Volunteer profile — Arryn Ketter

last updated: November 2001

Arryn Ketter is currently a Master’s candidate at McGill University’s Center for Medicine, Ethics and Law. The focus of her thesis and her main goal is the emancipation of chimpanzees and other laboratory animals from biomedical research. A volunteer at the Fauna Foundation since its inception and a member of the Advisory Board, she owes her dedication and her strength to the Fauna's chimpanzee residents who will never cease to inspire her.

I asked him to forget about the black paint since it was stuck shut but, as chimpanzees so often do, he persisted and persisted. Finally, when I realized that he wouldn't give up, I went to find a wrench to open up the black paint. I got the jar of paint open and set it in front of him. Clearly pleased, he gave me a grunt of approval. Then he did something unexpected. I waited for him to pick up his brush and begin applying paint to the canvas but he had other intentions.

Tom dipped his fingers into the jar and applied the black paint to his pink foot. He worked slowly and carefully to cover every inch of visible pink. I couldn't help but feel the tears well up in my eyes. As they rolled down my cheeks, I thought how this man in front of me must feel incredibly self-conscious about his pink foot and how difficult it must be for him to look so different from the others. I was also crying at the thought that this too is something we share with chimpanzees: an acute awareness of what it means — and the suffering that may entail — to look different.

With each moment I spend with chimpanzees, it is the similarities that have become increasingly obvious, not the differences. What is all the more difficult to understand, however, is how so many people don't see them at all. I am sad for those who met Tom in the past and missed knowing that they met one of the most amazing persons on this planet.