In order to shoot a demo, both animals were subjected to physical abuse and forced to work more than 10 hours a day, an insider has claimed.
TRACY YOU: ‘Producers at a popular Chinese TV station have dressed a chimpanzee and a bulldog like children and made them perform a series of human tasks in a new reality show. To film the weekly show, Miya the chimp and Dongdong the bulldog, both said to be two years old, were regularly beaten and threatened behind the scene when they failed to carry out the stunts, MailOnline can reveal. In the programme called ‘We Are Friends’ (神奇伙伴在哪里), Miya must complete three challenges each episode alongside Dongdong.
The challenges range from doing the washing-up, using a smartphone to attending a class with children…So far, Miya has been made to walk Dong Dong on a leash, cleaning the windows, putting on leather shoes, doing shopping in a pet store, using a toilet and writing homework. In order to shoot a demo, both animals were subjected to physical abuse and forced to work more than 10 hours a day, an insider has claimed.
An animal rights organisation has called for a boycott against the programme, describing it as ‘extremely cruel’, ‘immortal’ and ‘misleading’… The anonymous source who claims to have worked for the show, sent a complaint to animal rights group PETA Asia last month – shortly after the programme was launched – in hope of bringing more attention to the matter. The complaint came with a compilation video which appears to show trainers dragging and kicking a chimpanzee and a bulldog on multiple occasions…
A spokesperson from PETA Asia told MailOnline: ‘The only reality in this show is animal cruelty.’ He also said: ‘This is just another example of animals being exploited and abused in China and Thailand, where animal protection laws are weak and non-existent.’ On PETA Asia’s official account on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent to Twitter, a boycott against the show has been called for’. SOURCE…
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