Chimp Smuggling

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 1 February 2017

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The BBC exposes the illegal trade in baby chimpanzees, captured in Africa and exported to the Gulf or Asia as pets or for private zoos. Capturing a baby chimp means killing the parents and often other adult chimpanzees. The trade is starting to threaten chimp populations in the wild. Reporter David Shukman infiltrates a smuggling ring based in Abidjan, the capital of the Ivory Coast, and discovers the scale of this illegal trade which crosses several continents.

Photo: A captured baby chimpanzee is freed during the police raid of an illegal wildlife smuggling ring, Credit: BBC

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The screams of baby chimps just a few months old.
0:11.0	They've been seized from the jungles of Africa to be sold as pets.
0:15.0	It's a shocking and illegal train.
0:20.0	Shymphs are our closest relatives in the natural world and they're suffering terrible losses.
0:27.0	To get one infant chimp out of the jungle, all the adults in its family have to be killed.
0:32.0	For each baby you secure, you probably kill 10 chimps.
0:37.0	I'm David Shukman, and here on the BBC World Service my report from Inside an Animal Smuggling Network.
0:48.0	We discover that there's far more trafficking than the authorities suspect.
0:53.0	And this comes as chimpanzees are threatened with extinction.
0:57.0	Hold is he?
1:00.0	He's two-month?
1:02.0	Two months. He'll be my ghost pet.
1:04.4	We expose a smuggling network that spans the globe. You may find some parts of this program disturbing as we reveal
1:16.1	a secret trade in baby chimps. Our journey into an underworld of animal smuggling began in Cairo. For centuries Egypt has been one of the world's great
1:35.2	trading centres.
1:37.0	Ground source going up.
1:41.0	From our hotel we posed as buyers and recording secretly we found dealers who said
1:46.8	they could get us baby chimps. They sent us videos of the animals they had
1:51.1	ready. Pittiful, eyes wide, dark hair ruffled, recently captured,
1:58.0	and now destined to be pets,
2:00.0	were kept in private zoos in the Gulf states or Asia.
2:03.0	It's a cruel trade and no one knows the true scale of it.
	...

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