Favourites on Friday - Human Behaviour: Disgrace and Salvation

This may seem a weird choice for something headed ‘Favourites…’ – I guess it’s not so much ‘happy-favourite’ but more of a ‘there’s hope-favourite’.

When I see or read what human beings are sometimes capable of inflicting, not just on each other, but on animals, it breaks my heart and makes me ashamed of the human race.  I have never been a supporter of animal testing, of animals being kept in laboratories purely to be tested on.  I know the arguments in favour of it, that, basically speaking, such testing is for the good of the human race, that it goes a long way in helping to establish cures and medication for life-threatening diseases.  But animals are living creatures, same as us …

Anyway, I’m not here to preach or bang my drum about it.  Instead I want to share this video I found about lab chimpanzees being released.  Over 100 were released, part of a large-scale retirement.  As one of the comments said, it is bizarre that it talks of the chimps being ‘retired’ – they were caught in the wild, taken somewhere ‘alien’ miles from their home where most of them have lived indoors, in cages, separated from their fellows, for years … some of the chimps are over 50 years old, which is old for a chimp.  They can’t be released back into the wild because they’ve been in captivity for so long.

I think the Humane Society does great work, and I’m glad that somewhere like the Chimp Haven exists.  In an ideal world, organisations like this wouldn’t be needed.  But this is the reality of our world … A word of warning, you may need tissues – there aren’t any horrific scenes, but I cried while watching this.