Dr. Rob Shumaker, director of orangutan research, spends a moment with Popi, the third orangutan retired from entertainment to call Great Ape Trust home. Great Ape Trust photo.

Orangutan population now six at world-class scientific research institute

Des Moines, Iowa – October 30, 2008 – Popi, the scene-stealing orangutan who starred opposite Clint Eastwood 30 years ago in a blockbuster movie and headlined a Las Vegas floor show, is writing her own script at Great Ape Trust of Iowa.

Popi, now 37, is the third of eight orangutans moving to Great Ape Trust from the Los Angeles area, where a company specializing in providing trained animals for the entertainment and advertising industries privately owned them. The company, Steve Martin’s Working Wildlife (which is not associated with comedian and actor Steve Martin) has decided to discontinue the use of orangutans in entertainment and donate the orangutans to Great Ape Trust.

Popi, one of at least three orangutans who appeared with Eastwood in the 1980 hit Any Which Way You Can, also was the featured orangutan in Las Vegas nightclub performer Bobby Berosini’s Lido de Paris floor show at the Stardust Resort & Casino in the 1980s. She also appeared with Berosini in Branson, Mo., before retiring from show business around 2001 with her move to Steve Martin’s Working Wildlife, co-owned by Steve and Donna Martin.

The Martins’ business was the sole supplier of entertainment orangutans on the West Coast, and their decision to shutter that part of it had a significant impact on the use of orangutans in entertainment, said Dr. Rob Shumaker, Great Ape Trust’s director of orangutan research. He said the Martins were driven by genuine welfare concerns, and it was important for them to find a destination they approved of for their orangutans.

“In this new chapter in Popi’s life, she appears to be delighted by all the new things around her and the additional choices she can make,” Shumaker said.

The seeming ease with which Popi has adjusted to her new life is a happy surprise for Shumaker and the rest of the orangutan staff. “She is gentle, sweet, shy and unbelievably resilient,” Shumaker said.

“Popi spent essentially 30 years in the entertainment industry and has the most unusual background I know of any orangutan anywhere in the United States,” he continued. “The big impact to me is how resilient she is after a highly unusual life that included appearing in two live floor shows a night, traveling and being on a movie set.”

Shumaker credited the expertise of Great Ape Trust orangutan caretaker staff for Popi’s smooth transition to her new life, as well as the treatment and care she received from the Martins.

Popi and the other orangutans who appeared in Every Which Way But Loose and Any Which Way You Can provided many moviegoers their first introduction to orangutans, Asia’s only great ape.  The impact of those movies on perceptions of orangutans is still evident today.

The high visibility of orangutans in entertainment is, however, controversial and detrimental to conservation efforts to save a species on the brink of extinction, Shumaker said. A survey conducted of visitors at Great Ape Trust and Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo cited in the March 14, 2008 issue of Science magazine showed that the appearance of apes in advertising and entertainment negatively influenced the general public’s perception of the conservation of great apes  in the wild. Orangutans, found only on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, are classified as endangered by the World Conservation Union (IUCN). Sumatran orangutans are critically endangered, with only about 6,600 individuals remaining in the wild.

Two other retired entertainment orangutans – 4-year-old Rocky and his biological mother, 19-year-old Katy – moved to Great Ape Trust in July from Steve Martin’s Working Wildlife. The Trust offers expansive vertical living quarters that allow the orangutans, the most arboreal of all the great apes, ample room to climb. Other enrichment opportunities are found in The Trust’s recently opened 3-acre outdoor yard, one of the largest for captive great apes in North America.

Popi and Katy, who knew one another in California, have rekindled their friendship, and Popi is slowly being introduced to orangutans Azy, Knobi and Allie, longtime residents of Great Ape Trust.

“We’re in the process of introducing Popi to all of the others, but with regard to her history, we anticipate doing this more slowly than when we introduced Katy and Rocky to the others,” Shumaker said. “We want her to set the pace.”

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Great Ape Trust of Iowa is a scientific research facility in Des Moines dedicated to understanding the origins and future of culture, language, tools and intelligence.  When completed, it 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 a unique educational experience about great apes.