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Chimpanzees' tea party

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The chimpanzees' tea party was a form of public entertainment in which chimpanzees were dressed in human clothes and provided with a table of food and drink.[1]

The first such tea party was held at the London Zoo in 1926, two years after the opening of Monkey Hill.[2][3] They were put on almost daily during the summer until they were discontinued in 1972.[4] They were the inspiration for the PG Tips television advertisements which began in 1956.

Notes

  1. ^ Allen, John S.; Park, Julie; Watt, Sharon L. (September 1994). "The Chimpanzee Tea Party: Anthropomorphism, Orientalism, and Colonialism". Visual Anthropology Review. 10 (2): 45–54. doi:10.1525/var.1994.10.2.45. ISSN 1058-7187.
  2. ^ Animals in human histories: the mirror of nature and culture. By Mary J. Henninger-Voss. Boydell & Brewer, 2002. Page 281.
  3. ^ "Zoo Tea Room for Apes—Lesson in Table Manners." Daily Mail. 6 April 1927.
  4. ^ Monsters of our own making: the peculiar pleasures of fear By Marina Warner. University Press of Kentucky, 2007. Page 335.