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Should Chimps Have Human Rights?
An anonymous reader writes "A Brazilian court has already issued a writ of habeas corpus in the name of a chimp. And now an Austrian court may well decide that a chimpanzee is a 'person' with what up until now have been called human rights." From the story in the Guardian/Observer: "He recognizes himself in the mirror, plays hide-and-seek and breaks into fits of giggles when tickled. He is also our closest evolutionary cousin. A group of world leading primatologists argue that this is proof enough that Hiasl, a 26-year-old chimpanzee, deserves to be treated like a human. In a test case in Austria, campaigners are seeking to ditch the 'species barrier' and have taken Hiasl's case to court. If Hiasl is granted human status — and the rights that go with it — it will signal a victory for other primate species and unleash a wave of similar cases."
See also: Great Apes Project
I don't know if Chimps should have human rights. I think what we need to do is research that does work to gauge how well chimps could cope in human society when raised in that society and how intelligent they can then become.
Then compare that with the lowest human being and work your way up through the human being scale (if the chimp is better then the lowest human beings we have) until we find a type of human (most likely suffering some form of mental retardation) that is comparable with your average chimp. Then assign chimps the same rights as that human being has.
Unfortunately until now most research has been far too biased or faulty one way or another, and as such we don't know if chimps are equal to some humans. As such, how are we suppose to know if they deserve human rights?
No. Just no.
Animal cruelty is one thing, but writs for Chimps? Seriously now...
hoo! hurr! grr! huuuh! hoooh! hoo!
Not long ago certain former "leader of the free world" took away its citizens' habeas-corpus provision. Every MINUTE a person (in the up-until-now traditional sense) dies of malnutrition or trivially treatable diseases. I'm all for the ethical treatment of animals but we do have more pressing problems.
+Raider of the lost BBS
If they get Human Rights, can I get Animal Rights, like flinging my poo at my boss when he annoys me?
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
To all who believe in spanking your monkey, be forewarned.
By that standard, shouldn't people, say, in vegitative states or with extreme cases of metal retardation be legally not human, and therefore eligible for the hot dog machine?
On Penn & Teller's Bullshiat, a show with many many many subtle flaws despite it's many many many good parts, they once had a little bit in the PeTA piece about how if animals have rights, then therefore they should have responsibilities. When I first heard this I thought at first that this was just a bit of flat humor, but then it occurred to me that this was actually a very powerful argument. Fine - if the primate deserves equal protection under law, then he should get equal treatment under law as far as paying taxes, sending his offspring to school, not assaulting people by climbing on them, being hygenic, etc.
Generally Chimpanzees are considered on par with the intellegence of a five year old child. Can you imagine having this discusion about the rights of a five year old child? Would anyone ever consider medical experiments reasonable on a five year old child? Yes they aren't human but genetically they are close. What if we do meet a more intellegent race? Is it okay to experiment on them and detain them simply because they aren't human? Certain rights should be expanded to include both less intellegent species as well as more intelllegent species. Whales, Dolphins and Great Apes should arguably have some basic rights as sentient beings.
Brazilian judicial system is similar to the U.S. one, each judge has the final say over his jurisdiction. Despite of that, Brazil is ruled by civil law, not common law, so the decision of that judge is completely irrelevant for jurisprudence. There are a lot of judicial activism there too, so it is not rare (but it still weird) that a judge bias can affect the decision, on this case, an animal right defensor judge accepting an animal as a litigant, back in the seventies, a judge acquitted a man that was on trial for murder accepting a witness statement from the dead friend which he had communicated telepathically with a medium.
Despite of those aberrations, judicial system in Brazil is not that ridiculous. It is massively slow and a lot of times unjust, but we are not near to give animals (or companies, for all that matters) full rights of a natural person.
FYI there was a proposal in Spain to give to all the non-human Great Apes some very basic rights (they cannot be killed, tortured or keep in captivity).
