Richard Farmer’s chunky bits

A pretty pass. So it has come to this: we can’t even trust Disney. The latest Disneynature production was promoted as “filmed over a period of months and under extreme conditions, ‘Chimpanzees’ is a true, one-of-a-kind story that could only be written by nature.”

Except it was not written by nature at all. Christophe Boesch,  head of the primatology division at the renowned Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in the eastern German city of Leipzig, participated directly in the filming in the Ivory Coast rainforest as the principal scientific consultant. He has blown the whistle in talking to Der Spiegel:

“What appears to be continuous documentation was actually pieced together, Boesch says. The tough orphan star of the film was played ‘by five different chimpanzees,’ he claims, though a young chimpanzee named Oscar does assume a leading role in large stretches of the narrative.

However, Oscar didn’t lose his mother — nor was he ever adopted by any male chimpanzee whom he didn’t know, as the press kit for the German market claims. A young male chimp was in fact orphaned during the filming and was adopted by an older male chimp, but this animal died in July 2009, a few months after losing its mother.

Boesch attributes this sleight of hand and omissions of fact to the team behind the film. He says that it was their idea to keep silent about the production’s true background in order to ‘not damage the film’s magic’.”

How much can a koala bear? With my faith in animal lovers already cruelly shattered by this revelation about Disney, along comes Phil Davey of Mountain Media with a suggestion that all might not have been right with my cuddly koala picture in yesterday’s snippets.

Emailed Phil:

“hi guys

just wanted to flag to you some problems with the image of the koala richard farmer used in his column today. The state forest the photo was supposedly taken in is close to my home and is a pine plantation. You can actually see the darker pine trees in the background to the shot.

Koalas don’t live in pine trees.  His “home” therefore wasn’t just chopped down … he has either wandered over from a nearby native forest or was placed there for dramatic effect (forgive the cynicism) or maybe even photoshopped in.  Definitely a pine forest though.

keep up the good work, Phil”

A silly question really. Would you rather they paid or you paid? Yesterday’s Crikey report on the latest Essential poll brought us the finding that some 64% of voters favour higher taxes for corporations as a way to increase revenue, the most strongly supported revenue or spending change of those proposed. What a surprise!

News and views noted along the way.

• The rose — “The spinning vortex of Saturn’s north polar storm resembles a deep red rose of giant proportions surrounded by green foliage in this false-color image from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Measurements have sized the eye at a staggering 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) across with cloud speeds as fast as 330 miles per hour (150 meters per second).”
• The reliability of China’s economic data — “If you’re someone who uses Chinese macro-data, then there are some things that you might want to think about. It’s definitely a case of caveat emptor … There is evidence of political manipulation [of the data] at the local level, and to some degree, also in the central government.”
• Muslim victims of Myanmar unrest face uncertain future
• Feminism now seems ubiquitous — and irrelevant. That’s the test for Spare Rib — “Radical in the 1970s, Spare Rib is being relaunched into a world in which feminism has become too personal.”
• The high human price of cheap t-shirts