Savage’s guest from the Humane Society told an interesting story if you were listening closely. The Chimps that need saving are actually not being used for anything. Chimpanzees have a long lifespan similar to humans – it’s not like goldfish where if you want a bunch you start today and you have millions in a few months…. Chimps take 8 to 10 years to reach puberty. The female is pregnant for about 8 months and usually has only a single baby chimp at a time.
The Federal Government thought that chimps could be useful for testing AIDS vaccines (“we demand more AIDS research funding!!!”), so they paid for a breeding program so there would be a supply of them down the road when a vaccine might need to be tested – but they found that chimps do not get infected by HIV, so they were not useful for that purpose. In 1996, the National Institute of Health imposed a ban on any further breeding of chimps for HIV/AIDS research. So we have a couple thousand chimps sitting around with no research to be a part of – chimps have a lifespan close to humans – they live about 40 years in the wild in Africa and 60 years in capitivity….