And the scientific name for Great Apes (humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans) is hominids and we have in common more of 97% of our DNA even with the more different of them (this obviously doesn't make them automatically humans).
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
Or, more generally: rights come with responsibilities. Which is something most of the animal rights movements fail to acknowledge.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
If we go by similarity to humans - we are apes. African apes, to be specific. That means that chimps are closer relatives to us than say orangutans are to chimps.
The intermediate stages from the common ancestor to the human and chimp branches are extinct, but that's just a coincidence, something that could have been the other way around. Looking at it that way the ethical questions become more difficult. When you can't define clear groups, the in-group/out-group ethics becomes difficult to rationalize.
Rather than an ethics based on questionable categories we need one based on functions - especially cognitive capabilities relating to suffering. When it comes to chimpanzees an the other great apes, the answer is very clear - we do need to give them rights. They may not understand it themselves, but neither do human children and we offer them rights and protection. Apes are a trivial problem - it becomes more difficult when you distance yourself further. What about cats, mice or even insects or one-celled organisms?
Come to think of it, you have a point there, my cat certainly deserves citizenship.
After all, the fuzzy things managed to tame humans, so it kinda says something about where they are in a sorted list by IQ. Plus, you've seen how they're attracted to books you're reading, or to your keyboard. They're natural nerds, I tell you
Second, but probably more important, giving cats a right to vote can't _possibly_ make it any worse. When was the last time you saw a cat torturing another cat for fun, or to scare the other cats into submission? When was the last time you saw a cat go to war? For that matter, when was the last time you saw a cat kill another?
I mean, sure, they fight, but with the natural weapons they have they'd be perfectly capable of taking each other apart if they wanted to. The species however has clear rules of engagement and of signalling "I surrender" or "I'm not a threat, don't attack me". Plus, most of the fights you get to see are either (A) actually playing/training, or (B) because humans force them into situations where the normal conflict resolution mechanisms don't work. E.g., bringing another cat on the territory of another without all the "rituals" (so to speak) normally associated with joining another group, and without the possibility to just go away.
Plus, they have built in mechanisms to avoid needing a war in the first place. Most felines release a number of eggs based on how well fed the mother is. So if the cat can barely feed itself, it will at most give birth to one kitten or two. If it's doing perfectly well, it will do its part for population growth. So it's hard to end up in a situation where they'd need to start a war for resources.
So I have to wonder how much worse it could possibly be if the cats could vote on issues like the stupid war in Iraq. My take is that it couldn't be any worse than letting humans do it.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I do not believe chimps should have human rights, but that we should improve the rights of all animals. It seems us humans see animals as... well animals. We often forget these are things with feelings and emotions just like we do. We should never think of killing another human because "that's wrong" but at the same time we rarely think twice about killing hundreds of animals for the sake of cheap wood or because some stupid reason like "I hate bugs". Basicly we're that asshole kid who runs around hitting everyone and it's about time we faced up to this, we scream and shout about global warming while at the same time completely missing the little picture where we're wiping out entire species of animals because we can't use basic birth control and have an over populated planet in some areas.
I want to point out right now I'am not some nutter who runs around bombing animal testing labs. I accept some things must be done such as conservation and culling of over populations in the animal world. This while not pleasent if something we need to do to keep a balance in wild life, I would not wish to stop it nor would I ever attempt to.
I like muppets.
my dogs? They damn sure recognize themselves in a mirror, they fully understand what a mirror is and play games in the mirror. The make will sit in front of the mirror and look me directly in the eye via the reflection, he likes doing that. And he knows it's a reflection because as I move my hand up behind his head, he can see my hand in the mirror and he'll tip his head back to meet my hand. And he coordinates it perfectly. He really, fully understand what a reflection is and how they work and he enjoys playing mirror games.
They also play hide and seek and are smart enough to anticipate what the other will do and make strategic counter moves to "cut em off at the pass" when playing in the yard.
