Roadside zoos, accredited zoos, and circuses market themselves as places for families—while destroying the family bonds of the nonhuman animals they hold captive. Donate today to help fund our Michigan chimpanzee rights case and create a world where the freedom of nonhuman animals is respected and protected.
Almost eight years ago, a chimpanzee was born at a roadside zoo in Wallace, Michigan called the DeYoung Family Zoo. Her mother had been sent there after spending years at a notorious chimpanzee breeding facility called the Missouri Primate Foundation (the focus of the film Chimp Crazy).
Several months into this chimpanzee’s life, a nonhuman primate specialist with the USDA’s APHIS Center for Animal Welfare visited the facility in response to a complaint. There, as shown in records we obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, the USDA representative learned the chimpanzee’s mother had been repeatedly burying her infant in the bedding and leaving her there, according to the DeYoung Family Zoo. Understandably, this caused the infant to become deeply distressed.
The DeYoung Family Zoo told the USDA representative that, after consulting with other facilities that had experience with chimpanzee breeding (i.e., other facilities that deprive chimpanzees of their freedom), they decided to hand-raise the infant themselves. The mother, they believed, was too inexperienced. The USDA representative made note of the situation in her report with seeming approval—and, as with so many USDA reports, that was that.
