The Official Chimp Crazy Podcast with Tooth & Claw | Episode 3 | HBO

♪ (HBO INTRO PLAYS) ♪ ♪ (PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYS) ♪ WES LARSON: I'm Wes Larson, one of the hosts of Tooth & Claw podcast, and this is The Official Chimp Crazy Podcast, produced in partnership with HBO. This week, we're talking about the third installment of Chimp Crazy. First up, we'll have a conversation with the filmmakers, Eric Goode and Jeremy McBride. And finally, we'll speak with Dr. Craig Stanford, a primatologist and Professor of Biological Sciences at University of Southern California. We're going to talk with them about the social needs of chimpanzees. A lot of other really interesting information when it comes to chimpanzee biology. And if you're looking for a more in-depth exploration of the series with recaps and analysis and exactly what happened in each episode, check out The Official Chimp Crazy Podcast on Tooth & Claw, wherever you get your podcasts. All right, well, welcome back to our interview portion of the episode. We're here once again with Director Eric Goode... ERIC GOODE: Hello. WES: ...and Producer Jeremy McBride. -JEREMY MCBRIDE: Hi, Wes. -WES: Executive producer. (CHUCKLES) Hey, guys. So, you know, we start out this episode... We ended on the cliffhanger in episode two that we learned Tonka was still alive. And in episode three, we do see that it is indeed Tonka. He's living in this small enclosure in her basement in Lake of the Ozarks. So the question I had for both of you, off the bat, is once you found this out and you knew that she had Tonka, initially, was it pretty hard to decide what to do with that information? ERIC: Yeah, we, you know, we struggled with that, but we realized that Tonka seemed to be okay, you know, in terms of his health. So it didn't feel like Tonka was in any imminent danger. And we just thought that it would be for the greater good to see where Tonia would take us, where she would lead us to, and if we could learn about more people harboring chimps. So that's what we did. We took it week by week. JEREMY: For us, this whole story is all about this idea of you being unsure of where things are going to go, and things can change in an instant. You know what you don't see is incredible contemplation that we had. What do we do? Do we continue down this route of exploring and experimenting, kind of subjectively following this person? Or do we turn them in? Which was also complicated for us. The person that we've created trust around with Dwayne and putting him in that situation. So it's very, very hard. WES: Yeah, I can imagine. I do think another really strong point to this episode is after we've learned that Tonka is in Tonia's basement, you guys actually go back and show what a lot of that effort was. And you show her, you know, moving Tonka from Festus to Missouri, or to Lake of the Ozarks. And one process of that is we meet Cy. Was he already on your radar or was this someone that Tonia brought you to that you had no idea existed? ERIC: Yeah, we had no idea. It was so serendipitous, the whole thing, going to Cy's. You know, we're in a rural part of Ohio, going down miles of gravel roads, and finally arrive at this remote property with a metal gate, with lots of signage saying, "No trespassing." And the first thing you hear were the screaming of the chimpanzees. Just the most incredible cacophony. And Tonia's saying, you know, "My boys hear me. They know I'm coming." And she had purchased Happy Meals for all the chimps. And so they were making this racket. And it was one of the more intense, visceral experiences I've ever had with exotic animals. Just the noise and the banging against the caging. Anyway, we meet Cy. We meet his boyfriend, who worked the graveyard shift at a dynamite factory. And you couldn't make this stuff up. And then we began to learn about Cy's issues with the law and that he had, you know, absconded with almost 300 and something thousand dollars of the township's money. And Cy was wearing an ankle bracelet. And he seemed so nonchalant. But of course, he's, you know, I don't know if he's still in prison, but he was on his way to prison. Yeah, it was one of the more remarkable days. WES: Well, for me, I know in the last episode, she produced those ashes and showed 'em. And when I was watching, I thought, "Oh, you know, this is going to be some bullshit." Like, you know, she cremated a pigeon or something and put its ashes in here. And it seemed almost like it was a really poorly thought-out plan. But then you actually see what's gone into this, and you realize, yeah, she was driving around a decapitated corpse of a chimpanzee, and had it cremated, and all of that. Like, they went to some great lengths to hide this. And I really liked the Cy part because he is so honest, and he immediately says, "You know, if you want to know who I am, just Google me." And he does have this incredible backstory. But