Enough Monkey Business! Tell FOX: Exploiting Real Animals on ‘Animal Control’ Isn’t Funny

FOX’s Animal Control series starring Joel McHale shamelessly uses real animals as props and punchlines, making a mockery of the issues plaguing real animal control officers, who are swimming upstream in an ever-growing homeless-animal crisis.

There’s never a humane way for film and TV productions to use real wild animals such as the capuchin monkey and the sloth who’ve appeared in Season Two. Sloths are extremely shy, nocturnal animals who would otherwise shun human contact, but shows like Animal Control force them into close proximity with their captors and subject them to the stresses of a TV set, where they may endure excessive handling, loud noises, bright lights, and noisy crowds of strangers.

Primates used for film or TV are typically ripped away from their mothers as infants and subjected to lives of confinement and deprivation at off-set supplier compounds. Studies have shown that depictions in the media of primates alongside humans can increase the demand to acquire these animals as “pets,” which would fuel unscrupulous primate dealers who mass-breed primates and sell them to private owners with no consideration for their welfare or safety.

Animal shelters are experiencing all-time high surrender rates and extreme crowding. Animal control agencies, shelters, and rescue groups need support, and this show’s flagrant disregard for these issues is a huge setback to their work. FOX should instead give airtime to local shelters to promote animal adoption along with spaying and neutering at the end of every episode.

Join us in calling on FOX to stop using real animals on Animal Control, and until it does, boycott the show in favor of humane entertainment.