Biology:Chimpanzees' tea party

From HandWiki
Short description: Obsolete form of public entertainment
Depiction of a chimpanzee in a zoo drinking tea.

The chimpanzees' tea party was a form of public entertainment in which chimpanzees were dressed in human clothes and provided with a table of food and drink.[1]

The first such tea party was held at the London Zoo in 1926, two years after the opening of Monkey Hill.[2][3] They were put on almost daily during the summer until they were discontinued in 1972.[4] They were the inspiration for the PG Tips television advertisements which began in 1956.[5][6]

Notes

  1. Allen, John S.; Park, Julie; Watt, Sharon L. (September 1994). "The Chimpanzee Tea Party: Anthropomorphism, Orientalism, and Colonialism" (in en). Visual Anthropology Review 10 (2): 45–54. doi:10.1525/var.1994.10.2.45. ISSN 1058-7187. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/var.1994.10.2.45. 
  2. Animals in human histories: the mirror of nature and culture. By Mary J. Henninger-Voss. Boydell & Brewer, 2002. Page 281.
  3. "Zoo Tea Room for Apes—Lesson in Table Manners." Daily Mail. 6 April 1927.
  4. Monsters of our own making: the peculiar pleasures of fear By Marina Warner. University Press of Kentucky, 2007. Page 335.
  5. Laws, Roz (2015-01-12). "'You hum it son, I'll play it' Remember the PG Tips advert tea chimps?". http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/lifestyle/nostalgia/you-hum-son-ill-play-8413023. 
  6. "PG Tips chimps: The last of the tea-advertising apes". BBC News. 2014-01-09. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leicestershire-23508215.