People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India is furious on seeing the latest advertisement for Amul Macho Innerwear. The ad shows an orangutan wearing Amul Macho underwear, hanging from a creeper, falling from a tree top, grinning, etc.

Why is PETA furious? As seen in the ad, the orangutans are made to wear make up and ornaments, and are seen wearing the underwear. Orangutans wouldn’t willingly do so in their natural environment. To be trained to “perform” in ads, films and television shows, great apes are taken from their mothers at birth, a very traumatic event for both mother and baby, and are trained to perform tricks through a regimen of pain and suffering. These tricks are confusing and do not come naturally to these wild animals. Eyewitnesses at facilities that train (or “break”) great apes have reported seeing baby chimpanzees and orangutans severely beaten with fists, rocks and broom handles. Beatings are routine to ensure that the animals remain fearful and obedient. Deprivation of food and water is another training method.

PETA, in its letter to J.G. Hosiery Pvt. Ltd., has asked the company to immediately stop the humorless ad conceptualized and written by the ad agency-Saints and Warriors. “Most people do not know that the chimpanzee grin often seen in films and on TV, is actually a grimace of fear or a carefully choreographed response to a command,” says PETA India’s chief functionary Anuradha Sawhney. “No one who watches an orangutan wearing an undergarment rushes out to buy the Amul Macho brand.”

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PETA India focuses primarily on the areas in which the greatest numbers of animals suffer the most: in the food and leather industries, laboratories and the entertainment industry. PETA India’s investigative work, public education efforts, research, animal rescues, legislative work, special events, celebrity involvement and national media coverage have resulted in countless improvements to the quality of life for animals and have saved countless animals’ lives.