Should Apes Have Human Rights?

by Rachel Nowak

The ape family tree has dwindled to a few remaining twigs today, but during the Miocene era (23-5.5 million years ago), it was a thriving, bushy affair, with numerous species in Africa, Asia, and Europe. Researchers agree that the great ape and human lineage originated from one of these animals, but their vote for the most likely ancestor changes as new discoveries are made.]

A few summers ago, a chimpanzee fell into the moat at Detroit Zoo and started to drown. Rick Swope, a visitor to the zoo, jumped in and pulled the animal back onto the only piece of dry land he could reach, an area already occupied by another dangerously agitated chimp. When asked why he took such a risk, Swope replied: "I looked into [the drowning chimp's] eyes. And it was like looking into the eyes of a man."

Swope is far from alone in thinking that chimps, as well as orangutans, gorillas and bonobos, are in some ways eerily like humans. Evidence of both cognitive and genetic similarities is fuelling an international drive to win certain "human" rights for all great apes. Backers of this crusade, known as the Great Ape Project, argue that because all great apes have certain "indicators of humanhood" -- they are self-aware, have distinct personalities, form deep emotional attachments, are intelligent and have rudimentary linguistic abilities-and are genetically similar to humans, they should be given at least some of the legal rights humans enjoy.

"The idea is to set a precedent that other countries can follow," says David Penny, a theoretical biologist at Massey University in Palmerston North and lead author of a submission to the New Zealand parliament from 38 of the country's scientists, lawyers and philosophers. Under current regulations, the onus is on the government to take action in cases of abuse, but if their campaign is successful, the new law will allow concerned individuals to step in whenever they believe a chimp or other great ape is being mistreated, much as we already use the courts to protect children.

But while the campaign has many supporters, the possibility that great apes may soon have legal standing in New Zealand is making some biomedical researchers nervous. They fear that the crusade is really aimed at stamping out research on all animals. They also say that the human-like qualities of the great apes have been exaggerated for political reasons.

The Great Ape Project has used the same arguments to call for a United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Great Apes. That declaration would guarantee chimps and their close relatives all the rights contained in the New Zealand proposals, plus the right to freedom from imprisonment "without due legal process."

But, says primatologist Frans de Waal of the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in Atlanta, "if you argue for rights on the basis of continuity between us and the great apes, then you have to argue continuity between apes and monkeys." And so on, until eventually even the humble lab rat wins "human" rights. After all, dogs can form deep emotional attachments, and cats seem to have distinct personalities.

Legal rights for rats is an unlikely outcome, says philosopher Peter Singer of Monash University in Melbourne, who helped set up the Great Ape Project. But he predicts there will be a gradual broadening of the "sphere of moral concern" to include first all the great apes, and then perhaps other species. After all, in the past certain humans -- women, gays and the physically and mentally-handicapped -- have been denied the full rights enjoyed by others.

Based on what we know about the nonhuman great apes, there is no logical reason for the broadening of moral concern to cease with humans, says Singer. "The case is clear for these beings. Like humans, they are entitled to certain rights." Indeed Singer, who famously argued in his 1975 book Animal Liberation that suffering in animals should be taken as seriously as suffering in humans, tilts the slippery slope in the opposite direction: if you deny chimps certain rights, then logically you have to deny intellectually disabled children too.

And that, he contends, leads researchers and lay people alike to overemphasise the similarities between humans and other great apes, and to ignore the differences. "There are even differences in degree, and those differences are substantial," he says. True, a mathematically gifted chimp called Sheba has been taught to count to nine. But it took heroic efforts on the part of a trainer to get Sheba to a stage that most children reach fairly easily by age three.

De Waal is concerned that arguing for better protection for chimps, orangutans, gorillas and bonobos on the basis of their human-like qualities could even backfire. He agrees that great apes appear to have some distinctly human characteristics, such as the much talked about "theory of mind" -- the ability to recognise that someone else may have a different point of view or different knowledge. The evidence comes from studies showing that, just like humans, chimps and other great apes will attempt to manipulate the behaviour of other animals by deception, say, or teaching. "But," de Waal points out, "the evidence is not overwhelmingly strong, and if in ten years, say, we prove that that theory of mind doesn't exist, does it mean we can do anything we want with these animals?"

To guard against that happening, he believes the crucial issue is simply an animal's capacity for suffering. Certainly, chimps should not be sitting alone in small cages. But that's because the animals are obviously distressed, not because they are obviously human. Behind closed doors, some supporters of the New Zealand campaign happily concede that for them, too, the chance to prevent suffering is the key incentive, rather than a deep-seated belief that humans, chimps and orangutans are all alike. Legal rights, however they are won, would instantly ensure that individual great apes had fundamental protection against suffering that courts would recognise and enforce.

Ironically, if the New Zealand bill passes into law with the rights for apes amendment in place, it will have little impact there. New Zealand has never experimented on great apes, and the 28 chimps and six orangutans that live there are reportedly well looked after. Great ape experiments in Britain and Australia are also a thing of the past.

But the law could have an impact in the U.S. There, around 1700 chimps are kept for experimental use, mainly for testing vaccines against viruses like HIV or hepatitis, although only a small fraction are used at any one time. Moves are afoot in the U.S. to win legal rights for these animals -- not by introducing a new bill, but by setting a precedent through a carefully chosen lawsuit on behalf of a chimpanzee. If chimps in New Zealand have legal rights, it might just persuade a judge in the U.S. to grant similar rights to their American cousins.