Woman In Documentary Featuring ‘Dolly Parton Of Chimps’ Says Her Husband Caught Her Breastfeeding A Chimpanzee

There’s some good news for folks who love a good animal-related docuseries like Tiger King. The director is back with another one that has the healthy mix of drama and crazy that you’ve grown to love.

Chimp Crazy follows a former nurse turned exotic animal broker, Tonia Haddix. The “Dolly Parton of chimps,” as she refers to herself, gets caught up in the drama surrounding the disappearance of a movie star chimp named Tonka.

The New York Premiere Of “CHIMP CRAZY” – After Party at The Bowery Hotel on August 13, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Udo Salters/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)

HBO partially describes the series like this, “Through the experiences of Tonia and other “chimp moms,” Chimp Crazy reveals the bonds between owners and their highly intelligent great ape pets, the risks humans take when they raise these animals as members of their family, and the risks to the welfare of the animals themselves.”

In the series, Haddix initially works at the Missouri Primate Foundation for breeder Connie Casey before acquiring chimps of her own. Chimps she admittedly loves more than her own kids.

While a search for Tonka and a court battle between PETA and Casey add all kinds of drama, it’s the “chimp moms” that bring the crazy. As if loving chimps more than your own kids wasn’t crazy enough, one of them takes it to another level.

A chimp mom named Pamela Rosaire, who bought chimpanzees from Casey, breastfed one of her chimps after it was born prematurely. That could come across as insane to the untrained eye, but as Rosaire explains, premature chimps can’t digest formula and she was already breastfeeding her daughter.

It’s not easy being the Dolly Parton of chimps or a chimp mom for that matter

“Years ago, I had a baby chimp born two months premature. Premature chimps can’t digest formula, but I’d just had my daughter, Dallas, so I did what came naturally,” Rosaire said, according to The Sun.

“He’s a baby that needs feeding, so feed it.”

When you put it like that, it doesn’t sound as completely bananas as it did initially. What else was she supposed to do? Her husband, Roger, isn’t as quick on his feet as she is.

He walked in on his wife breastfeeding a chimp and wanted to know what she was doing. Come on, get with the program here. She’s being a good chimp mom.

“One day she’s got Dallas on one booby and a chimp on the other,” Rogers explains before ignorantly adding, “I say, ‘Woah, what are you doing?'”

Now grown, Dallas says of the chimp, “We were like brother and sister. The moment a boy liked me, he’d throw poop at him. I can’t imagine life without him.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m all in on this kind of crazy.

Sign me up for all of it. The missing celebrity chimp, the Dolly Parton of chimps nickname, the battle with PETA and, of course, the breastfeeding chimp mom. She had me with a daughter named Dallas.