And they enjoy being petted and tickled, that's obvious to anyone with a brain. And they even have favorite words. Like my puppy, when I call her by her regular name she responds and comes, sits, stays, etc..
But when I call her "wiggly dog" she explodes into a fit of tail wagging like you've never seen, she wags her entire body, like a snake wiggling on the ground. You can tell she takes extreme pleasure in being called "wiggly dog".. The male, his favorite thing is when I call him "big dog", he gets all excited about that just like the puppy.
My dogs are intelligent. I demand they get equal rights too damn it!
[blockquote]Monkey --> Ape --> Gorilla --> Chimpanzee --> Missing Link? --> Man[/blockquote]
This is a common misconception. There's no missing link that shows chimpanzees ever evolved into humans. The "missing link", if found, would demonstrate that both species came from a common ancestor millions of years ago before the two evolutionary paths diverged.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
From the discussions going on I get the feeling that alot of people don't know what the human rights are, so here they are (taken from wikipedia):
- security rights that protect people against crimes such as murder, massacre, torture and rape
- liberty rights that protect freedoms in areas such as belief and religion, association, assembling and movement
- political rights that protect the liberty to participate in politics by expressing themselves, protesting, participating in a republic
-due process rights that protect against abuses of the legal system such as imprisonment without trial, secret trials and excessive punishments
- equality rights that guarantee equal citizenship, equality before the law and nondiscrimination
- welfare rights (also known as economic rights) that require the provision of education and protections against severe poverty and starvation
- group rights that provide protection for groups against ethnic genocide and for the ownership by countries of their national territories and resources
Please explain to me how these apply to animals? What we need is animal rights, a set of rules which apply to animals specifically.
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Isn't this a little strange? For having rights one should be able to lay a claim to this right. As far as I know, a chimp can't.
Animals deserve rights when they can specifically ask for them. The moment a chimp makes a sign on its own asking for equal treatment, I say we give it to them. Until then, it's monkey brains for dinner...
There are quite a few faulty assumptions regarding human rights and whether animals should have them:
first, there seems to be a confusion between what it means to be a human being as opposed to animal (as a general rule), and what makes humans valuable. It is not because humans can laugh, think, etc. that they are valuable. Else, as soon as you are sedated, you'd stop being human because you wouldn't have those characteristics anymore. Humans are intrinsically valuable (their rights come from natural law), and an animal can never be biologically human.
Second, it is always quite dangerous to start defining what you 'need' to be a human being. Think about slavery, most genocides,etc. What happened is that some people decided to use arbitrarily defined criteria to strip people from their human status. Who says the criteria animal rights activists use are correct?
Third, why do they believe that chimps should have the same rights as humans. It is as logical to say that human beings should have the same rights chimps enjoy presently (i.e. none). The very idea of human rights is based on the premise that there is something intrinsically valuable in human beings, regardless of their mental capacities or physical abilities.
It's not an April Fool. See same story dated March 3rd:
l d-first-great-ape-trial-in-austria/
http://chimprescue.wordpress.com/2007/03/03/a-wor
Daniel
Carpe Diem
I believe that would make you 14 years too young to be eligible to become president of the United States of America.
Navicula hydraulica plena anguilarum est. Omnes castelli tuus nostri sunt. Ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
Interesting arguement.
This is a smart chimp so it should have human rights.
This suggests human rights are dependent on intelligence.
Logically they should also argue stupid people should NOT have human rights. Unborn children, those in persistent vegetative states are also arguably not worthy of human rights either.
Perhaps even babies aren't smart enough to have human rights either.
Also bestiality couldn't be illegal as marriage is a human right. Or perhaps certain humans aren't deserving of all human rights. Different rights for certain types of people. Maybe some groups shouldn't get to vote, and other groups should be slaves, or simply executed to protect the rest of us?
Human rights are for the human species. Animal rights are for other animals. What's really wrong with that?
They already do in some countries. They elected one of their own in the US, for instance.