another question I had about all that was he seems really willing to help Tonia. As soon as she shows up, it seems like she wasn't that connected to him. She got his information from Connie, and he's willing to go to pretty great lengths to help her. And I'm curious, as you've learned more about this community and these people, do you find that there is this strong camaraderie between people that own primates? Or is that just kind of a fluke that he was so willing to do this? ERIC: I think that she got lucky 'cause it could have ended completely differently. She did not know Cy from Adam. And she, you know, entrusted this guy she'd never met before with this chimp, her beloved Tonka. Cy could have just as easily not returned the chimp or had taken the chimp and never let her visit. No, the exotic animal world is dog eat dog, survival of the fittest. It's not, generally speaking, the most trustworthy group of people. And I'm grossly generalizing. But, no, it could have ended up really badly for her. JEREMY: But wouldn't you say, Eric, also, like, that is all for sure true. At the same time, they are-- they do have this common interest to make sure that these animals don't end up on the other side, which they would kind of call, you know, not in private ownership. So, you know, despite those things around the personalities between people and those rivalries, I do think there's also this, like, if it has to go with one of them over going to a sanctuary or over going back into the wild or whatever the case might be, they're going to choose that path, I think. ERIC: Oh, yeah, that's fair. But nevertheless, it could have ended badly. WES: Yeah, well, I thought it was a really interesting moment, and I'm really glad you guys included it. And I also, another part of this episode that, personally, I felt really drawn to was we get, finally, this really more-in-depth look into Tonia's backstory. And we get to see that, you know, she raised 75 foster children, and she adopted one of those children as her own, and she, you know, has this biological son as well. I think up until this point, you know, we knew a lot about Tonia, and we'd seen multiple dimensions of her, but this really gave us a good look into just how caring of a person she actually is. And I think it brings this whole new feeling to the series because you do realize this is someone who loves caring for things so much that she can't help herself. And her family even says that. Her son said-- I feel like he's very insightful. There's moments where he says, you know, "I-- I'm almost hurt by it, but I see how much joy these animals bring her, so I couldn't take that away from her." JUSTIN RANGE: I'll be honest with you, I used to hate the idea of being around them and stuff, but the joy that she has for taking care of these animals, man, like, I'm telling you. You can just tell she's happy, and I can't get in the way of that. WES: Yeah, I guess I'm just curious to hear your feelings on Tonia. JEREMY: I think this episode is very much about kind of getting inside of her head. You know, I'd say this. In any viable character or subject you explore in a documentary format, I think there's certain things that need to be satisfied. You know, you have to have this really great on-screen presence, which we know Tonia does, undoubtedly. She's herself. She is who she is. She puts herself out there. And for us, it was very interesting. Her childhood, her attraction to animals, and her journey to get to Connie's. She's a real person that has had a lot of life that she's lived in different ways, all to find her way back into this love she's had for animals, which we show, which is an honest view. WES: Yeah, I like that. For me, as I watched it, you know, I think all three of us have a similar interest that we all love animals, you know, in different ways have devoted our lives towards animals. And there's certain things about animals that I find so fascinating, but you can see, for her, a lot of what she loves is what they get back to her. And, you know, she even brings that up, that the first time she held a chimpanzee, she felt this incredible feeling of, like, maternal care almost. And that's been a thread throughout her life, that she has felt this need to care for things. And it really humanizes her, I think, in a really beautiful way in this episode. JEREMY: I don't know what it is, Wes, but, you know, just this kind of quality of being attracted to things that other people don't find interesting or want, maybe, that she felt a little bit about that herself with fostering, with doing hospice care. She's attracted to those situations, and I think this is very much similar, in a way. So there's real compassion to that idea of someone who is willing to put their time into something like that. WES: Yeah, there's another really great moment that illustrates it really well, where you were talking to Alan Cumming, Eric. And