Chimp who made legal history gets new home
SOROCABA (Brazil): Marcelino is calling to her, but Cecilia cannot be with him. Not yet. He may be handsome, but she has suffered a lot and isn’t ready for a relationship.
This is not a soap opera. It is just the way things go in a refuge for abused and depressed chimpanzees.
Cecilia, 20, looks around, perhaps remembering her childhood in a zoo, or her two friends who died there.
Luckily, she is now in the best place to have her depression treated: the Sorocaba Great Primates Sanctuary.
Cecilia came here four months ago from Mendoza in Argentina, after making legal history in a case brought by animal rights’ groups.
The judge ruled that Cecilia was being held in unsuitable conditions at the Mendoza zoo and should be transferred to this sanctuary near Sao Paulo.
The judge’s ruling defined Cecilia as “a non-human subject of law”. Though she was a chimp, the law applied to her as it would to a person.
Cecilia had spent her whole life deprived of the benefits of roaming free in the wild.
Above all, she was heartbroken by the deaths of Charly and Xuxa, her two lifetime chimp companions. “When she arrived here, she had no physical problems, but she was very depressed,” says Camila Gentille, a veterinarian.
Now Cecilia is starting to eat better and even looks over and replies when Marcelino calls to her from his nearby enclosure, as she sits on her perch. AFP