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See you, Mack …
posted in
25
Aug
2010
“WE GO SI BACK” MACK …
Last August 22 would be normal day for Mack. After lunch he came back to his island in company with his family. In this afternoon Mack laid down under a palm tree and did not awake.
Mack, who came from Sierra Leone, West Africa, was 46 years old. If he had died in his country, his human friends would have told him, after his eternal dream,“we go si back”, which in the local language means “goodbye” or “see you”.
When He was still a teenager, Mack was sold by hunters to Delta Regional Primate Research Center (which now is called Tulane National Primate Research Center), in Covington, LA, United States. He had been kept there for 14 years. The use they had made of him is a mystery, but surely was nothing good. In 1981 he was sold to Coulston Foundation Medical Torture Center, in New Mexico. There he was used to reproduce and week by week he used to be put with different partners, in order that they generate babies, who then would be sold in an endless system. North-American capitalist system was destroying lives in the name of profit. He had never be allowed to create a family, but he was the father of 28 chimpanzees.
In 1990 his situation got worse. The foundation used his body to “test new material”. He used to be anesthetic for several days, hardly eating, so they could evaluate his reactions. In the last study he had been under anesthetics for two days, 12 hours each day, and received a total of 94ml of anesthetic Ketamina, in order to be asleep.
When Dr. Carole Noon bought the facilities and the 265 primates of the broke Coulston Foundation, she found Mack abandoned in a dungeon. In spite of never had the chance to spend time with other chimpanzees for a long time, he easily became friends with others and in 2006 was transferred to his island at Save the Chimps Sanctuary, in Fort Pierce, Florida, together with his sons Brandon, Patrick, Hailey and Jasmine.
Mack was small for a male chimpanzee. But his personality and maybe, his spirit inspired that some who were stronger and taller respect him. In the last four years of his life, Mack lived in paradise and gone to the stars unexpectedly.
Mack is another symbol of the fight of our brothers’ primates for a place in this unfair and cruel world, which someday will recognize the importance of these extraordinary beings in the construction of humanity.
Dr. Pedro A. Ynterian
President, GAP Project International
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The GAP Project
GAP is an international movement whose main objective is to fight for the basic rights to life, liberty and non-torture of non-human great apes - Chimpanzees, Gorillas, Orangutans and Bonobos, our closest relatives in the animal kingdom.
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