Chimp’s fate a nagging mystery
Tommy the chimpanzee was the unwitting focus of a lawsuit that attempted to establish new legal rights for animals. But where is he now?
Sometime in 2015, the chimp seemingly went missing, even as his case was making its way through New York courts. He has yet to be found by an animal rights group that has spent years searching for him.
But let’s back up. Nearly 50 years ago, Tommy was born in a chimp breeding facility and, it is believed, starred in “Project X,” a Matthew Broderick movie released in 1987. Later, he was enlisted as a performing chimp in upstate New York.
At some point Tommy was moved to Mayfield, where he lived in a concrete building behind Circle L Trailer Sales on Route 30. In 2013, the chimp’s owner, Patrick Lavery, told me he took Tommy in because the animal had nowhere else to go. The chimp was content, he said.
“He’s really got it good,” Lavery added. “He’s got a lot of enrichment. He’s got color TV, cable and a stereo.”
What Tommy didn’t have was the company of other chimps or regular access to sunlight and trees. That led the Nonhuman Rights Project to argue in a novel lawsuit that Tommy was
being imprisoned and that he had “the common law right to bodily liberty.”
New York courts disagreed, and in 2018 the state’s Court of Appeals denied a request by the animal rights group to continue with the case, even as Associate Judge Eugene Fahey expressed regrets about the limits of the law in a remarkable concurring opinion that examines troubling questions most of us are happy to avoid.
“Does an intelligent nonhuman animal who thinks and plans and appreciates life as human beings do have the right to the protection of the law against arbitrary cruelties and enforced detentions?” Fahey wrote. “This is not merely a definitional question, but a deep dilemma of ethics and policy that demands our attention.”
Despite the end of the case, the Nonhuman Rights Project still considers Tommy a client.
“We say that we represent them for the rest of their lives,” said Courtney Fern, the group’s director of governmental relations. “The only acceptable place for Tommy, from our point of view, is a true chimpanzee sanctuary.”
So, where is Tommy now?
In recent days, I again spoke with Patrick Lavery, who told me he gave Tommy to a zoological park “a few years” ago when he and his wife retired. He didn’t remember the name of the zoo, however.
“I’m sure he’s doing good,” Lavery said. “When he left here, he was in good health and good spirits.”
Public records from New York’s Department of Agriculture and Markets suggest Tommy was transferred late in 2015 to the Deyoung Family Zoo in northern Michigan. But a private investigator hired by the Nonhuman Rights Project found no evidence of him there, the group says.
Meanwhile, the zoo claimed in 2016 court documents that it does “not own or possess a chimpanzee named ‘Tommy,’” although an inspection by the U.S. Department of Agriculture did show an increase of one in the zoo’s chimp population. The zoo, which has not yet opened for the season, did not return a request for comment.
The Nonhuman Rights Project has twice sent private investigators to the Mayfield area in search of Tommy. In 2016, neighbors indicated Tommy was still on Lavery’s property but an investigator who visited three years later found no evidence of the chimp.
It is possible, of course, that Tommy passed away. He would be in his late 40s by now, relatively old for a chimpanzee. It is also possible his name has been changed or he’s being hidden, perhaps to avoid attention from activists and the international audience that, after his case was profiled in the HBO documentary “Unlocking the Cage,” took interest in his plight.
Some of you, I’m sure, will wonder why it is anybody’s business where Tommy is, given that animals are private property.
That seems to be the view held by Lavery, who seemed baffled by the continued attention, noted that he complied with federal and state regulations, and maintained that outside meddling on the chimp’s behalf was unnecessary. “It’s time to put it all to rest and let it sleep,” he said.
The counterargument, though, would note that chimpanzees are an endangered species with remarkable intelligence and emotional awareness. It would insist that we have a shared human obligation to ensure chimps in captivity are living well.
“It’s a problem when chimps are treated as something to be traded, bought and sold,” Fern said, adding that Tommy’s treatment and seeming disappearance illustrates the inadequacy of animal protection regulations in the United States.
There’s probably reason to be wary of declaring animals “legal persons.” The consequences for those who, say, eat meat or own household pets might be profound.
Yet I’ve never been able to shake the profoundly depressing thought of Tommy sitting alone and watching TV, day after day after day, like a prisoner in solitary confinement. Surely, we as a society can do better. Certainly, we owe chimps and other animals more.
Maybe life is better for Tommy now, wherever he is. But maybe it isn’t.