Daniel
Carpe Diem
> Animals deserve rights when they can specifically ask for them. The moment a chimp makes a sign on its own asking for equal treatment, I say we give it to them. Until then, it's monkey brains for dinner...
Exactly! And the same applies to human babies. I say human rights starts at age 2. It certainly shuts up those anti-abortionists.
Now I have no idea what I would like for dinner, but I'm not that fond of monkeys. They smell of bananas. I'll just look around the house an see if I can find something tasty.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Yes, we should be kinder to animals, in general. If we kill them, we should at least have a reason, if not a good one. That is, if you go hunting deer for sport, at least make venison out of them. I have no problem with killing cows for beef, but certainly we should think twice about killing an animal, or an entire ecosystem, just to get some more wood or make room for another supermall.
On the other hand, bugs don't even have brains, as we know them. I'll have to check my sources, but I strongly doubt they could have feelings, as we know them. In fact, I would argue that most insects are only slightly more sophisticated than artificial intelligence currently used in games -- and I don't see anyone up in arms about killing an AI, yet.
I would not have responded except for your comment about "I hate bugs". Well, I do -- and I see nothing wrong with killing a mosquito -- or even a fly, even if it's absolutely no danger to me at all (though I suppose it could be carrying disease). That doesn't mean I go around spraying the wilderness with pesticide, but it does mean that I don't allow so much as a gnat to live in my house.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Clearly, you've never owned a dog, or thought the relationship through if you have. Humans enter into all manner of social contracts with canines. Food and care and love in exchange for protection, warning, even hunting prowess. It seems to me your argument fails before it ever reaches the level of trying to deal with a chimp; not to mention the fact that we routinely award human rights to those humans so disadvantaged that they cannot even do for you what a dog could. The argument extends to all manner of animals; falcons, cats, and so on. It isn't about a social contract. It never was. It is about recognizing that respect and care for those beings that have the capacity to suffer is the basis for high quality ethics. Singer recognizes this, as do many who have similar views. I can torch your argument another way, too. Take a member of a human society that you have no commonality with. Will you eat them? Use them as testbeds for your drugs? Strip their skin for leather? Even if they routinely do things you find abhorrent, such as have sex with children and kill babies that aren't perfect or wanted? I doubt you would - most people would not. Certainly there is no "social contract" with such people; yet we recognize that there are things that are bad to do to them regardless of the disparity from our own outlooks.
We are animals; they are animals. What should be done is obvious. Rationales for making another animal suffer for your benefit are ethically corrupt. It really is just that simple.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Rights come with responsibilities as well.
Not in our society. Certain rights are only granted if certain responsibilities are upheld, but even our most despised criminals are granted the right to food, shelter, freedom from torture and so on.
I would grant at least these minimum rights to any animal that can pass the mirror test.
I meant crap like: person A humiliates/tortures/kills/whatever person B, just to make a point to persons X, Y and Z. Innocents get made an example of, just to remind everyone else what their place is, and what can happen if they get ideas above their station.
I can honestly say that I've never seen anything even remotely similar in cats. And, trust me, I grew up with cats around since I was a baby. If cat A has a problem with cat X, it takes it on cat X directly, not on some bystander to make a point.
Oh, they'll make a show of power all right, but then one gives up and that's it. I can't even remember hearing about a cat fight that ended up lethal for one of the combatants.
And I don't think lack of opposable thumbs is what's lacking there to make them lethal. The same cats are perfectly able to tear a larger animal apart. E.g., I've seen cats hunt rabbits or rats larger than their own size. The teeth and claws are perfectly enough to do a _lot_ of damage to another cats, if they wanted to kill each other.
Compare that to some of the genocides the humans did, and I can't help liking cats a lot more. There's stuff we humans do which isn't even about power or territory, but just killing someone else because they're from a different country, race, religion or voted for the opposite party. (See, civil wars.)