he kind of says, you know, I understand how Tonia went down this path. And I empathize for, and I can see the attraction that those animals have. And you could see that he even kind of had that same reaction to them, and that in a different world, he could have gone down the exact same path. But he had that stopping point, you know? And I think most of us do have that. And with Tonia, she really ran with those feelings. And speaking of backstories, and you brought this up a second ago, Jeremy, we get to learn a lot about Buck the chimpanzee. And it's kind of another cautionary tale that's placed in this episode. And I'm curious to ask you both, why did you decide to include this story of Buck the chimpanzee, who lived in Pendleton, Oregon? JEREMY: I think I mentioned this to you, Wes. Eric and I-- I remember this moment, Eric. We were by our favorite little spot near the kind of bar at your property, the little dining area outside, and I shared with you the news that Buck was killed. He was shot. And Eric and I talked weeks before planning this trip to go out to Pendleton to cover this story. And this happened, Wes, right at the same time when we had sent Dwayne down to Festus to explore what was going down with these Missouri Primate Foundation chimps that were being confiscated, and we missed it. And from that point on, we made this very conscious effort to document everything. So I think that context was really important for the Buck story. And we did some reconnaissance. Eric went down there. We found Jamie. And I'll say this, Jamie, and Alan, and Angela Scott, who we see in the first episode, they all have similar stories, in a way, to that of Tonia. Obviously, Tonia, as you say, took it a little further. But they all have this kind of real attraction and connection with a particular animal. In this case, we're learning about Buck and his story, a story that probably would never have been told otherwise. And it was a remarkable one. I think thematically, we were looking for a way to bring that story in, to illustrate what Tonia would be going through in that particular moment, which for us was about kind of pressure. Travis, in a way, in episode two, was used to describe and illustrate, you know, danger, what could happen if you have a, you know, captive chimpanzee that you're in a situation you're not supposed to. Similarly, Buck was about, "As time goes on, this ticking time bomb kind of event could occur." ERIC: The life they led, it was really profound. But ultimately, she ended up being in a cage, you know, with this chimp. She could never leave. And so, you know, it's this cautionary tale that one might think, "Oh, it's redundant with the Travis story," but it had its own sort of interesting elements that we felt was important to shape and round out this entire story about keeping chimpanzees. And she, of course-- she, of course didn't want Buck to be rescued because her image in this town, Pendleton, was everything. And so she needed to find a way out. So it was just a very sad, tragic ending, a senseless ending of Buck's life. WES: I think, for me, the thing that I really resonated with, with that storyline, and you bring up Travis too, that with Travis, it's like the worst-case scenario. And with Buck, it seems like something that Tonia could easily find herself going down the exact same path. Where, you know, Tonka gets older, she-- her people that are her support system start kind of falling to the wayside, and she's stuck alone with this chimpanzee that she can no longer take care of. And it seems like she's already kind of getting there because we hear her in this episode maybe start to make plans of a potential way to rid her of this problem. And, you know, potentially that's the same thing that happened with Buck, where they're relying on outside influences to maybe handle their chimpanzees for them. And so in the episode, we do learn that. We get this call to Dwayne, where Tonia tells him that Tonka is very sick, that he has congestive heart failure, and now you are dealing with a subject who is potentially going to harm this animal that you do now have some responsibility for. So I'm curious now, at the end of the episode, how your decision making has changed, and why you finally decide to go to Jared Goodman at PETA and turn over this evidence? ERIC: Yeah, yeah. No. I was in Philadelphia, and we get this call from Tonia, and Tonia tells Dwayne that she has been advised by her veterinarian that it's not fair to, you know, keep Tonka in this state with his congestive heart failure. And in that call, she stated something like, "June 2nd is the date." And she even said to Dwayne, "Do you want to come and film me putting Tonka down?" I think I called Jeremy immediately, and I said, "You can't believe what just happened. What do we do?" And we had maybe a week or two to figure it out. JEREMY: Dwayne was having a birthday, he was literally a clown