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Wildlife: Reality Doesn't Always Show on TV
Chimps…so cute, so funny…so full of character. Television advertisements and movies rely on them to entertain. But the public sees them on the screen so frequently that people don't realize chimpanzees face extinction in the wild, according to a new study in the journal Science.
Primatologists at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago surveying visitors in 2005 found that many people believed that chimps were thriving in the wild. In reality, fewer than 200,000 exist, down from about a million a couple of decades ago, says Steve Ross, one of the study's lead authors at the zoo.
Of the respondents, 95 percent knew gorillas were endangered, 91 percent thought the same of orangutans, but only 66 percent believed chimpanzees were in similar straits. When told that chimps were indeed at serious risk, 35 percent of those who provided a reason for their mistaken beliefs said they had thought chimps weren't in jeopardy because they were commonly seen on television and in advertisements and the movies.
"Given the reality that chimpanzees could go extinct in the wild in the next several decades, our study highlights the importance of portraying chimpanzees accurately in the media," says Ross.
