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Peter Clay, a senior orangutan caretaker, offered food enrichment to Rocky on the day of the young orangutan's arrival in Des Moines after he was retired from the entertainment industry. Great Ape Trust photo.
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Des Moines, Iowa – August 27, 2008 – Peter Clay, a senior orangutan caretaker at Great Ape Trust of Iowa, was recently profiled in American Careers, a publication of Career Communications Inc. of Overland Park, Kan., a curriculum resource development and publishing company.
In the three-page, photo-rich spread, writer Sandra Moran details not only the routine aspects of Clay’s job of caring for and feeding orangutans, but also qualifications that include respect for orangutans as equal partners who have the right to collaborate or not collaborate with the scientific research, an understanding of primate behavior and skill in understanding and accommodating orangutan social needs.
Moran is a freelance writer who uses The Trust’s award-winning Web site, www.GreatApeTrust.org, as a resource in the anthropology and archaeology classes she teaches at Johnson County Community College in Kansas City. “As part of my classes, I touch on evolution (non-human primates and primatology),” Moran said. “I have shown my classes clips from the Great Ape Trust Web site of the bonobos and some of the work being done at your facility.”
When Moran, formerly the in-house writer for American Careers, was assigned a profile on a non-farm animal caretaker, she contacted The Trust and Clay was recommended as a strong subject for the piece.
A career you might not have considered
To read the profile on Peter Clay, click here (Copyright © 2008 by Career Communications, Inc. Reprinted with permission) |
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BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Great Ape Trust of Iowa is a scientific research facility in southeast Des Moines dedicated to understanding the origins and future of culture, language, tools and intelligence. When completed, Great Ape Trust will be the largest great ape facility in North America and one of the first worldwide to include all four types of great ape – bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans – for noninvasive interdisciplinary studies of their cognitive and communicative capabilities.
Great Ape Trust is dedicated to providing sanctuary and an honorable life for great apes, studying the intelligence of great apes, advancing conservation of great apes and providing unique educational experiences about great apes. Great Ape Trust of Iowa is a 501(c) 3 not-for-profit organization and is certified by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA). |
Great Ape Trust is certified by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums
