The Year of the Gorilla ambassador, Ian Redmond, (OBE), on Sunday 26 July 2009 participated in a discussion on the BBC1's 'The Big Question'. One of the big questions on that day was whether apes, such as gorilla's and chimpanzees, should be given rights.
For Ian Redmond, who has spent "hundreds of hours in the company of apes", and even "become friends" with some of them, some basic rights should definitely be accorded these majestic creatures. In a post on the Year of the Gorilla blog at WildlifeDirect, Ian says that great apes are very similar to humans in many aspects such that they have been classed into the same biological family as humans - Hominidae.
That said, his argument for apes rights is that great apes are self conscious animals with cognitive abilities similar to a those of a human child and should therefore have similar rights. Ian laments that despite apes being biologically classed together with humans, in law, they still have the legal standing of a piece of furniture. He says:
It seems to me (and many others) quite wrong that a self-aware social mammal with cognitive abilities similar to a child has the same legal standing as a chair, i.e. a possession to be bought and sold. To me, great apes deserve respect, and the granting of basic rights in law might change atavistic attitudes and help prevent the abuses that humans inflict on them.
In most countries without wild ape populations, captive apes can be bought and sold legally, and any protection they do have in law is accorded mainly because they are endangered species or because they are animals and covered by anti-cruelty laws.
To Ian, these laws are interpreted to mean physical abuse and thus do not constitute 'rights'. For rights he proposes that we take the path charted by the Great Apes Project (GAP) which seeks the right to life, liberty and freedom from torture.
The debate over ape rights is an ethical one. Some think that giving apes rights is equating them to humans. This is evident because most people agree that there is a need for greater respect for, and better conservation of, great apes. When 'rights' are mentioned however, distinct polarities emerge among those who had previously agreed. You can however differentiate the rights that GAP proposes for great apes from those sought for humans by reading the GAP recommendations (for ape rights) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Ian recommends, in the short term, a "focus on educating people about apes to increase respect for their cognitive abilities and social skills". After this, he reckons, "the logic of granting them rights might not seem such a radical idea..."
Where do you stand?
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What Others Had to Say
Added by maxwood on January 7, 2010
Support for Apes' Rights could be derived from an economic function.
California alone spends $billions per year fighting forest fires which originate in drought-stricken regions where many trees have recently died and masses of deadwood are standing around (biofuels). Today's corporations have equipment to cut down entire trees (sometimes at great cost through roadbuilding to create access), but it is prohibitively expensive for humans to climb large trees to reach dead branches.
What if apes could be trained-- and rewarded-- to climb large living trees wearing an anvil pruner, a ratchet pruner, a handsaw and a hatchet in a belt, distinguish live from dead branches and competently remove the former?
What if a pallet-plywood-paved road system were developed toward all biofuels-littered areas, and apes were trained to find dead branches and drag these to a gaylord (large box on pallet) which could be fetched periodically by a 36-inch-wheelbase forklifttruck? Deadwood can be sorted later by human carpenters into logs, poles, walksticks, whipsticks (bindable into strong tool handles), y-forks, block toys, anti-erosion chips, composting flour etc.?
Spy cameras mounted on a nearby tree could observe compliance by apes, and reward them via a robot regurgitating a treat (such as monkeymeat jerky chews). Guys in an officer in Los Vegas would watch monitors and operate the robots.
A National Geographic book dating from about 1996, The Great Apes, has a photo series showing chimpanzees capturing and dividing a red colobus monkey carcass. Chimps being, like wolves but unlike men and dogs, a raw-meat-eating animal, they will sit for
hours chewing a piece of mutilated
monkey meat.
The last photo in that series
shows a female chimp with a piece
of monkey meat, given her (according to the text)
by the alpha male Brutus (shown in earlier pictures). Does this illustrate that the concept of mon(k)ey exists among chimpanzees?