Lucy the Human Chimp

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Jaquin H Great ending. It really conveys the message. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 09/04/24 Full Review Audience Member Pretty fascinating! In the end, this expose is as much about the young woman who devotes her life to trying to get a human-raised chimp to adapt to the wild. It's a study of human psychology and isolation as much as it is one of chimp behavior. Weirdly fascinating. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/24/23 Full Review Audience Member Was pretty shocked by the cruelty of Temerlins. The documentary paints them as loving parents to Lucy, but doesn't address how insanely cruel their actions were throughout Lucy's life. First they kidnap a new born baby from it's mother at 2 days old without any thought to how traumatizing that would be for the mother chimp. They seem amused by the memory of drugging the mother. They raise the chimp purposely to believe it's a 1st world human. When she becomes inconvenient, they abandon her in a completely foreign environment with no warning. They taught her to communicate, but didn't bother to use that skill to explain what was happening. How could anyone have thought 2 weeks was enough time to help her adjust before leaving forever. They paint themselves as loving parents, but never visit again in the 8 years she's there. The whole time hearing how Janis spent years helping Lucy adjust, I couldn't help think, it should have been the Temerlins doing this. They robbed both Lucy and Janis, and profited off the suffering they caused everyone. I wish the documentary would have acknowledged that Lucy wasn't a good candidate for reentry and the Temerlins were horrible. Initially I thought Carter was amazing for staying with Lucy, but later found this article, http://www.chimprehab.com/lucy/. I had wondered where the professionals at the center Lucy was moved to was and why Janis, who had no training in primate behavior was the sole manager of Lucy's training. According to the organization they had a better option for Lucy the who time that would have allowed her to have the comforts she was accustomed to, but Carter refused to let Lucy live in an environment that Lucy would have preferred. Lucy wasn't free on that island. She was as much of a prisoner there as she would have been anywhere else. The documentary dresses up truly sad treatment of an obviously intelligent animal as some sort of fake hero story overlooking the insane amounts of hubris on everyone's part. Rated 1/5 Stars •  Rated 1 out of 5 stars 02/20/23 Full Review Audience Member Janis Carter's selfless, fascinating narrative was amazing, Few viewers even know that no chimpanzee sanctuaries existed in 1977, for captive chimpanzees, so Lucy's trip to Africa with Janis gave them both a chance for a remarkable future. Today the Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Project carries on under Janis's direction. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/17/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Lucy the Human Chimp

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