THE LAST STRAW/Frank McNally: It's an increasingly competitive world, as we all know, and job security is a thing of the past. But even so, I was shocked to learn this week that a zoo in Berlin is laying off five of its chimpanzees, in what amounts to a productivity review of the monkey enclosure.
According to Reuters, the chimps have been deemed too sluggish and insufficiently entertaining for the public. Ranging from 14 to 24 years old - middle age for primates - they had apparently been letting themselves go, even before management got the same idea. Now the zoo wants to make more room for gorillas and pygmy chimpanzees, which are livelier and have young offspring. A spokesman put it bluntly: "Children bound around with more energy than middle-aged people. It's the same with animals." These are traumatic times for everyone at Berlin Zoo, which is still recovering from the surprise visit by Michael Jackson and his masked progeny during the emergency public relations exercise that followed his baby-dangling incident elsewhere in the city. We can only wonder what the monkeys thought.
But traumatised or not, the five chimps are bound for China, where humans are more easily entertained, and their fate has divided Germans. As quoted by Reuters, wildlife activists were predictably outraged, while a bus driver called Rainer made the case for German efficiency: "It's sad. But if the chimps just sit around doing nothing, that's not good either. We've all got to earn our keep." Of course, zoos regularly trade animals, according to their needs and specialities. There may even be a January "transfer window," as in English soccer, when zoo managers attempt to strengthen their line-ups, adding agility or aerial presence, or whatever, the way football managers do. "I'll swap you three hyperactive baboons for a medium-sized giraffe," as Sir Alex Ferguson would say.
But Berlin could be setting a disturbing precedent for other cities. I visited Dublin Zoo several times during 2002 and, without wishing to be harsh, it was obvious that some inmates were not pulling their weight. Weight is the key thing, of course: big animals, like elephants, don't have to do much to be entertaining. The smell of the elephant enclosure is entertainment enough for many people. As size and visibility decreases, however, activity becomes more important. Pound-for-pound, the South African meerkats are models in this regard: always on their toes like little troupers, warming their bellies in front of heat lamps, posing for photographers from the newspapers . . .
But some of the medium-sized animals are not exactly killing themselves. The gorilla family, for one, could be in trouble in the event of any restructuring. All they ever seem to do is sit there, like the Royle family, only apparently not as happy.
Sometimes the baby gorilla tries to gee things up a bit, but his father swats him away like a fly and he retreats to the safety of his mother. Then they all go back to not moving for another half an hour.
Meanwhile, in a not unrelated development, but lower in the animal kingdom, I'm cheered to read that the people behind the entertainment form known as "reality television" are being hit by a virulent new type of litigation As usual the trend has started in the US, and a typical case is one pending against a modern, more aggressive version of "Candid Camera". The plaintiff is an unwitting airline passenger who was asked by the programme host, posing as airport security, to lie down on the conveyor belt and pass through the X-ray machine with his hand luggage. He emerged bruised and bleeding at the other end, while the "security officer" checked the X-ray screen, and perhaps saw there the vague outline of the humongous lawsuit just incurred.
But it's not only unwitting members of the public who are suing. Even those who volunteer for ritualised humiliation on TV - and we're talking about people who have a less developed sense of personal dignity than middle-aged chimpanzees - are now suing when the humiliation exceeds acceptable levels. So far, the producers are considering the trend merely something to be budgeted for, but a lawyer representing two plaintiffs predicted this would soon change. "That's why God invented punitive damages," he said.
If I remember my Old Testament correctly, God's idea of punitive damages did not require the intercession of lawyers. But in these secular days, when the only people who seem to believe in acts of God are insurance companies looking for an excuse not to pay you, we may be depending on lawyers to do the job. Anything that helps rid us of reality TV is clearly the Lord's work, however. Whether it's a plague of boils on the backsides of programme producers, or just a rash of compensation claims, it's OK by me.