performing a birthday party service, right? That was happening. -So it was never-- -ERIC: That's right. JEREMY: So much of this, you just can't make it up. But this was one that, for us at that moment in time, we knew we had to take action. ERIC: Yeah, I mean, I should say that through this process, Dwayne became very close with Tonia, and he really sincerely, along with us, wanted to figure out a way out for Tonia. WES: Yeah. I mean, you do see their friendship in the film. Like, he answers the phone, I checked or I clocked this, like, he says, "Hey, T." You can tell they were buds at this point, and that has to be really hard to form this friendship. And especially with Dwayne's background, where he has kind of been on the other side of these things, and he kind of knows what's coming, I'm sure that was really tricky for him. I was sympathizing with him in that moment, for sure. Well, before we meet up with our other guest, I did want to point out one of my favorite moments in this episode. Just a little bit of levity. There's this scene where we do see what Tonia's doing to hide Tonka. And she literally, with her husband, is pushing his entire crate up the stairs at a Holiday Inn. TONIA HADDIX: We went ahead and just went to the Holiday Inn 2.4 miles from the facility, but we couldn't leave him in the trailer. We put him in the bathroom at KCP because we're not going to trash a hotel. I waited until I heard that PETA hit the facility, and then we just drove straight to Sai's. WES: Which to me was insane, A, that they were able to do that, and B, that they managed to just get a room at the Holiday Inn to store this chimpanzee in. JEREMY: The full version of her story, which is much more expressive, you wouldn't believe it. You just wouldn't. The casualness in which she describes how normal it would be just to like, you know, dart a chimp, put him in the back of your truck, carry him up the stairs, put him in a transport cage, bring him upstairs, put him in the bathtub, go for an eight-hour drive, ten-hour drive, no problem, it was surreal. WES: It really is. (WHOOSH) All right, so now for the second part of this interview, we are joined here by Dr. Craig Stanford. Craig is the Professor of Biological Sciences and Anthropology at USC Dornsife and a very accomplished primatologist. Thank you for joining us today, Craig. CRAIG STANFORD: Hello, Wes. Thanks for inviting me. WES: Yeah. We're very excited to talk to you. I've been looking forward to this for a couple weeks, -talking to you about this, so. -CRAIG: Cool. Cool. WES: Okay, Craig, so my first question I had for you, and we've talked about this a bit throughout the series, but just how important are social groups for chimpanzees? CRAIG: Oh, chimpanzees are as socially needy as humans are. You know, if you think about what's the worst thing you can do to a human being short of execution, the answer is solitary confinement, right? We are so utterly social that we cannot survive, really psychologically survive, without it, and chimpanzees are exactly the same way, the same level of neediness for being social. WES: I think that's really interesting because a few times in the series, we hear some of these people who have captive chimpanzees say that the only thing a chimpanzee needs is its mother. And I've looked into your work, I've read some of your papers, and that doesn't seem to be true from what I've learned. CRAIG: Yeah, you know, I've been involved in some of these cases, cases of chimps that are kind of surrogate children in people's households, one very well-known case in a suburb of LA, where I am. And that's what the owners, they like to call themselves "parents," but let's call them what they are, owners, that's what the owners always say. They feel the animals have lived in a human environment from infancy, they cannot survive as a chimp in the world. And that's virtually never true. Because what chimps really need more than anything else is the company of other chimpanzees. I always say it's a little bit like raising-- it's like if you or I were raised as children in an extraterrestrial civilization, where we were treated very humanely, and lovingly even, but, you know, you would grow up to be a little bit of a messed up person because you would not have any of your cultural connections that need to be there. So that's really who chimps are, and it's really not in a human household. WES: Something you just mentioned, I was reading a paper of yours where you talk about how, you know, it goes beyond just socialization. They actually-- There's culture in these animals, there's stuff-- there's cultural transmission. I'm curious, you know, is there any possible way for a human to provide adequate socialization for a chimpanzee, or is there always going to be something missing? CRAIG: Well, yeah, there's always going to be something missing. I mean, you can raise a chimpanzee, and this has been done not only in