Smoking Orangutan

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Overview

Smoking Orangutan refers to a controversial viral video of a flanged male orangutan smoking a lit cigarette within his enclosure at an Indonesian zoo. After the video began circulating online in early March 2018, many called for the zoo to be shut down.

Background

On March 5th, 2018, Indonesian animal rights activist Marison Guciano uploaded a video of a man throwing a lit cigarette into the enclosure of Ozon, a 22-year-old Borean orangutan, who proceeds to pick up the cigarette and smoke it in front of onlookers (shown below). The video was taken at the Bandung Zoo in Bandung, Indonesia.

Developments

On March 7th, a Change.org^[3] petition to shut down the Bandung Zoo was updated with information about the orangutan video (shown below). That day, the Netherlands news site ADL^[2] publshed an article about the video titled "Movie of smoking orangutan in Indonesia makes animal lovers angry."

On March 9th, ABC News tweeted the video, which gathered more than 271,000 views, 2,500 likes and 1,400 retweets within 24 hours.

Growing outrage after a zoo visitor tossed a lit cigarette into an orangutan enclosure, prompting the ape to pick it up and smoke it. More than 1M people signed a petition to shut down the zoo after the incident. The zoo says it regrets that it happened. https://t.co/nxWlMGDFg5 pic.twitter.com/2yBvbZeux8
— ABC News (@ABC) March 9, 2018

Bandung Zoo's Response

On March 7th, CBS News published a statement from Bandung Zoo spokesman Sulhan Syafi, saying "we very much regreat that such a thing happened."

News Media Coverage

In the coming days, several other news sites published articles about the video controversy, including Time,^[4] NY Daily News^[5] and New York Post.^[6]