Hi everyone,
For those who don’t know me, my name is Vanessa, and I study bonobos at Duke University. I’m also on the Board for Friends of Bonobos, and so I run this blog and help out wherever I can.
One of the biggest perks of my job is that I go to Lola at least once a year. I am unabashadly in love with bonobos, they are the funnest creatures ever so I hope you don’t mind me sharing some of our research findings with you while I’m there.
First things first, I’ll be updating you with what’s been happening at the sanctuary over the next few days – 10 days to be exact – we arrive at Lola on July 4!
The Sanctuary has welcomed five new orphans this year, two from the province of Equateur (Boyoma et Eleke) and three from Lodja in the province of Kasai Oriental (Sake, Lomela and Katako Kombe). This was the first time we received bonobos from this province.
Having heard from a local NGO that a large number of orphaned bonobos were located in Kasai Oriental, the Sanctuary’s educators, Pierrot and Blaise, went to Lodja in August, accompanied by Anne-Marie, our nurse, to recuperate the infant bonobos and to launch an awareness educational campaign. There they found a catastrophic situation: bushmeat – including monkeys and bonobos- is considered a delicacy!
Donations made here are
Mar 17th Maciej G USD 15.00
8 Comments
Woo hoo! look at them pretty babies! Really looking forward to your on-site posts, Vanessa. Safe journies.
s.
Great…how awesome for you to be able to do this……be safe!
How beautiful they are! It’s so sad to know how many died leaving those little babies orphans…Thank you, Vanessa for your great work.
Delicacy – who even invented the word – I think perhaps bizzarre describes this behavior better and perhaps uncivilized even better. Cakes and pies are a delicacy not animals!
That’s what I’ve been saying all along – animals are not to be eaten.
http://nothoney.wordpress.com/2008/01/14/your-compassion-is-hypocrisy/
s.
You peeople actually waste medicines that are rare in Africa on Bonobo infants(who are animals not people, no matter how hard you try to portray these animals as human beings!). I mean medicines like antibiotics, oxygen, diapers, incubators, gasoline to “rescue” these filthy disease ridden animals (no matter how cute!) and you people waste this precious life saving resources on animals! What about the suffering human beings that could use this same medicine that you administer to apes, these people could use these resources to live. I fail to see how you people seem to “humanize” these animals by first diapering the things like they were human infants then you mane them just like pet owners do, and then you acclimatize them to humanity by giving them affection and misplaced love, anthromorphizing the animals into something all of you apehuggers seem determined to shove down our collective throats as “real science” Jane goodalls campain “they are just like us” to the constant belaboring of the genetic similarities 98% Human (for gawds sakes!!!) You present these animals as 98%human! These animals have none of the qualities that would qualify them as human, they are bequeathed these “Human Characteristics| by reasearchers who oh so desperatley cannot ever concede that they may be wrong in their anthromorphization of the apes to suit your critera! Hey the africans where these apes live have been hunting and eating apes way before you became our self appointed conscience. I am sick of the propoganda that phonies like Karl Amman with his posed photographs of 1 a gorilla head in a bowl on a kitchen table with a bowl of bananas next to the severed head. this was a set up photo posed for shock value. Africand do not leave raw carcasses in their homes for fear of disease. 2 A tiny infant chimpanzee is clinging to the leg of and adult woman with children in the background(a really nice photo amman has a good eye for composition) with the caption “this infant chimp orphan survivor is a plaything for children” Africans do Not allow their children near the captive infant chimps because they bite! and they carry diseases! Yet this phony and others like him Goodall are still pushing this humanizing of apes!!! No way. You people are too much. You know your centers need to be shut down by the same governments you are so hostile to , sell the infants to medical labs and release the rest into the nearest troop and the strong will live and the weak will be food for some hungry predator.
Constance hit it right on the nose. These save the apes groups are anthromorphizing these animals. Here is a little known fact, Jane Goodall finally conceded that establishing regular feeding times for the chimps at gombe caused them to lose the skill of foraging for food independantly. In other words her “work” is based on corrupt data, and to compound her error she named them and began to administer medicines to the ill ones, she turned them into very dangerous(frodo the chimp is a very good example with one kill of a human infant under his pelt) pets. Apes are wild animals who do not possess any human qualities other than the qualities that ape workers have mistakenly given them. What comes next? Inter species marriages? I did read a hilarious story written by some funny fellow about Goodall and the other “ape saving women” being made to marry their “oh so human” apes and the subsequent disaster of a wedding night in which the respective brides barely survived the wedding night nupitals. I had tears in my eyes from laughing so hard! Any ways I do agree with constance, treat these animals like animals stop anthromorphizing the animals, not all of us are duped by this horribly flawed reasoning.
To Constance and Albert,
You are maybe right when talking about the animals getting dependent on humans, but the rest of what you are saying is just weird. It is because of us, humans, egoistic creatures, the rest of the planet is going down the flush. These animals are totally innocent in all what we, the omnipotent humans, have done to the planet, to other species. These animals die because of us, so we OWE THEM. Do remember this!