Jacky (chimpanzee)

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Jacky was a male chimpanzee ( Pan troglodytes ) who was used in the American space program and in figure skating shows. His body is now exhibited as a specimen in the Zurich Zoological Museum .

Life

Origin and role at NASA

Jacky was captured in Sierra Leone in 1958 . At that time the country played a central role in the international ape trade; more than 80% of the chimpanzees in the western world were native to the country. Important customers for the captured individuals were zoological gardens , laboratories and the entertainment industry. Jacky reached the United States via the capital Freetown , where he served the then newly founded NASA for research purposes. As part of the Mercury program , NASA first used rhesus monkeys and then chimpanzees as test pilots, known as “chimpanzees”. Jacky completed the training program; Part of it was to learn to sit quietly in the pilot's seats and to simulate the acceleration during take-off in centrifuges and the decrease in air pressure in decompression chambers with the chimpanzees as test animals. The chimpanzees were also taught how to operate levers when lights were lit. In the end, Jacky was not one of the two chosen ones (the chimpanzees Ham and Enos were selected ) who completed the two test flights in 1961, but was probably retired in 1959 or 1960.

Ice skating chimpanzee

Lucien Meyer, an artist in Luparesco's ice clown troop , bought Jacky from the pool of discarded NASA chimpanzees, gave him his name and began to train him. Meyer appeared with Jacky for the first time in 1960 at the Wiener Eisrevue and went on tour with him regularly in the following years. Jacky then became very popular with the public as a skating chimpanzee. He was able to perform somersaults and other tricks, and gave kisses. During the off-season Jacky stayed with a dog breeder and trainer in Au ZH , where he lived in an outdoor enclosure. In 1965, Jacky was taken out of service by Meyer, because male chimpanzees reach sexual maturity at the age of seven and can then hardly be tamed.

Stay in the shelter and death

Jacky then lived in an animal shelter in Au, where he was integrated into the home owner's family and was allowed to eat at the table with the animal keepers. This made Jacky very human, for example he drank and smoked. It also attracted media attention; the Schweizer Illustrierte gave him a photo story. Jacky died in 1969; the cause of death was probably heart failure, which is not uncommon for animals used in show business .

preparation

After his death, Jacky's body was taken to the Zurich Animal Hospital by a vet. The latter offered the body to the Zurich Zoological Museum for its collection. The museum had Jacky's body prepared by two taxidermists using the skinless dermoplasty method, which makes the exhibit more robust and resistant to attack than a conventional preparation. According to reports from the taxidermists, the aim was to give the preparation the most neutral and natural pose possible according to scientific criteria, which contradicted the tradition of the decades before, which often had the goal of making the preparations as spectacular and wild as possible.

literature

  • Jens Kieselbach: Ape - monkey for people . In: Aline Steinbrecher, Francisca Loetz (Hrsg.): Sammelsurium der Tiere. History and stories of the Zoological Museum of the University of Zurich . Chronos Verlag , Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-0340-0907-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Jens Kieselbach: Ape - ape for humans . In: Aline Steinbrecher, Francisca Loetz (Hrsg.): Sammelsurium der Tiere. History and stories of the Zoological Museum of the University of Zurich . Chronos Verlag , Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-0340-0907-2 .
  2. ↑ Silke Bellanger, Aline Steinbrecher: The eventful life of a monkey. Website of the Zoological Museum Zurich, accessed on September 16, 2018 .