households like the ones featured in the show, but in research projects. You know, Washoe, the famous sign-language-using chimp back in the '60s, was raised in the home of the graduate students as a human child and, you know, became, in some ways, a quite well-adjusted and happy chimp. But even those researchers would be the first to say that having social contact with other chimps is just fundamental. And, yeah, you know, you asked about culture. So, yes, chimpanzees have culture. They have cultural traditions. This was hotly debated for decades. But we now know that there are-- there's a systematic pattern all across Africa of chimpanzee communities and populations that will use-- they'll do a particular style of grooming one another. They'll use a particular kind of tool for a particular task. And that varies from forest to forest to forest. And it's not even dependent on what's available in the environment, like the kinds of stones to be used as tools or whatever. These are cultural traditions. They're just like ours. They're very simple versions of the fact that when you go across the world, you know, from one village to the next, people make their houses a different way, they celebrate their weddings in a different way. It's very much a simple version of that. WES: Interesting. Yeah, it's fascinating. And I'm a bear specialist. I know a fair amount about bears. I've researched a lot of different species. But just this tiny bit of surface-level looking into chimpanzees that I've had to do over the last few weeks, I've learned that they are such an incredibly complex animal. And it seems like they're an extremely reactive animal, too. Is that-- Is that a bad characterization for them? CRAIG: Well, I mean, you have to remember that fundamentally, they're wild animals, right? So even if you raise them as children, if you put clothing on them, if you raise them at the dinner table, you know, you're raising a wild animal as if it were your child. But genetically, it's still that wild animal, no matter how much we want to kind of caricature it. In fact, it's interesting that you say you work with bears because I got a lot of phone calls. If you remember the whole Tim Treadwell-- WES: Oh, yeah. CRAIG: ...grizzly bear incident. The famous movie was made by Werner Herzog. And I got a lot of calls from people asking me, "What's wrong with being a participant observer in grizzly society? Jane Goodall did that." And I said, "Well, the difference is that chimps typically do not come into your tent and eat you when you're an adult. WES: Yeah, and honestly, in some ways, as a person who specializes in bears, I'd be much more comfortable living around grizzly bears than I would be around chimpanzees. CRAIG: Oh, is that right? Well, you also, you know bears, so you know how to-- I've been attacked by a chimp once. And in the end-- The attack was fast and all that, but it was scary. And in the end, I did basically what you would do for a close-up bear attack. I just huddled on the ground, covered my face and my neck and so forth. But the level of danger is... Although chimps certainly are powerful, dangerous animals, grizzlies obviously are on a whole other order. CRAIG: All right. Well, I'm glad to know that... I guess I've always wondered about that myself. Like, I've told people even if I had to be in a cage with either of those animals, I'd probably pick a grizzly bear. But for me, it's because I think I understand them. I think it's exactly what you just said. CRAIG: I wouldn't want to be in a cage with either of them. WES: (CHUCKLES) Yeah. CRAIG: But there is also that idea that people have that they can outrun an animal over a short haul. And that's, of course, with either of those animals, that's just an insane idea. WES: It is. Yeah. That actually-- So that's a question I'm sure you've been asked before that is maybe an annoying question. But we've talked about this a fair amount on Tooth & Claw, about the actual strength of these animals. And I know, you know, in old experiments, they thought that chimpanzees were up to five times the strength of a human being, and then that's been adjusted to something more like one and a half times. And I'm just curious, from your perspective, how-- you know, how strong actually are they? Is there any human out there that could, you know, survive a physical fight with a chimpanzee? CRAIG: No. No, that-- I think the answer to that is kind of arbitrary, but what you just said, the answer is absolutely no. -WES: Okay. -CRAIG: A really big male chimp in the wild, not in captivity where they become grossly big and overweight, but in the wild is maybe 150, 160 pounds, something like that, but enormously strong compared to a man or a woman of the same size. And it's partly body strength, and it's partly leverage, arm leverage strength. You know, the lever arm of a chimp, their arms are just much longer than ours relative to their bodies, so