NATURE "Chimpanzees: An Unnatural History" | Excerpt | PBS

In 1959, the United States Air Force captured dozens of baby chimpanzees in Africa, transporting them to Alamogordo, New Mexico where they and their offspring were enlisted into in the space program.

NATURE's "Chimpanzees: An Unnatural History" explores the lives of these chimpanzees who were forced to endure a grueling life as the ultimate human stand-ins.

"Chimpanzees: An Unnatural History" airs on PBS Sunday, June 20, 2010 at 8pm (check local listings) and is part of the 28th season of the Peabody and Emmy award-winning series produced by Thirteen in association with WNET.ORG for PBS. Major support provided by Canon U.S.A. Inc. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/chimpanzees-an-unnatural-history/intr...

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Pets & Animals

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• Nature
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• Chimpanzees chimpanzee

[elanxx]

Poor Ham :(

[quicksilver3x3]

How dare they treat him, or any animals, like that.

[00Neven]

and Neil Armstrong took all the credits :D

[judyrusso]

the sheer terror that these chimps must have felt being imprisoned in little boxes for the space program.

[braindoodle89]

I agree. There is very little reason other than peoples' distate for the idea that prevents humans and chimpanzees from being in the same genus.

[DNelson4817]

No, the AF is no longer experimenting on the primate facility.

[wandap55]

And we are still using these chimps for lab experiments. Isn't time we stopped?

[GBart]

So Yuri Gagarin was the first ape in space, unless you want to count Joseph Kittinger, but he's not official, then Ham, then Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom.

[GBart]

I'm one of them. No offense John Glenn, but Enos was the first person to orbit the Earth.

[godofthunder90]

Actually some want to include chimps into the Homo genus.

(Humans is apes too!)