PERPETUATING STEREOTYPES about redheads may not have been the intention but Dublin Zoo’s latest campaign to attract visitors has ruffled more than a few feathers.
The zoo is offering free entry to all red-haired children this weekend to highlight the endangered status of orang-utans in the wild. The offer is also open to any child who arrives dressed as an orang-utan or who wears a red wig.
Marian Purdy, co-founder of the website redheadandproud.com, which seeks to counter discrimination against redheads, said she couldn’t see much harm in the campaign but some children would “inevitably” use the association between redheads and orang-utans to taunt others.
The move caused some controversy on Twitter yesterday, with many users claiming the promotion was insensitive and stigmatised red-haired children, with one user remarking “Apes and Redheads? Connection?” In 2008, Adelaide zoo in Australia was forced to drop a similar ad campaign which offered free visits to all “rangas” – a derogatory term for redheads – after the zoo received hundreds of complaints.
Ciarán McMahon, the primate keeper at the zoo, defended the campaign, saying it was intended as a “fun and quirky” way of raising awareness. “The real point is raising awareness about these endangered animals that may be extinct in 10 years,” he said.
Orang-utans are a species of great ape found on the southeast Asian islands of Borneo and Sumatra. Despite conservation efforts, continued destruction of their natural habitat has seen numbers dwindle to dangerously low levels.
While some redheads may take umbrage at being lumped together with orang-utans, their affinity with the great forest apes may run deeper than just hair colour.
Some scientists believe redheads may soon be extinct themselves, theorising that the recessive gene for the rarest natural hair colour will eventually die out or fall dormant due to global intermingling.
The hair type currently constitutes about 4 per cent of the European population. Scotland boasts the highest constituency with 13 per cent, ahead of Ireland’s 10 per cent. Last month, British Labour Party deputy leader Harriet Harman caused a furore after she branded Scottish Lib Dem MP Danny Alexander a “ginger rodent” in a speech, in Scotland of all places.
