Last week the Nonhuman rights project filed a lawsuit on behalf of two chimps, arguing that they are sufficiently intelligent and self-aware to deserve some right. Specifically, the right to bodily liberty. If successful the project may file additional lawsuits, trying to extend similar rights to other intelligent animals; like dolphins and whales. This is the first such suit in US history and has obviously been making headlines, so I’ll skip the nitty gritty details. Your probably all bored to death of it (maybe its even driving you bannanas, *badumtsch*).
Rather, I’m bringing this up because tomorrow the group plans to file an additional lawsuit on behalf of Hercules and Leo, who are currently at Stony Brook University. They’re not being used in medical or cosmetic tests, but rather the Anatomy department is using them to study chimp locomotion. This has obvious implications for human evolution; as a better understanding of how chimps move is a crucial resource in trying to identify how our ancestors moved. Its this sort of work which has resulted in the startling conclusion that perhaps our ancestors didn’t walk like chimps after all! This is nothing short of a palaeoanthropolgoical paradigm shift, with fascinating implications for our evolution.
There are no details available about the research in question, although the Functional Morphology and Primate Locomotion Laboratory has “adequate facilities for housing and maintenance of experimental animals…. [and a] full-time, professional animal trainer works with the animals and manages their welfare“. Hooray, I guess.
But should this research be allowed? I’m no legal expert and so don’t have a clue whether the lawsuit has a chance of succeeding. My personal view is that chimps are indeed very intelligent, and so deserve to be protected and treated well. But should they have rights? I don’t think so. To me, rights come with a responsibility to understand them and their limitations. I don’t think chimps could ever meet this burden, so could never have rights. As such, so long as they are protected and treated well there’s nothing stopping them being used in research where appropriate.
If they have sufficient personhood to have “rights” should they also be jailed for theft, have their children removed for abuse, and be electrocuted for murder? These are common enough occurrences in chimp communities.
I don’t know much about the chances at law but this is new territory where a legal ruling actually creates law. Rights are in fact hallucinations. We – ie our cultural group at this time – presume them as a basis of social habit but they aren’t out-there properties of the world; they are (useful) shared imaginings. They have a basis in evolutionary game theory and the capacity for having a hormonal reaction to “right-like” notions appears to be genetically programmed fro humans (and maybe chimps to some degree), but the actual expression of this propensity has varied enormously in human soicieties. This makes me very sceptical of any absolute claims in this arena. A more useful useful question is: does it work, for us, for chimps, for other species, for the planet? I tend to think not, while I agree that treating chimps well is a good idea. I’d rather courts spent their time on the immense practicalities of human behaviour.
That’s a good point. Since they’re arguing for relatively limited rights however, I’m not sure they would be technically making murder etc illegal. But since their focus seems to be on chimps being held against their will, if a chimp were to somehow imprison another that would surely be a violation. What then? Do we leave it as an “internal affair” or intercede. If the former, then why are we intervening in the first place and mucking about with rights?
LOL. They should be locked up in insane asylums if they cannot pledge to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The asylums could be also called zoos or they could be banished to wilderness places. God gave only mankind personhood. All else is foolishness.
That would be hilarious. Give the chimps rights, then immediately take them away when they start throwing rocks at each other.
Good article about a very interesting trend, although i don’t necessarily agree with your conclusion.- It depends how you define “rights”. Right to avoid invasive research, yes I think all animals should have their right. As for non-invasive, non-harmful research, I don’t see a problem with that (or justification for lawsuit) if the animals are well cared for and have their physical and psychological needs met, are being respected as individuals by their trainers et.c.
Of course I only have this short summary here from your post, haven’t come across the news or read about the background, maybe there is more to it than it looks like.
Kids have rights.
Kids do have rights, and that’s a good point. But I don’t think the situation is directly analogous because children will eventually grow up and understand their rights. Chimps won’t. What’s more children even have comparatively limited rights because of their lack of understanding. They’re treated differently if arrested, can’t buy harmful substances, vote etc. All we really do is protect and educate them until they develop such an understanding.
