Name: Pony the Orangutan Slave, and the Plight of Primates
Uploaded: 2021-04-24T00:42:18.000Z
Duration: 8 min 55 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

関係詞節（制限と非制限）

Hi, I'm Sofia, and in this video I'm going to talk about Pony, an orangutan who was used

as a slave, as well as the current plight of primates in general.

But, first I'd like to talk a little bit about Koko, who was a beloved gorilla who

For those who don't know about Koko, she was a beautiful gorilla who learned sign language

So, she could actually communicate with humans through sign language.

She befriended several celebrities, including Robin Williams, and even adopted an abandoned

kitten, who she named "All Ball" because to her the cat looked like a little ball.

Koko famously played with and cared for her kitten very gently and lovingly, until one

day her kitten went missing and she was informed by a human – via sign language – that

her kitten had been hit and killed by a car.

Koko reacted to the sad news with a period of profound grief and crying out loud.

So, Koko was quite a celebrity, and we're all remembering this sweet gorilla after her

However, not all primates are treated with such reverence.

As a stark contrast, this orangutan called Pony was captured and used as a prostitute

They shaved her hair off, chained her to a mattress,

and men would come and pay to have sex with her.

Customers could choose between a human prostitute or Pony, but many came specifically for Pony,

as she was apparently considered a novelty and was very lucrative for the brothel.

The director of the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation said, “It took us over a year

to rescue her, because every time we went in with forest police and local officers we

would be overpowered by the villagers, who simply would not give her up.

They would threaten us with guns and knives with poison on them.

In the end it took 35 policemen armed with AK-47s and other weaponry going in there and

It's very sad and disturbing that so many people were supposedly okay with an orangutan

Fortunately, most people in general would never be okay with an orangutan (or anyone)

being used as a sex slave, and most of us are naturally horrified by the idea of it.

But, unfortunately, primates are still in big trouble all over the world and for a whole

By far, the biggest threat they're facing right now is that they are losing their habitats.

This video was actually filmed in Borneo, the same place where Pony was from.

This is a different orangutan apparently trying to fight off a bulldozer that is destroying

An alarming 60% of primate species are now threatened with extinction, and 75% have declining

populations because we are taking their land.

Well, because of our rapid human population growth coupled with our consumption habits,

which (importantly) include palm oil and animal foods.

Palm oil is used widely in many products.

So what we are doing now, is we are clearing these rainforests, and replacing all that

So, please don't consume items with palm oil.

But, when it comes to land use globally and loss of biodiversity in general, it's important

to keep in mind that it's animal agriculture that is the leading driver of deforestation

in the world, and (by far) the largest land user on the planet.

Animal agriculture uses a staggering 45% of the land surface of the planet.

So our collective consumption of animal foods like meat, dairy and eggs, results in the

need to clear even larger expanses of natural ecosystems, like rainforests and other sensitive

And when we convert natural ecosystems into farmlands, we kill the animals who were there

because they lose their habitats – so, it's directly driving loss of biodiversity, which

Of course, the demand for both animal foods and palm oil is increasing every single day

How fast is our human population growing?

Well, after subtracting deaths, our human population is increasing by a net growth of

That's a net growth of over 80 million people per year.

The entire United Kingdom has a population of about 65 million people.

That means, in terms of humans, we're adding more than a new United Kingdom every year,

even though we are already overshooting  what our planet's natural resources

Slowing and stabilizing our human population growth is urgently needed from an environmental

perspective and would make all of our environmental challenges easier to address, including the

palm oil disaster, the plastic contamination disaster, and a lot of other things.

But a global transition to vegan diets is also urgently needed from an environmental

Remember, according to the United Nations, animal agriculture is the number one driver

And loss of habitats is the number one cause of species going extinct right now.

And there are so many species going extinct right now, that biologists have already classified

our time as the Sixth Mass Extinction in Earth's history.

According to a comprehensive study just published in the journal Science, researchers from Oxford

University found that, by eliminating meat and dairy from our diets, we could feed the

entire world population and, at the same time, reduce global farmland by more than 75% – an

area equivalent to the US, China, European Union and Australia combined.

I think this is so remarkable that I would like to repeat it.

If the human population fed itself with plant foods instead of animal foods, we would reduce

the land used for farmlands by 75%, which is an area equivalent to the US, China, the

So, if we're eating meat and dairy, we're paying for products that are wiping out and

killing species, and doing so in the context of an alarming and ongoing mass extinction

event, which is what is happening right now.

As a physician, I'd also like to point out that a plant-based vegan diet happens to be

It decreases our risk for many chronic diseases.

Even Harvard's Healthy Eating Pyramid acknowledges that we should, “Go with plants”, because

“eating a plant-based diet is healthiest”.

So, if you're not doing so already, I invite you to leave animal foods off your plate forever.