they have that enormous level of strength beyond whatever their body size and strength is. So, no, I mean, being attacked by a chimp would be a horrible fate. WES: And in those-- in those circumstances, like, for example, in the film, we see the story of Charla Nash, and Travis, and Sandy Herold. You know, Charla, as I'm sure you're aware, was attacked viciously and horrifically. When you see something like that happen, are we looking at aggression or are we looking at communication? How did these animals use violence in their societies? CRIAG: Oh. Oh, that's aggression, of course. That can't be interpreted as anything but aggression. When it happens in the wild, like I said, I've been-- almost everybody who's worked with wild chimps has been, I'll put it in quotes, "attacked," because we never know exactly what inspires it or what's going on in the chimp's head. They normally don't bite. In an attack on a researcher, the chimps are utterly habituated to people. They don't flee from us. They don't usually approach us. But when they do, the occasional chimp, it's sort of like an act of bullying, but it might actually be in some way enjoyable for the chimp, in kind of a playful way. It's not enjoyable for us at all. So there, you could say, "Is it aggression exactly?" But in these cases, the tragic ones like the one you just mentioned in Connecticut, no, it was-- Whatever triggered the chimp is impossible to say. I can't, I'd just be guessing. But yeah, it was obviously an attempt to do terrible harm. WES: What is it that-- What's so difficult about caring for a chimp in captivity? What are specific things about this animal that make them difficult to keep? CRAIG: Well, first, there's the sheer fact of, as we said, the strength of the animal. That, you know, if it's a male chimp in particular, but really both males and females, once they reach adolescence or pre-adolescence, that animal's going to begin to, if it's a male in particular, the hormones are flowing, and that animal's going to begin to trash its environment. This is what happened in the famous case I was involved in, in a suburb of LA here, West Covina, where there was a baby chimp named Moe who had been, quote, "adopted" by a couple from an animal-- from a hunter in Africa. Almost certainly he bought the chimp from an animal dealer and, long before 9/11 and enhanced airport security, he was able to bring it back into the US. But Moe became an adolescent, and he began to trash their house. Not aggressive to people at that point, but, you know, to property. So they built a big cage in the backyard. I was an expert witness. The case settled, did not go to trial, but I was asked, "How would you feel, as somebody who's spent years living with chimps in the wild and loving them as another species so similar, how would you feel about having an animal in the backyard next to where your kids are playing?" And I said, of course, "That would be a nightmare." On all levels, it would be a nightmare. The risk of harm to my family would be the biggest nightmare, of course. And ultimately, you know, these situations never turn out well. It's always a lose-lose situation because in the end, Moe broke out of his cage once and damaged a police car, and then on another occasion, he bit the finger off of a woman who was visiting. So something like this always happened. And then Moe was taken away. And the story, Moe ended up probably being intentionally released from a sanctuary outside of LA where the settlement involved him being sent to live. So point is that, you know, and then the couple who consider themselves surrogate parents, it was an emotional tragedy for them, and it was a literal tragedy for Moe. It's virtually always a lose-lose situation. WES: Yeah, and I'm familiar with Moe's story, and I know that St. James Davis was also mauled by chimpanzees while he was visiting Moe. CRAIG: Right, yes. And the details are really murky, and it was a long time ago, but yes, the two male chimps that were housed next to Moe, apparently their cage was left unlocked mysteriously, and they broke out when the Davises were visiting on Moe's birthday. And those two male chimps attacked the Davises. And he protected his wife and ended up just horrendously injured by it, right? WES: Eric and Jeremy, I'm curious if you guys had anything you wanted to bring up with Craig while he's here and we got a microphone in front of him. ERIC: Yeah, yeah. One question, actually, listening to you, Craig, is when a chimp attacks, in the wild, another chimp, do they ever attack with the intention of not only attacking, but eating the other chimp? Because in the case of, you know, Charla Nash, you know, the chimp was actually eating her face off, not just attacking her. CRAIG: When you say eating, he might've been chewing, but my guess is, not knowing every detail, is that that was one way for him to inflict maximum damage. Meaning he's not hungry, right? He's