So if a chimp could be taught about it rights, I would be happy extending them to the individual until they’d been fully taught. But that’s not going to happen.
I guess it comes down to how “rights” is defined. The lawsuit is not about chimps not being able to vote, after all;-)
Sure, but kids can’t be kept in labs and used for research:-) It is a point that kids will eventually grow up to resume the full set of responsibilities expected from adult humans. However, that doesn’t go for all. For example, disabilities can mean some won’t grow up to take on that normal adulthood template with its set of responsibilities, but they are still considered individuals with rights and can’t be kept in labs and used for research either.
Also, it is unreasonable to expect animals to understand human world concepts even if they are intelligent (even though we humans are “the scientific research species”, we don’t understand their realities well either. However, the concepts of entrapment, freedom and exploitation are pretty clear concepts to both us and them. So does their lack of human responsibilities mean they can be kept permanently imprisoned and exploited, and that their individual personhood is irrelevant? I think that is a more relevant question and probably the assumption the lawsuit tries to challenge.
Alongside technological development et.c there is this development of ethical reflections about our attitude to the other species and the ecosystem going on, and I think is just as much a part of the progress of human civilisation as space exploration, technological innovation and milestones of scientific knowledge… I think we’ll see much more of it in the years ahead; attempts to expand humanity’s ethical boundaries and see how inclusive they can be, while still allowing society to conduct research efficiently.
Rights are a very human-centric concept, but this raises the question of whether we should be playing around trying to bestow them on animals in the first place. That’s why I tried to make a distinction between certain protections and rights. Plus the former come with a whole let loss baggage, philosophically and legally which would make the whole process a lot smoother. Would “group seeks to raise standards for chimp living” really result in as much controversy as “group wants to give chimps rights?”
Not really. For example, dogs and wolves have property rights. The have other types of rights too of course, but I mention “the Law of Possession” because it applies equally regardless of social status, like human rights do too. It means that generally if you are a top dog and a the underdog – even just a puppy – has something first, for example a bone or a chunk a meat, then it owns it and you don’t take it with force/aggression even if you are much stronger (Not every individual stick to the law of course, just like there are jerks amongst humans too, but that it the general rule). It is totally legit to steal an item using tricks, however, or get it by begging and pestering … again, that’s an option open for anyone to try.
Nope. It is highly likely that they provoked the controversy to either 1) promote their ideology, or 2) get more media attention, or both:-) Looking at the two options again, would you have written a blog post about it if their campaign mission was to raise the living standards for chimp in research facilities?
What I mean is that while animals of course do not have advanced abstract concepts like human rights, the rights concept itself is a natural aspect of social animal societies (just like “good behaviour” standards are/social customs), not a human invented construct. We are not that unique!
Social standards aren’t unique to humans and well documented in chimps, but I think there’s a distinct difference between a social tradition and a right; so the former isn’t really analogous to the latter.
And I just learnt that yesterday the case was thrown out of court anyway. Apparently haebus corups can only be applied to human beings.
I wonder whether this matter should not also be looked at from an opposite perspective. I think that what people generally se as ” sins” is nothing more or less than remnants of our animalistic behavior past. If so, how much better are we, from a behavioral point of view, than the animal world. Generally, in there natural en in environment , the do not kill unnecessarily. Nor do they rape and especially not baby animals. Dogs, horses and I am sure chimps are capable of bonding. Seen it between young heifers as well. We have seen chimps display remorse at a youngsters death. Elephants and dolfins display it. Chimps intelligence for surpasses other animals. One would think that there level of self consciousness, self awareness and possibly existensial awareness oils be second only to ( some) humans. Fact is that only 2,7 percent of human are true individualists anyway. So why should they not be reconned hominids ? Is it not adults responsibility to protect the young. Are morons not given rights? as a previous writer said, we should expand our own civility. Chimps ate being driven to extinction by humans with low levels of self awareness?
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