Still, keeping chimpanzees as pets is a highly contested issue. (Missouri has relatively lax laws concerning animal ownership.) Where they can be owned differs state to state, with more than half outright banning or severely restricting the private ownership of exotic animals.
Whitney Curtis for Rolling StoneĪs bizarre as owning a pet chimpanzee might sound, at least 15,000 primates exist as pets throughout the country, according to the Animal Welfare Institute. Haddix took over the care of Tonka, a chimpanzee and actor in the films ‘George of the Jungle’ and ‘Buddy.’ Haddix had claimed Tonka died from heart failure, until authorities searched her home as part of an emergency court order obtained by PETA and discovered Tonka in an enclosure in her basement. Tonia Haddix stands for a portrait next to portraits of capuchin monkeys she owned at her home in Sunrise Beach, Mo., Tuesday, July 5, 2022. It all seemed like a fever dream, reminiscent of Tiger King - with the added mystery of who exactly turned in Haddix, which eventually pointed back to a documentary crew who had been filming Haddix for the past year.
The insanity of the saga - an acting chimp, an elaborate hoax, a messy lawsuit, $20,000 in reward money, and the brief involvement of the attorney for Kyle Rittenhouse and multiple alleged Capitol rioters - naturally made national headlines. “Tonka is the love of my life,” she says. It’s been an emotional ride for Haddix, who speaks with Rolling Stone a day after authorities took away Tonka and four years after her extensive legal battle with PETA began. In reality, she had been stashing the chimp in her basement to avoid giving up Tonka with her six other chimps that the judge ruled were being kept in unsafe conditions. The 52-year-old had blatantly lied to PETA, a judge, and multiple media outlets, saying that Tonka, who starred in George of the Jungle and Buddy alongside Alan Cumming, had died of heart failure. It’s been only a few days since officials showed up to the exotic-animal broker’s Missouri home on June 2, after PETA received a tip that Tonka, a Hollywood movie-star chimp in his thirties that Haddix claimed had died in May 2021, was, in fact, alive.
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