Chimpanzees in Popular Culture

Chimpanzees in Culture

The fact that so many people find the Chimpanzee to be entertaining means it can be in the spotlight. There are plenty of known aspects out there with this animal on display throughout popular culture. The circus and other entertainment outlets around commonly use them.

Chimpanzees can be trained in a variety of ways for such activities. Sometimes they are placed in cute outfits too so that they get even more attention from the crowd. The zoo is a prime attraction for people that want to see animals. Since the Chimpanzee can be so entertaining, their area of the zoo often gets a great deal of attention. When there are babies on display that attention increases.

Throughout the past several decades Chimpanzees have been on TV in various sidekick roles. In the 1990’s one called Darwin was introduced on a Nickelodeon cartoon called The Wild Thornberry’s. It is about a girl that can talk to animals and the Chimpanzee is adopted by her family. They travel around making documentaries about animals.

The world of science fiction often adds a nice spin to the intelligence of the Chimpanzee. Various shows out there depict them as being able to take over the world or to even go into space on missions. These stories often stir up fears though from people that by teaching Chimpanzees things we may be building them up for such problems to occur.

The Chimpanzee is often used to advertise for zoos and for various businesses. It is a common animal used for promotions in some clever commercials too. The biggest recognition though was in the long running series Planet of the Apes. This science fiction story included many Chimpanzees. The concept was that humans were being caged and used for research by the apes just like what we really do to them.

Some have become well known due to their association with certain people. One such Chimpanzee is Bubbles. He was well known for being cared for by Michael Jackson.  This fascination lasted for about 10 years from the time that Bubbles was a young Chimpanzee. He was living in the bedroom of Jackson in a crib. However, by 1988 he had become aggressive and it was felt it wasn’t safe for him to remain there. He was moved to a sanctuary that Jackson frequently visited.

A powerful book that was released in 2008 has brought lots of attention to them along with popular culture. In this book called The Chimp who would be Human, Nim is a Chimpanzee that has gone through various types of testing. The research person that worked with him wasn’t able to think only in terms of science and a loving bond between the two developed.

Some of the things that Nim was able to do include laundry and sign more than 100 words. This is because he first lived with a family in their apartment. Later though he was sold to be used for testing for vaccines. What the researchers found though is that Nim was too timid to be in the wild and too humanist in nature to be placed in a cage.

The book shows Nim in toddler clothing and takes you on a very interesting journey. It is the belief of the author that humans are playing God with this type of development and including the Chimpanzee in human culture in such ways. It is a grime look at what can take place though when we don’t allow nature to takes its course. Even though the Chimpanzee is very closely related to humans, it still isn’t a human.