Basically: when a cat signals "I give up", that's it, the fighting stops. When a human comes up with his hands up, on the other hand, the others just want to kill and torture him. And then there are the countless cases where people took out their frustration upon non-combatants who didn't fight in the first place. It took millenia and several international conventions and harsh laws to tell everyone to freakin' let go... and as we see in the recent cases in Iraq, they still don't.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
nothing that exists has a soul, that's what I know.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
The ones with souls should exercise a little compassion for those without it.
Can I bum a sig?
Will the chimps be forced to live by human law?
If a chimp kills another animal, will it be arrested for animal cruelty?
If a chimp kills another chimp, will it be murder? How about if a chimp kills a human?
How about rape, assault, etc?
For one to have human rights, one has to have human responsiblities.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Nonsence/Nonsense
I can't stand it when people can't spell properly.
Yes, the 'net is an irritating place for me.
Daniel
Carpe Diem
I'd suggest whilst the full range of 'human' rights would not fully be apropriate for monkeys, as they cant cope with the responsibilitys or understand them (although arming chimps WOULD be hilarious at a distance) , we can certainly derive a subset of rights they should be able to expect (the right to life, the right not to be tortured, the right for a human advocate to sue on their behalf for loss of rights, etc) based on the facts at hand.
Chimps are chimps. They don't want to be people, they want to be chimps. The only right we need to grant them is the right to be chimps in peace. It has nothing to do with their capability, that's a red herring. They're chimps. Highly intelligent, self-aware, sentient if you ask me (but don't ask me to define it), and also not human. They're chimps. Anthropomorphizing them and asking if they should be considered "people", or comparing them to disabled humans, is to violate their right to be chimps.
So as far as I'm concerned, it's very clear. We shouldn't be performing medical experiments or capturing or hunting chimps or destroying their habitat (more), but that's it. That's all they need. We just need to start respecting the other life forms on this planet, not dressing them up in suits and expecting them to be people. They won't be, don't want to be, and are just fine as they are.
The enemies of Democracy are
"The name's racist."
No, no it's not. Had you said "speciesist" or some such, maybe I'd have listened. But when people are so intellectually lazy that they group every bit of so-called discrimination they see into racism, I engage in my own bit of laziness and refuse to keep reading.
As many pointed out, rights go together with responsibilities. Can you hold a chimp responsible for a crime, then? Apparently not. FYI, occasionally chimps kill other apes (bonobos) and eat them. Do you seriously propose that chimps are tried and sent to jail for premeditated murder/bonobo-slaughter/cannibalism-of-some-sort ? Trying to extend what is now human rights to not only apes but all animals (I can see efforts in that direction) leads automatically to paradoxes: animals kill each other all the time, that's the way life is. Believing in so called "animal right to life" implies (in case the person believing in it is consistent and smart, which is seldom the case) automatically that all the predators and omnivores are criminals. Furthermore, many (most?) carnivores cannot possibly survive without eating other animals; so, if the spider kills a fly, it is a criminal, but if you deny the spider its prey it (the spider) will die, so indirectly you become a criminal.
Some common sense is needed to stop the non-sense...
a chimpanzee should not have HUMAN rights
YES, a chimpanzee has rights as a living thing and deserves some legal protections. but not, in any way, HUMAN rights
i passed an animal rights activist on the street the other day, and she had a t-shirt that read "animals are people too"
no. never. no way. no how
but her t-shirt does just about sums up the essential disconnect between reality and delusion going on here:
YES, animals deserve some protections from suffering. yes, cruel treatment against ANY life form is incompatible with any sense of morality. yes, yes, yes
but NO: the rights of animals NEVER rise to that of your fellow human beings
that's the line in the sand
the rights if animals are not zero. but the rights of animals also do not rise to the rights of your fellow human beings
that's the only common sense reality on the subject matter
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
First of all, a chimp doesn't get "human rights" simply because they're not human. If you want to propose a "chimp rights" campaign, go right ahead.