a captive chimp. He's probably dramatically overfed. But the question you raise is really interesting because in the wild, when we see these attacks happen, we see killings happen, males usually kill anybody they can get their hands on, but they typically don't eat them. In a few cases, when they catch a baby chimp, they take one away from a mom and the opposing, neighboring community, they might eat that baby, but it's very rarely where-- And then obviously, the body of a chimp is a massive gift of protein and fat, right? And chimps love meat, which Jane Goodall discovered in the early '60s that they weren't vegan at all, but they never really seem to see this-- this carcass that they've just created as a meal. So I think we can safely say that these attacks are not-- they're not provoked by hunger. ERIC: I ask because, obviously, chimps eat monkeys. CRAIG: Yeah, and that was one of Jane Goodall's early discoveries. And my own work, when I worked with Goodall and afterward, was on exactly that, on chimps eating meat. Why do they eat meat? What's the pattern of eating meat? It's usually colobus monkeys that they are going after. And I was trying to answer a lot of the questions related to that, absolutely. But when they're killing each other, it's-- there are cases of cannibalism, for sure, but it's usually not. JEREMY: So we also talk a lot about, obviously, our main characters in this series and their connection to these particular animals, these chimpanzees. And obviously, a lot of it's linked to this idea of anthropomorphism, which in some ways can be good. In some ways, it can highlight their own selves in these animal relationships, which can create empathy. And we later learn about this idea that was shared by someone that, you know, the mistake of love is the very idea with some of these captive chimps that have been in Hollywood, most of what the affection that they share back to their owners, is that something where it was trained? They were trained to love these people through their upbringing. What is a chimp feeling in that relationship? CRAIG: I think you could ask the same question about your dog or cat, or if you raised a bear cub. The animal has a need for the b-- a bond, right? We probably shouldn't call it love, because that really is just total anthropomorphizing, but the bond is incredibly important. The bond consists of all kinds of affectionate acts and touching, rubbing, vocali-- that kind of correlates, sort of, with what we would call love, right? And to be honest, if you're going to-- I'm very much against anthropomorphizing, but if you're going to anthropomorphize, chimps would make much more sense than a dog or a cat because, as we know, people treat their dogs and cats like humans, and they spend vast amounts of money on them, as you would on your child. So a chimpanzee is very, very, very similar to a human, so it kind of makes more sense. But no, when you raise a chimp in a human household, the chimp is utterly reliant on you in every possible way, physically, psychologically, emotionally. So the difference might be that when the chimp becomes an adolescent, although it still will recognize that bond, you know, it's a wild animal. You're raising a wild animal. And so it will, in many cases and times, revert to being a wild animal, and the hormones are flowing. And so it doesn't have control over what it does in all circumstances. WES: Well, something to add to that too, and Craig can correct me if I'm wrong about any of this, but we've-- we brought up dogs and cats a few times now, and these are animals that we've domesticated over thousands of years. So they're essentially part of our social group now, whereas a chimpanzee in captivity is trained. You know, it's not a domesticated animal, it's a trained animal. And so that kind of natural behavior is much closer to the surface than you would see in a dog or a cat or an animal like that. CRAIG: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we bring these animals into captivity, and we domesticate them over thousands of years, and they become a fundamentally different creature than they were. So that isn't true for a chimp. The chimp has a layer of captivity on it. With an ape, because they're kind of seen as caricatures of humans in appearance, sometimes we lose sight of that, and that's a shame. ERIC: But so Tonka, this case to Jeremy's point, was trained to, you know, stick out its tongue when it wanted something in this very cute way, was trained to kiss through the bars, was trained to, you know, put on glasses, was trained to do all these things to signal to whoever was taking care of Tonka, you know, that Tonka wanted food, but it was all these qualities that Tonka was trained to do that would make someone naïve think that this chimp really loves you. CRAIG: Absolutely. ERIC: And that's where this confusion lied with Tonia, who's our main character of the story, and