Earlier this month, a 37-year-old chimpanzee called Louis died at Twycross Zoo. He was famous for being a “PG Tips chimp” in adverts parodying James Bond. Most news outlets reported this as a minor interest story, linking to the original adverts (see above) so we could all watch the chimps in wigs. Some conservationists I know muttered darkly about the ethics of using animals in adverts, but I didn’t see any discussion about this in the mainstream media.
Anyway, this reminded me of some interesting research in how media portrayal of chimpanzees affects public perceptions of conservation.