Secondly, babies and the severely retarded are a poor example, because they usually DON'T get the same rights as grown-up, normal humans. Do babies have the right to free speech? Do they have the right to travel wherever they want to go? Do they have the right to vote? Do they have the right to petition their government, or serve in it? Hell no! Mom and Dad are their dictators.
What about someone who is severely retarded (not even capable of speech or understanding "rights," the way chimps are). Odds are they're under strict care of an institution or family members, which means they don't have any meaningful rights either.
Now, if by "rights," you mean simply "the right not to be wantonly abused or killed," then sure. I suspect that's what most people mean when they're talking about chimps. But there are already laws on the books giving those "rights" to most animals (in the U.S. we call them "animal cruelty laws"). That's not to say that it's absolutely illegal to kill animals already, by any means. But generally it must be done under regulation and with minimal cruelty (slaughterhouses are regulated, hunting is strictly controlled, etc.). In the U.S., at least, you can't just walk out into the woods and start killing animals. And (if you're not working in a licensed medical lab) you sure as Hell can't torture animals. Both will get you heavily fined at minimum, thrown in jail at worst.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
I got it. I suggest that if the banana looks like it is suffering then yes show it some compassion.
Can I bum a sig?
This is great. They think being selfaware means they should get HUMAN rights? If this is the case then Dolphins should get it too since they have demonstarted a long time ago they are selfaware. Oh wait this only applies to animal life which resembles humans which make it easier for us to personify them and/or identify with them. I find this just as silly as the vegan argument for not eating meat. Sure they aren't killing animals for food. They just slaughtering plantlife for sustinance. Just becasuse the plant can not run away screaming, doesn't look in any way like us, and isn't cute and cuddly doesn't make it any less alive and less deserving of the same protections they want to extend to some memebrs of the animal kingdom. This is a silly argument.
Okay, this might sound like a troll, but hear me out. I'm not interested in getting into a discussion about abortion, but it makes a pertinent example, regardless of whether you are opposed to it or not.
I have a hard time believing that chimps would be granted any rights in today's society, especially considering that roughly half of the population argues in favor of a woman's "right" to have her unborn child killed. If the rights of an unborn human child are so small that they may be outweighed by the convenience of the mother, I fail to see how a chimp's right to life would ever take precedence over the possible value of the medical research obtained.
Abortion doesn't cure disease - in fact, it is, more or less, last-resort birth control. If you can't convince society to respect human life, I doubt you'll be able to convince them that medical research should be halted so that chimps can be spared. After all, at least the medical research has the potential of providing cures for disease someday.
I'm not trying to troll here - you can believe what you want with respect to the merits of abortion. That's not the issue. The issue is that in order to convince people to give animals the same rights as humans, you are going to have to offer a compelling case for doing so. People (sadly) aren't interested in the moral arguments, and the arguments against giving animals rights are strong:
It isn't an easy subject to take on. Granted, we shouldn't ever intentionally inflict pain on living things, but then, how would we eat? There are vitamins and minerals our bodies need which are only present in living things. So without a binding set of moral principles, the debate is going to remain centered around the pragmatic aspects, and I doubt this will result in any action being taken.
After all, the Democrats successfully convinced Americans that it is wrong to "imposing your private view of morality on the general public". Given this is considered evil, how could one convince the general public that your particular moral imperative applies to the public at large? Isn't religion supposed to be a private thing now? (I suppose we could get involved in the related discussion about private versus public morality, and how law reflects the morality of the public at large, for better or for worse.)
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
What if they've been saying this for years and years, but we're too stupid to understand?
It's more complicated. Especially when it comes to the issue killing other humans, where there probably are some rahter hardwired genetic moral safeguards in place against arbitrary killing (Non-arbitrary killing is another story entirely...)
