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Last December, the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) made headlines for taking the first steps to have chimpanzees regarded as legal persons. Three separate suits were filed in New York state, asking judges to affirm the writ of habeas corpus, in which captors must present to a judge cause for holding a person captive. After judges refused to issue writs on the grounds that chimpanzees are not considered legal persons, NhRP brought the suit to the New York Supreme Court’s appellate division.
Just last week, the Court presented its decision, unanimously denying the right for habeas corpus to be extended to Tommy, one of the chimpanzees in question. In the decision, the Court stated, “Needless to say, unlike human beings, chimpanzees cannot bear any legal duties, submit to societal responsibilities or be held legally accountable for their actions. In our view, it is this incapability to bear any legal responsibilities and societal duties that renders it inappropriate to confer upon chimpanzees the legal rights — such as the fundamental right to liberty protected by the writ of habeas corpus — that have been afforded to human beings.”
After this disappointing decision, NhRP has stated that it will now take the case to the Court of Appeals.
Beyond simply sharing over 90 percent of our DNA, chimpanzees have demonstrated again and again that their mannerisms, behaviors, and demonstrated preferences and dislikes are all remarkably similar to their human counterparts. Let’s take a look at some clear examples of chimpanzees’ humanity.
1. They Possess a Moral Compass
According to some researchers, chimpanzees display empathy, seek to maintain social order, and create uniform rules of behavior within their group. For example, if two male chimpanzees become physically aggressive with one another, a female chimpanzee is known to intervene and make peace between the rivals.
2. Chimpanzees are Innovative
Like humans, chimpanzees are known to create and innovate in ways that serve their basic needs. For example, in Zambia, chimpanzees developed eight different mechanisms for opening an orange, including peeling, stomping, and smacking two pieces of fruit together.
3. Chimpanzees Experience Emotions
Just like humans, chimpanzees possess a full and complex range of emotions … especially when they experience freedom for the first time:
4. They Can Communicate Through Sign Language
Although chimpanzees’ vocal chords aren’t designed to speak words, over the years many have mastered American Sign Language (ASL). Washoe, the first chimpanzee to break the language barrier, successfully learned ASL and was able to communicate her needs and wants to humans. She even taught ASL to her adopted son, Loulis, without assistance.
5. They Love Veggies!
Even chimps can be Green Monsters!
6. Chimpanzees are Social Creatures
Humans aren’t the only ones that value communal solidarity. Communities range in size, with some comprising 40 to 60 chimpanzees. Members of a community also form subgroups, wherein membership often changes. A community excitedly comes together when fruit becomes available.
7. They are Creative and Love to Paint
So Green Monsters, what do you think? Are we really all that different …?
Image source: Kevin Case/Flickr
If Chimps were to be considered human then they would be not only given the rights that we as human get, but they would also be held to the laws and punishments for breaking them that we get…now just how the hell would that work? Some how I don\’t see chimpanzees following human laws do you?
you people are flakier than PETA,and I thought THEY were the flakiest on the planet.
If "flaky" people can have rights, so can the other animals who, by nature, are not flaky. The legal system accommodates "the law" to serve the interests of the privileged and powerful, like slave owners. The law once considered slaves as "property." Was that the right thing to do? Women and children were once legally not considered "persons" even though they are human.
Coercion is central to the legal system, which presents one face to those in power (like humans), and a different face to those who challenge this power (like animal activists). In the case of the former, coercion is systematized through a body of lawmakers and interpreters which supports and rationalizes the use of force (among other avenues) by those in power to gain material possessions or otherwise bend certain others–the powerless, the silenced, the not-fully human–to the will of the already powerful. Children haven\’t got the right to bear arms or drive automobiles or vote: Does it therefore follow they haven\’t got a legal right to life? A legal right not to be harmed? A legal right not to be happy and enjoy life? They haven\’t got a legal right to protection from abusers simply because the abusers have duties or responsibilities? Give me a break!
"Other animals, which, on account of their interests having been neglected by the insensibility of the ancient jurists, stand degraded into the class of things. … The day has been, I grieve it to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated … upon the same footing as … animals are still. The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may come one day to be recognized, that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps, the faculty for discourse?…the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being?… The time will come when humanity will extend its mantle over everything which breathes… "
Jeremy Bentham (1748 – 1832)
Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation