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It was not until 2017, after a year of research, that the BBC discovered a secret network of pet traders selling baby chimpanzees. The animals are caught in the wild and sold as pets. A raid in Abidjan, the largest city in Côte d'Ivoire, led to the rescue of a young chimpanzee who is now under the care of the authorities. "You have to kill the mother, you have to kill the father," Colonel Assoumou Assoumou, an expert on crimes in Côte d'Ivoire, told the police. "If our ancestors had killed them, we wouldn't even know about chimpanzees these days."

According to CWAPC, the illegal global trade in exotic animals is estimated at more than $10 billion a year. Many animals are taken from their natural environment to supply the animal trade. It is estimated that 90 percent of domestic wild animals die within the first two years of captivity.

For example, Taymur, a 3-year-old male orangutan, was kept as a pet in Kuwait and drugged. The investigation revealed that the animal was already addicted to drugs, reported Scorpion, an Indonesian animal welfare organisation that tried to get the orangutan back to Indonesia. In April 2017 the time had come. He returned home from Kuwait and finally arrived at the BOS Foundation's orangutan reintroduction programme in Nyaru Menteng (Nyaru Menteng).

The orangutans, which are only found in the wild on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, also suffer from the illegal trade. Especially the young animals have done it to the traders. They are often kept under bad conditions.

The poachers do not specifically hunt orangutans, but instead concentrate on bushmeat. But when they discover orangutans, they are often captured to be sold as pets.