU chimpanzees from hell to haven!

In February 2006, PETA learned that Ohio State University (OSU) was going to dump nine chimpanzees and three capuchin monkeys at Primarily Primates.

The OSU chimpanzees starred in documentaries and were the subjects of scientific writings for years until the funding for their language and behavior studies dried up and OSU began to see them as a burden. OSU had the opportunity to contract with a reputable and caring chimpanzee sanctuary—a place where sleeping quarters and exercise areas would have been comfortable, spacious, and interesting. Instead, OSU came up with a cheap deal to keep the chimpanzees out of public view at the rundown dump that is Primarily Primates, a filthy shambles of a place, where numerous animals have died without receiving even basic care or veterinary attention during times of severe illness.

Sarah stopped eating at PPI and has lost approximately 35 pounds since she left OSU.

PETA immediately wrote to OSU officials and gave them every sordid detail about PPI and all the reasons why the chimpanzees should not be sent there. But the deal was struck, and late on a cold night in February 2006, the OSU chimpanzees—Kermit, Darrell, Sarah, Bobby, Sheba, Keeli, Ivy, Harper, and Emma—were loaded onto a transport truck and driven away from the people they loved and all that was familiar to them. Harper clung desperately to one of the caretakers who assured him that he was going to a better place with sunshine and grass, where he could play in a big enclosure. That's what OSU officials had told the caretakers even though they knew the horrendous history of PPI.

Because adequate preparations for receiving the OSU chimpanzees were not made by PPI, most of them had to be sedated after they had already endured a grueling 62-hour journey. Within minutes of receiving the injection inside his travel cage—a cage so small that he could do nothing but sit—Kermit, the eldest male in the group, slumped over and died. Kermit never saw his PPI "retirement" cage. The next to die was Bobby, who was just 16 years old (chimpanzees can live into their 60s). PPI staff members noticed that Bobby did not look well, but he was not seen by a veterinarian and was "found dead" in his cage the next morning.

The two youngest chimpanzees, Emma and Harper, were taken away from the OSU group and forced into a cage with two strangers, including one who had been purchased for tens of thousands of dollars by the often drunk director of Primarily Primates, Wally Swett. Darrell, another OSU chimpanzee, who had been Kermit's sleeping pal for 22 years, was put alone into a windowless cinderblock room, where he has remained in isolation since March 1, 2006. Despite PPI’s promise to house the OSU group in new enclosures, no such housing was prepared for them. The contract between OSU and PPI called for enrichment, for the OSU chimpanzees' social groups to stay intact, for proper veterinary care, and for proper nutrition with foods that the animals liked.

PETA knew that things would only get worse for the OSU chimpanzees and that OSU didn't care how many of the animals suffered and died at PPI. We took a bold step and filed suit against PPI.