BANGKOK - Thai forestry officials have blown the whistle on ape kickboxing matches staged at an amusement park in suburban Bangkok. Some 110 orangutans are routinely dressed up in boxing gloves and silk shorts and forced to spar for tourists.
Police banned the fights and threatened to confiscate the apes after
Indonesian authorities attended a weekend show and denounced cross-border smugglers for supplying the bulk of these fighting orangutans to Safari World.
Chimpanzees in bikinis announce the kickboxing bouts at Safari World with placards, and have been performing the demeaning spectacle at the park's zoo stage for at least 20 years. Outraged members of the International Primate Protection League challenge Safari World's claims that the show is harmless and that the animal fights are as choreographed as WWF Wrestling. Last week Taiwanese animal rights activists urged a boycott of the popular act.
The endangered ginger-haired orangutans live wild only on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo, and are the largest arboreal mammal on Earth. A shaggy mature male can tip the scales at 90kg. Less than 20,000 orangutan remain outside captivity and their numbers are dwindling in the jungle. The number of orangutan babies smuggled for the lucrative pet trade is skyrocketing.
"The only way to get a baby is to kill the mother," Cheryl Knott, an anthropologist at Harvard University, told the National Geographic society recently. Each one is worth up to 500,000 baht ($12,500). The apes' name translates as "Old man of the forest" and orangutans are shy vegetarians.
"The monkey boxing shows have been ordered to stop because the animals are evidence in a law suit," Chatchai Thammavichai, a Forestry Police official, said.
Safari World's general manager, Pin Kewkacha, insists that all his apes were acquired through the proper channels, or bred in captivity. Yet, under normal conditions, female orangutans can reproduce only once every eight years.
DNA tests to determine the provenance of over 100 apes were ordered by Thai police.
Forestry police said Safari World previously sought licences for 14 orangutans, but wildlife officials were dubious that these apes had given birth to 96 more.
The Indonesian embassy is now demanding the return of any orangutan proved to have been born in the wild.
- INDEPENDENT
Herald Feature: Animal welfare
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BANGKOK - Thai forestry officials have blown the whistle on ape kickboxing matches staged at an amusement park in suburban Bangkok. Some 110 orangutans are routinely dressed up in boxing gloves and silk shorts and forced to spar for tourists.
Police banned the fights and threatened to confiscate the apes after
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