Tonka. And what would you say to Tonia about that love, all these things that Tonka does that makes her feel such a bond? CRAIG: Well, I'm sure from her perspective, she would probably argue that you're training a child to do all the things that a small child does when it's a toddler and it's not really a fully cognitively developed human being, right? But as you say, I mean, the reason primates are so fascinating in captivity is they're utterly trainable. They're so big-brained that they're very trainable to do a wide variety of skills, you can call them tricks, and to do things that appeal to people. But again, you're still talking about a wild animal. You're talking about, as Wes said, a trained wild animal, not a domestic animal, and there's a really fundamental difference that I think the owners, like Tonia, lose sight of. And, you know, it's understandable because they're so close to this animal, and they come to believe the animal, quote, "needs them," which in a sense it does, but in another sense, it eventually won't. WES: Yeah, you do see that throughout the film, and you see that it feels like they almost feel like they know more about these animals than anyone else. CRAIG: Well, just like your children. It's just like if somebody, it's just like if you went to a therapist, the therapist starts giving you advice, and you say, "Wait, wait, wait, this is my kid. I know my kid." And the therapist is speaking from a much broader background, not just this one child experience, right? So yes, parents are like that. They fall back on that. Yeah. WES: So Craig, I-- just to wrap this up, I, on our show Tooth & Claw, we often end with some sort of conservation message. And we, you know, we've been talking about chimps in captivity. I think there are conservation threads to that whole discussion, but I'm curious just to hear from you. How is this animal doing in the wild? What's their conservation status right now? And just a little bit more about how they're doing in general. CRAIG: Right, yeah, that's a good-- that's a good point to wrap up on. So there are four great apes, right? There are chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos in Africa, and there are orangutans in Southeast Asia. And all of them are endangered species. All of them are highly threatened with extinction. Of the four, the chimpanzee is actually the most abundant remaining. But the wild population, which is very difficult to survey, I said they don't really even live in cohesive groups, so censusing them is really difficult, is certainly under 200,000. And exactly where it is, we're not sure. But something like that would be-- that would be a pretty liberal estimate, actually. So that sounds, oh, gee, that's almost a quarter of a million animals left. But, you know, there are eight billion people. And Africa is the most forested continent remaining. But that's rapidly changing, of course. And in the coming century, it's going to change even more rapidly. So, yeah, they're in terrible trouble. And one problem chimps have especially is that unlike these other-- unlike gorillas, for example, which sometimes live close to villages, actually, if they're not being hunted, chimpanzees, whether they're hunted or not, they need huge expanses of good quality forest. They eat mainly ripe fruit in the wild. And so they need ripe fruit trees. And any forest that's been logged or people are hunting other animals, chimps are never going to last very long there. So yeah, they're in terrible trouble. They've been an endangered species for a long time now. And we worry-- we worry a lot about them. And we still find populations of them, occasionally, that we didn't know existed in some of the more forested, remote parts of Central Africa. But by and large, you know, their future is gonna be determined in the coming 50 to 75 years. And it doesn't look great right now. WES: All right. Well, we really appreciate you helping us learn a little bit more about this animal. For me, it's been a really incredible few weeks getting to dig into some of their natural history, learning from professionals like you. They are such an amazing animal and one that's hard not to see ourselves in. So it has been, for me, really an interesting and amazing journey. And I wanted to say thank you for helping us learn some more. CRAIG: Oh, well, thanks. And nice talking to you. WES: Yeah. JEREMY: Great job, Craig. Thank you. -WES: Thanks, Craig. -ERIC: Thanks, Craig. CRAIG: Take care, guys. WES: That's it for this episode. A big thank you again to our guests, Eric Goode, Jeremy McBride, and Craig Stanford. The third episode of the HBO documentary Chimp Crazy is available to stream now on Max. Tooth & Claw is hosted by Jeff Larson, Mike Smith, and myself, Wes Larson. It's produced by Mike Smith, with additional production services provided by Pod People. Special thanks to Tina Nguyen, Michael Gluckstadt, and Erin Kelly at HBO.