‘No more monkey selfies’: scientists told images could drive illegal pet trade

New guidelines say pictures posted on social media by primatologists and researchers can inadvertently damage conservation efforts
Patrick Greenfield
Sun 24 Jan 2021 08.30 GMT

Celebrity primatologists and scientists have been urged not to post selfies with chimpanzees, orangutans and other primates on social media to help conservation efforts for threatened species.

Cuddling baby monkeys on camera and sharing Instagram posts interacting with primates at sanctuaries is strongly discouraged under new guidelines aimed at scientists, researchers and TV presenters from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the global authority on protecting the natural world.

Experts fear that images of primatologists interacting with animals can undermine conservation efforts by inadvertently driving demand for the illegal primate pet trade and encouraging the public to take selfies with monkeys, orangutans and lemurs.

Studies have found the use of primates in commercials – such as the chimpanzees in PG tips adverts from the 1950s to 1970s – can distort the perception of an animal’s conservation status, and there are concerns that social media images of humans interacting with nonhuman primates are having the same effect.

Of the 514 primate species assessed by the IUCN, around two-thirds are threatened with extinction, driven by agriculture, hunting, human infrastructure and the climate crisis.

Siân Waters, a macaque specialist at Durham University, heads the IUCN specialist group for human-primate interactions that devised the guidelines. Waters said she had noticed the effect of social media posts and magazine articles in her work studying the endangered Barbary macaque.

“Sometimes people will ask us if we can get them a pet macaque. We noticed an increase in the number of people asking us that whenever there was a picture in the paper of a Moroccan celebrity or French celebrity with a Barbary macaque as a photo prop in the picture,” she said.

“A lot of people are very well intentioned when they post these photographs, but the problem is how they are perceived. The context can get lost very easily on social media.

“It might have a very clear conservation message which says, ‘Don’t keep primates as pets’ with an image of someone holding a confiscated pet macaque or a confiscated pet chimp. But in actual fact, that context is lost almost immediately as that is shared all over the world.”

The primatologist Jane Goodall issued similar advice last year after an image of a young chimpanzee scrolling on a mobile phone went viral on social media. Her institute has stopped using images of Goodall interacting closely with primates.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -trade-aoe

I did a report on the state of the orangutang at PP Safari World when it first open.
Everybody only seemed to worry about the boxing matches which actually were probably the high point in the poor, bored to death, animals day. The "fighting" was not cruel or violent in itself, it actually mimicked/used the animals natural abilities and responses.
It was the totally empty spaces and lives that these primates with highly complex socio-psychological and environmental needs were forced to inhabit that was the cruel part.
The UN classifies super-max solitary as torture for humans, i call these fun parks the same for animals.
Please NEVER go to Safari World or any other bright shining fun place that by necessity subtly tortures animals for your pleasure and a few laughs.