You seem to think morality should be independent from practical considerations - which is fine, if you presume morality to have some sort of metaphysical foundation. (I.e. God)
Now, I don't think so - which leads me to believe that the system of morality enforced in society through customs and laws should serve to make society run smoothly, and to guarantee some basic rights to the people who live init. This is both because I have preferences for a reasonably peaceful and quiet life, and because I realize that there is a ceasefire aspect to morality. If I think killing my political opponents (for instance) should be A.OK, then I will myself have to sleep with a gun under my pillow, etc.
Thus, I believe in equally enforced morality for all humans - because frankly, I don't feel that much kinship with non-human apes, plus I see roughly zero benefit in granting chimps human rights (unlike the case of granting humans human rights).
> Lets bring on the rights for chimps, but with right comes responsibilities.
Exactly. It is intellectual dishonesty to speak of "Rights" for any of the lesser orders (and a non trivial number of humans these days, rant for another day) in the same way as we speak of them for us. Every Right has an equal and opposite set of Obligations, no chimp I have heard of is capable of fulfilling said obligations. At a minimum they must respect the same Rights for fellow citizens. There is a reason we keep em in zoos and other highly supervised environments when they live in human settings.
Stretched to the most extreme a chimp can have similar Rights as a small child, i.e. as a dependent of a full Citizen who assumes responsibility for the actions of a minor child and makes decisions in its name. But even that doesn't make total sense because in the case of a child it is assumed the child will eventually assume all of the full rights and responsibilities of citizenship and those rights are only being held in trust until that time.
If as a society we decide that inflicting medical experiments, etc on em is a bad thing, so be it. But lets recognize that is it is US making the decision and it has nothing whatsoever with any daft notions that semi intelligent species have "Human Rights" because it does not a damned thing for them while the intellectual dishonesty can only lead to a reduction in what the term means for us in the long run.
Besides it is obvious what the real agenda is, get chimps "Rights" and then groups like PETA will use that thin end of the wedge to extend the flawed logic behind it to all animals and then all living things. These days PETA and the US Humane Society (National, not the local unrelated groups doing good works running the local animal shelter) are nothing more than front groups for terrorist groups like ALF anyway, if we ignored and defunded em they would go away.
Democrat delenda est
Judging a creature's sentience or intelligence is completely missing the point. Sentience (the ability to feel or perceive) and intelligence (the capacity for learning, reasoning, and understanding) were never considered unique factors that set humanity apart from every other organism on this planet.
No one is debating whether animals are capable of feeling or reasoning, to varying degrees many are.
What is at issue here is Sapience. It is humanity's sapience (ability to act with judgment concerning complex issues) that makes us human, and thus guarantees us rights apart from every other organism on this planet.
A monkey can kill another monkey, and the monkey can use their sentience and intelligence to feel sad that they will now be deprived of the other monkey's company, but a monkey is incapable of using judgment to determine that killing the other monkey was morally wrong.
It is that judgment, between right and wrong, that sets humanity apart.
The next Democratic Party platform... cross-species marriage. If you don't agree, you're a bigot. You heard it here first!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
It doesn't. Prove that a "soul" exists. Then we can consider discussing similarities between said non-existent thing between species.
There are no generalizable social benefits from bestowing chimps with human rights.
Here's a thought: Allowing animals to be abused, imprisoned, and generally shat upon creates a culture of acceptance of casual, utilitarian violence. While we do draw a pretty stark line between humans and other species, it could be argued that a society which is disrespectful of the "rights" of animals is especially vulnerable to treating each other badly.
It's called "dehumanization" for a reason. One group of people characterizes another as "subhuman", thereby instantly justifying all manner of abuses towards them. Since our society already has a category for "sentient beings who suffer but are not entitled to respect or rights", it's not that much of a stretch to place a group of particularly hated humans in the same category.
However, if we foster a general understanding that even beings who everyone acknowledges are "less" than us, and more "savage" are entitled to a base level of rights, it becomes harder to justify treating other humans worse than that simply because they're perceived as being "less" or "worse" than us.
I realize that this argument doesn't make logical sense, but it's much more based on the vague illogical psychology of society at large, and I think there's some truth to it.