Show business chimps - what happens after the camera stops rolling

Independent filmmaker and Deakin University researcher Donna McRae has launched a fundraising campaign for post-production of her latest work, a documentary called Cobby: The Dark Side of Cute.

An Australian children's program from the 1960s is the inspiration for the new documentary which highlights the plight of chimpanzees in the entertainment world.

Cobby's Hobbies featured a chimpanzee called Cobby who tried out a new hobby in each four-minute episode. The show wasn't exactly a commercial success, screening only in Adelaide, Bendigo and a few television stations in the US during the early 1960s.

Donna explains that what started out as a kind of Searching for Sugarman for chimps soon became a study in what happens to show business chimps after the camera stops rolling.

"Initially, I had the theme song stuck in my head for ages - it became a bit of an earworm! - and I started to wonder what had happened to Cobby," she said.

"I discovered that Cobby's Hobbies was filmed in Kansas around 1964 and that Cobby himself was still alive and well, having been donated to the San Francisco Zoo in 1968."

The film follows the journey of Cobby from the African wild to TV stardom to the San Francisco Zoo, where he has lived for almost 50 years.

"In my search, I discovered that the chimpanzees we see in entertainment and advertising are, without exception, infants. As a result, our impression of them is indelibly marked by their 'cuteness' but once the chimps grow older, their fate often becomes shrouded from public view."

"Cobby was relatively lucky – he has been well cared for all of his life by people who loved him – but other chimps haven't fared as well. It was quite sad to find that many showbiz chimps become exotic pets or end up in scientific laboratories or roadside zoos."

Donna and co-director Michael Vale have visited Cobby in San Francisco and filmed a range of interviews. Now, they need further funding to pull the documentary together in the editing suite.

The Cobby: The Dark Side of Cute campaign is hosted on Pozible and seeks to raise $11,000. It is one of four current projects by Deakin University researchers seeking funding as part of Research My World, an ongoing partnership between Pozible and the university.