Steven Wise, president of the Non-Human Rights Project, recently appeared on The Colbert Report to talk about his ongoing battle to give chimpanzees what they deserve: the right to legal personhood. Wise chatted with Steven Colbert on why Tommy — one of the chimps that the organization is fighting on behalf of — deserves this right.

Colbert played the fundamentalist in this conversation and said, “animals are animals, humans are humans, and never the twain shall meet, read your bible!”

Wise responded by saying a chimpanzee, “is an extraordinary being. She can think about the past, she can think about the future, she can think about how she wants to live her life, she can self-determine, the same things that make us [humans] want to file writs of habeas corpus when we’re thrown in human jail.”

And still, here are 5 more reasons why chimpanzees should be considered “persons.”

Colbert shared this picture of Tommy, trapped behind the bars of a tiny cage, in a dark shed located in a New York trailer lot:

Michael Mountain via the Nonhuman Rights Project

Colbert then said, “Let’s take it down because it is sad-making.”

Yes, because in fact, keeping a chimp behind bars, when they could be running alongside family and friends in the wild, is sad…and wrong.

That’s why it’s so important to grant animals “personhood” — even Alec Baldwin agrees!

Watch the entire interview below:

Image Source: fotopedia.com