[vox_mundi]

US lawyer argues chimps are people too

Attorney Steven Wise is on a crusade to prove that, as a matter of law, chimps are people too. For that matter, so are dolphins, elephants, gorillas and orcas.

Wise argued that apes, chimps, elephants and orcas are as entitled to the rights of "persons" under law as are people or corporations.

Legal systems around the world have granted rights of personhood to holy scripts, mosques, companies, and even a river.

"Personhood is not a biological concept, it is a public policy concept," Wise said.
"The legal system decides it; human being is not synonymous with person."

Wise, president of the Nonhuman Rights Project, is hoping a legal tactic successful in getting a slave legally transformed from property to person in a historic case in Britain will do the same for chimpanzees and other animals.

... "They truly are slaves," Wise said of chimps, bonobos and other animals proven to have feelings, memories, language, foresight and other traits considered human.

Here's a personal hypothesis: I think the reason aliens have not come down to have a chat with us is because we haven't passed the test ... we've failed to respect and communicate with the other intelligent life on the planet.

Until we cross that barrier, we're not invited to the adults table in the interstellar community.

[Newfie]

Great thread!

Can't wait for Ibon to chime in.

Yeas, chimps and some others as well.

[Pops]

Oh, I thought this had to do with what is in my sig ...

[onlooker]

I think anything or any creature has more right to personhood, then corporations. Corporations should not have been granted personhood. They do not need it. They are simply tools to do the bidding of humans. They should have no recourse under any law dealing with rights. The only legal recourse they should have is in relation to contract law as the business dealing of all Corporations involves contracts of one form on another. Giving them personhood has allowed them to wield even greater power then they already had or could have. Witness how it is very difficult to sue them. For example Cigarette companies for many years defended themselves successfully from any and all suits bought against them in the US. That should not have been.

[vox_mundi]

This reminds me of a Star Trek Next Generation episode The Measure of a Man where the question - is Data the property of Starfleet or a sentient being able to decide it's own future.

Chimps are not human but they are sentient creatures able to use tools, laugh, cry, communicate, plan ahead - and they've lived in balance with there environment for the last several million years.

Somehow, they deserve more than just ending up as a proxy for our medical experiments or on a barbecue grill as bush meat surprise.

If we every make a sentient AI we may ask the same question - or maybe the AI will decide if we are sentient and deserving of personhood.

[onlooker]

haha, or maybe like in the Terminator movies, AI will make the decision in a nano-second that we should be exterminated. It seems we have by default made that decision (extermination) for most living beings we share this Earth with.

[Newfie]

There a are few in the in the deep green movemet who feel strongly about this. I think I agree.

Also with the concept that humanities salvation rests on this concept, that we need to find our way forward in concert with nature, not by trying to overpower it.

I think some good rules were set forth in on the Georgia Guidestones. But even there they could be a bit more explicit.

Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.
Unite humanity with a living new language.
Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.
Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
Balance personal rights with social duties.
Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.
Be not a cancer on the earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature.

[Ibon]

I support this. If we are not extending this right however to the habitats where these sentient creatures live then this is a kind of perversion actually. Extending rights to other species that are held in captivity at the same time as we are destroying the native habitat of these very same species is nothing more than indulging in humanism.

Because you can't hug a wild bird or bear and practice anthropomorphism on them we therefore don't focus on them the way we do with our domestic pets and captive animals where we dote on them with anthropomorphism.

I have seen women waiting in line french kissing their designer dogs and cooing to them like they are their infants. This is not extending compassion or love to another species. It is projection of your own perversion on to an animal.

You have to really examine the motives behind certain causes, not that I am saying this is the case with the OP article which it appears it isn't. There is just so much twisted misplaced anthropomorphic emotions extended toward animals at the same time as we are destroying their habitat that sometime this twisted mixed up emotional position has something putrid at its core.

[vox_mundi]

Chimps in Senegal found to fashion spears for hunting

Members of a troop of chimpanzees living at a site called Fongoli in southeastern Senegal have been observed by scientists fashioning tree branches into spears and using them to hunt and kill bushbabies. The researchers, a combined team with members from the U.S. the U.K. and Germany have published their observations and findings in Royal Society Open Science. (New evidence on the tool-assisted hunting exhibited by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) in a savannah habitat at Fongoli, Sénégal)

In their seven year study of the chimps living at the site, the researchers spotted chimpanzees breaking off tree branches, tearing off smaller branches and leaves, removing the weak tips and sometimes gnawing on the ends to sharpen them. The spears (which were on average about 75 centimeters long) were then used to stab bushbabies sleeping in their nests in tree hollows. The poking, the team reports was not lethal, instead, it caused injuries to the bushbabies which was enough to allow the chimps to bite and kill them with relative ease.

Bushbabies are small primates with big eyes and sharp teeth, and serve as a primary protein source for the chimps living in that part of Africa, where other sources are rare. The researchers began their study in 2007, observing chimp behavior up until last year. During that time period they recorded 308 spear hunting events, which they noted, was more common for females than males—they accounted for 61 percent of the total. The researchers suggest this is likely the case because it is more difficult for females to chase down prey because they almost always have offspring clinging to their bodies. To date, the chimps are the only known animal to use a tool as a weapon to hunt a "large" animal, other than humans—chimps in other troops have been seen to use twigs as tools to help collect termites, but scientists do not count that as hunting.

The researchers also found that the troop at Fongoli was a much more cooperative collective than has been found in chimp troops in other parts of Africa—dominant males, for example, allow females and smaller males to keep and eat what they kill, rather than stealing it from them. That might help explain the development of tool use, which the team speculates, likely began with females. They also suggest the same might be said for early humans, who developed weapons use in a very similar environment.

