[Update 5/3/13: The Max Planck Institute has released a statement saying that the film is not a documentary, and that the filmmakers intercut different sequences and used different individuals to tell a story that is scientifically accurate. I'm relying on a web translation of the German language release.]
A film commissioned by The Walt Disney Company called "Chimpanzees," released in the U.S. a year ago and just now opening in Germany, tells the touching story of an orphaned chimp who was saved by a small male who wandered by and adopted him. It is "a true, one-of-a-kind story that could be written only by nature," the German language press kit says, according to an article by Jörg Blech at Der Spiegel.
It now turns out that not even nature is not good enough to write this story: It's a fake.
"The story was constructed," Christophe Boesch told Blech. Boesch is the director of the Department of Primatology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. According to Blech, he "participated directly in the filming in the Ivory Coast rainforest" as the film's principle scientific consultant.
The orphan chimp in the film was played by five different chimpanzees, Boesch said. Blech wrote that he sought comment form Disney but did not get a reply in time for his story.
Boesch published a study of chimp altruism in PLoS ONE on January 27, 2010, based on the field work that was incorporated in the film. Blech said the study conflicts with what is depicted in the film. There is another question he doesn't raise, but I will: Does this mean data in the paper could be fabricated, too? Would a scientist who will let his name be used on a fabricated documentary do the same thing with a publication?
The film is now available on DVD and Blu-ray with a bonus feature on "the making of Chimpanzee."
-Paul Raeburn
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