Chris Haston/NBCPETA won't be losing any sleep over the cancellation of Animal Practice.
In fact, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is applauding NBC's decision to give the sitcom the ax due to low ratings, telling E! News that they have been on the network's case since before the show aired regarding its nonhuman stars.
"The cancellation of Animal Practice sends the strong message that using animals for cheap laughs on TV shows is archaic and uninteresting to today's viewers, who are sophisticated enough to know that not only is putting a monkey in a lab coat not funny, it's also cruel," says PETA primatologist Julia Galluci.
Is it very terrible that we thought Crystal, the right-hand monkey to Justin Kirk's veterinarian, looked adorable in her lab coat?
Well, PETA would probably think so. According to a spokeswoman, they had received upward of 40,000 letters from people complaining about the sitcom's use of animals.
Activists wearing monkey masks took to protesting outside NBC headquarters in both L.A. and New York, and PETA wrote to companies that advertised during the show to pull their commercials.
(E! Online is a member of the NBCUniversal family.)
—Reporting by Claudia Rosenbaum