An actor’s life is not a happy one. And that goes double, it seems, for actors of the non-human variety, even those who share 94 percent of their DNA with their fully bipedal co-stars. The latest celebrity chimpanzee to come to a sad end is Travis, who had appeared on US television on the Maury Povich Show, in clothing ads with Morgan Fairchild and in a TV pilot with Michael Moore and Sheryl Crow, and who was shot by police on Tuesday after he suddenly attacked his owner’s friend and could not be restrained.
It is rare that a chimp acting career ends well. Peggy, the first famous great ape (stop-motion gorillas atop Empire State Buildings excepted), suffered indignity from the start by being forced to assume the gender-inappropriate name Bonzo to star opposite Ronald Reagan in the 1951 film Bedtime for Bonzo. Peggy then languished and died in obscurity while her co-star went on to preside over the free world.
Then there was J Fred Muggs, a chimp more or less raised from infancy, proto-Truman Show-style, on the Today Show between 1953 and 1957. He became increasingly aggressive — though there were rumors that his jealous co-host aggravated this by spiking Muggs’ drink — and was finally dropped after allegedly biting guest Martha Raye. After a brief foray into fingerpainting, he is now said to be living quietly in Citrus Park, Florida.
And then there’s Bubbles, Michael Jackson’s pet. One can only guess how brief the sigh of relief was after he left his first home, a cancer-research laboratory, before he realized where he’d fetched up. Bubbles made several public appearances with his owner in Jackson’s heyday but in old age was exiled from the Neverland ranch (where Jackson apparently had several other chimps doing odd jobs and cleaning). For a long time, nothing was seen or heard of the long-suffering animal but rumors of his death turned out to be exaggerated.
He now lives on a ranch in Los Angeles and one suspects does not miss the showbiz lifestyle one little bit.
Tarzan’s Cheeta has perhaps fared best, if the autobiography he brought out last year, full of sex, drugs and rock-n-roll, is anything to go by. Which of course it isn’t, as (a) the role of Cheeta was assayed by numerous chimps over the years, and (b) none of them was literate. They all retired to various zoos and ranches and hopefully, in this marginally more enlightened age, we shall not have to rip their like from their natural habitat again.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
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