Great Ape personhood
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Advocates of Great Ape personhood consider common chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans (the hominid apes) to be persons. They seek legal recognition of this status.
Well-known advocates are primatologist Jane Goodall, appointed a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations to fight the bushmeat trade and end ape extinction; Richard Dawkins, Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, [1] Peter Singer, professor of philosophy at Princeton University; Alan Dershowitz and Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School; and attorney and former Harvard professor Steven Wise. [1]
Goodall's longitudinal studies revealed the social and family life of chimps to be very similar to that of human beings in most respects. She herself calls them individuals, and says they relate to her as an individual member of the clan. Laboratory studies of ape language ability began to reveal other human traits, as did genetics, and eventually three of the great apes were reclassified as hominids.
This, plus rising ape extinction and the animal-rights movement has put pressure on nations to recognize apes as having limited rights and being legal "persons". In response, the United Kingdom introduced a ban on research using Great Apes, although testing on other non-human primates continues. [2]
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[edit] Opposition
Professor Steve Jones of the University of London has raised concerns over this movement. He has based his opposition on the fact that although great apes share over 98% of DNA with humans, all other species of life share common DNA to a certain extent. In addition he has remarked;
"Rights and responsibilities go together and I've yet to see a chimp imprisoned for stealing a banana because they don't have a moral sense of what's right and wrong. To give them rights is to give them something without asking for anything in return."[3]
Kenan Malik argues in his book Man, Beast and Zombie that demonstrations of apes supposedly using language have lacked rigour, and that there is no evidence that apes possess a natural capacity for language, abstract concepts, or symbolic thought; they do not possess anything like humans' awareness of self. [4] Malik specifically opposes Singer's proposal for Great Apes to be accorded basic rights.[5]
[edit] See also
- Ape
- Ape extinction
- Chantek
- Declaration on Great Apes
- Great Ape language
- Great Ape Project
- Hominoid
- List of apes - notable individual apes
- Person
- Speciesism
- The Mind of an Ape
- Theory of mind
- Peter Singer, Tom Regan, Steven Best, Richard D. Ryder
- Great Ape research ban
- Emotion in animals
[edit] References
- ^ Motavalli, Jim. "Rights from Wrongs. A Movement to Grant Legal Protection to Animals is Gathering Force", E Magazine, March/April 2003.
- ^ http://education.guardian.co.uk/businessofresearch/story/0,,1663535,00.html
- ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6505691.stm
- ^ Kenan Malik, Man, Beast and Zombie (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000): 214-17.
- ^ Kenan Malik, Man, Beast and Zombie (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000): 371-72
[edit] External links
- Great Apes Status of Personhood - G.R.A.S.P.
- The Great Ape Project
- Ban Ape Research
- Ending Chimpanzee Research Project R&R: Release and Restitution for Chimpanzees in U.S. Labs