Elephants are people too (or soon could be)

Life in the circus might often seem like a glamorous one for human performers. But for circus elephants — who campaigners say undergo brutal training and spend much of their life in chains — it can be anything but.

Nor, obviously, can elephants choose to leave their show business profession. Yet this may be about to change, as one mystery elephant prepares to make legal history by challenging its captivity in an American courtroom.

The elephant’s identity is currently secret until the court papers are filed, to avoid tipping off the animal’s owners. But lawyers at the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) have already lined up a sanctuary to take the elephant if the ruling goes their way.

In order to prevail, however, the NhRP has to convince a judge that this elephant is not a thing lacking legal standing but a person with the capacity for at least some of the basic rights typically reserved for humans — namely bodily liberty. If successful, the case could radically alter the legal status of some animals. Even if unsuccessful, it is likely to trigger a debate over just exactly how “personhood” is legally defined and whether or not it should be reserved for human beings.

When human beings are being held against their will, they have the right to petition a court for a writ of habeas corpus to challenge the legality of their captivity. The NhRP’s goal is to extend the same habeas corpus protections to at least some captive animals by having the courts recognize their legal personhood.

[obixman]

Any chimp has more intelligence than any corporation I know of.

Corporations are only concerned with self preservation at best ( and there is ample evidence that at least some do not even have that level....)

[Outcast_Searcher]

Though humans clearly have a long way to go in this area, there is some progress in the first world.

As a child (nearly 50 years ago) I can clearly remember being EXTREMELY dismayed as a roughly eight year old child upon my first trip to the zoo. I can remember things like big cats in tiny very hot cages, sitting on blacktop, surrounded by herds of gawking people, on a VERY hot summer day. I can remember the poor cats looking and acting totally miserable, and thinking "Can't anyone see that treating these animals like this is just plain WRONG"? (As always, when I tried to point this out to my parents, I was basically told to shut up and conform, or I'd be in trouble. No, the 60's weren't all love and flowers).

Well now, most modern zoos at least have large relatively natural settings for such animals to dwell in. Though not perfect, it's got to be a lot more comfortable for the animals, even though (I'd imagine) it's also significantly more expensive for the zoos to build and maintain such habitats.

(And no, I'm not saying this makes zoos moral or humans "good", just that some aspects of animal rights are improving over time, at least generally in the first world.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Any chimp has more intelligence than any corporation I know of.

Corporations are only concerned with self preservation at best ( and there is ample evidence that at least some do not even have that level....)

And the same can be said for many governments.

[vox_mundi]

...As a child (nearly 50 years ago) I can clearly remember being EXTREMELY dismayed as a roughly eight year old child upon my first trip to the zoo. I can remember things like big cats in tiny very hot cages, sitting on blacktop, surrounded by herds of gawking people, on a VERY hot summer day. I can remember the poor cats looking and acting totally miserable, and thinking "Can't anyone see that treating these animals like this is just plain WRONG"?

Well now, most modern zoos at least have large relatively natural settings for such animals to dwell in. Though not perfect, it's got to be a lot more comfortable for the animals, even though (I'd imagine) it's also significantly more expensive for the zoos to build and maintain such habitats.

(And no, I'm not saying this makes zoos moral or humans "good", just that some aspects of animal rights are improving over time, at least generally in the first world.

What the animals (that survived) had to endure BEFORE they arrive at a zoo or circus is the real crime. These creatures can think and have emotions. An example from the link above ...

... One of the elephants they took in at the age of 13 is Nicholas, a 14,000 lb bull who was taken from his mother as a baby and trained to stand on his head and ride a tricycle. His owners at the Hawthorn Corporation were cited so many times for neglect and abuse that eventually the United States Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) took the highly unusual move of confiscating their entire herd. But four of his fellow elephants died, and one almost starved, before Nicholas eventually made it to safety and the scars of his years in captivity remain.

Even today, after eight years of being free from chains and punishment, Stewart notes, Nicholas’ eyes still fill with fear if he feels he has done something wrong.

[Cog]

No chimp ever offered me a job.

[vox_mundi]

Chimpanzees granted 'legal persons' status to defend their rights in court
New York judge grants writ of habeas corpus to Hercules and Leo, chimpanzees used for medical experiments, to defend rights against imprisonment

For the first time in US history, a judge has granted two chimpanzees a petition – through human attorneys – to defend their rights against unlawful imprisonment, arguably bestowing the status of “legal persons” on the primates.

On Monday, Manhattan supreme court justice Barbara Jaffe granted a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of two non-human plaintiffs, Hercules and Leo – chimpanzees used for medical experiments at Stony Brook University on Long Island.

In her order, Jaffe ordered Samuel Stanley Jr, the president of Stony Brook, to argue before the court why the chimpanzees were being “unlawfully detained” at his university and should not be transferred to a primate sanctuary in Florida.

The judge’s argument in this case and others is that chimpanzees are intelligent, emotionally complex and self-aware enough to merit some basic human rights.

The attorneys who brought the petition forward, part of the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP), argue that under New York law, “only a ‘legal person’ may have an order to show cause and writ of habeas corpus issued in his or her behalf. The court has therefore implicitly determined that Hercules and Leo are ‘persons’.”

[vox_mundi]

It's good that we did not share the planet with creatures like our current selves back 3.2 million years ago. Back then, we were no different than the chimps above.

However, we showed promise ...

Archeologists believe they have found the oldest example of tool use

Chimps used tools as early as the Stone Age: study