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Argentine Court Rules Orangutan Is a "Non-Human Person"
First time accepted submitter Andrio writes In an unprecedented decision, an Argentine court has ruled that the Sumatran orangutan 'Sandra', who has spent 20 years at the zoo in Argentina's capital Buenos Aires, should be recognized as a person with a right to freedom. The ruling, signed by the judges unanimously, would see Sandra freed from captivity and transferred to a nature sanctuary in Brazil after a court recognized the primate as a "non-human person" which has some basic human rights. The Buenos Aires zoo has 10 working days to seek an appeal." A similar case involving chimpanzees failed to provide "non-human person" status here in the U.S. earlier this month.
It's official:
Monkeys now have more rights than 21st century American citizens.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
Argentina has truly earned the title "Banana Republic".
Time for another scopes monkey trial!
*Scratch*
*Flingpoo*
Anyone got a banana?
Of course, this is how it starts.
Next thing we know: Planet of the Apes!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
is not whether or not animals are persons, but whether or not we can give ourselves every rights to subdue, restrain, decide of the life or death, and/or mutilation (commonly known as "fixing") of other living being. If you see this on a consent point of view, there is no way an animal can give consent in human terms. In most case, even if the animal gave consent it might not be relevant, as the animal is in direct dependence on humans for his bare survival, as it has been "trained" (and to some extend dumbed down) to be loyal to human. On this moral point of view, I object to pet ownership. Though, at the same time, I have no problem with the perspective to eat horse, dog, cat, rabbit, hare, squirrels meat (or other "cute" animals).
Deporting her to a country she has never been in seems a strange thing to do. Don't people complain when you do that to human people - deporting people who have only ever lived in whatever country their parent illegally migrated to. Heck it's not even the "native" country of the species in question...
So surely just set her free into the streets of whatever city the zoo is in.
What if you're just making dinner?
We're a part of nature, not something above it or separate from it. That includes using other animals for our own benefit. We are not true herbivores, so some "animal cruelty" is likely to occur eventually.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Should they send it to the Planet of the Apes?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
To eat, fuck, collect welfare and vote left, like countless human monkeys are doing.
That an orangutan will not try to eat you. Chimps can and will.
If these creatures get legal self identity, then are they also legally required to obey our laws?
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
There is a long stretched between eating meat, and agreeing to enslave another unable-to-consent living being. Though, most people are unable to understand this.
Killing for resource (food, pelt, bones...), can be made quick and with minimal suffering (assuming good shot placement). Enslaving another living being is a lifelong process. Nobody would accept to be jailed in apartments or house for years.
To have its To have its "vote" count for the most statist candidate, obviously.
What suffering? If it's a modern zoo then they were doing everything they could to make this animal feel as comfortable as possible. The lack of gawkers might be a bit of an improvement. However, the do-gooders really only traded one guilded cage for another one.
The creature in question has no real legal rights or self-determination in either case.
This creature has just had one master traded for another. Beyond the sensationalist headline, this situation is really indistinguishable from a sales transaction.
This ape is still being treated as someone's property. Except it's now some class of person. Great precedent there.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Just wait until Quantum Physics turns you into a monkey.
The odds are incredibly small, but the rest of eternity is a long time.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
By which standard to do measure "comfortable" ?
How we treat animals, children, and people "weaker" than ourselves says a lot more about *our* humanity than theirs.Â
Please do enlighten us about the humanity of animals.
Will the orangutan be an Argentine citizen?
Look up "Washoe". Being able to communicate, even if only by sign language, is important. The average chimp doesn't communicate much better than other ordinary animals, like dogs. And humans can fail to be communicative, look up "feral child". The point here is that humans are naturally prejudiced in favor of themselves, thinking that characteristics associated with personhood (like communicative-ness) are automatically/naturally associated with biological growth. But the fact is (at least here on Earth), communicative-ness at the person-class level is a result of Nurture, not Nature. As a result, if certain other organisms also receive appropriate Nurture (like Washoe did), then those organisms are as likely as a human to qualify for personhood. So now look up Koko the Gorilla and Chantek the Orangutan. Equally logically, any organisms that don't receive appropriate Nurture, including humans, are going to qualify more as ordinary animals than as persons. (The default Natural condition, per biological development only, for a human is to be just a clever animal.)
Wondering; what are these "basic human rights" that actual human babies are denied at the rate of 50 million a year?
Take for example the right to freedom. Nobody has to take care of the orangutan for it to exercise this right. But for a baby to exercise its right to freedom, it has to be nurtured for around 18 years or so, and that's much too inconvenient. It takes work and selfless sacrifice, both of which suck. (Speaking as a parent of one, and another on the way)
So how exactly does this make us more compassionate people? When we're willing to free a monkey because it's easy, and prefer to to stop a human heart because keeping it alive is harder?
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
But then, almost all of Slashdot readers aren't vegan, and couldn't care less about the untold suffering of billions of animals every YEAR, who are tortured and killed so they can avoid questioning why they eat what they eat. After all, you might have to admit you were wrong, and that would be just terrible, wouldn't it... The suffering of thousands of animals is nothing compared to your precious feelings, right?
You know, I was willing to agree with you up until this point. But then you went and outed yourself as just another bleeding-heart, more-enlightened-than-thou, vegan twat. Go back to your kale salad and stay off the fucking internet.
How do you know someone's a vegan? Don't worry, they'll be DAMN sure to tell you.
Once an animal is taken out of the wild and held in captivity it is almost impossible to put them back into the wild - they just can't survive. This is why you are very careful with taking animals out of the wild - it is a one way street.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
Warm, dry, clean, well-fed, not being hunted, sex partners shipped in from all over the world....
Sounds like a luxury hotel when compared to a rainforest.
So it's a corporation?
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Sounds more like a jail than a hotel. And all things considered, I'd rather live in the rainforest than in a shiny jail. Though, I agree, I am in a minority thinking that way, even among humans.
And when they hit someone they will charged with assault and jailed. Then sued for all their worth. Are we going to have to construct ape jails? Do they pay taxes to pay for them?
Because when a fetus is in a women's body it is part of her body. And she can do what she wants to her body. End of story.
These are two completely different subjects and you're really reaching here to tie this into abortion law.
hopefully we can learn from this and with the next president stop making about left vs right, and make it about right vs wrong
Actually, I would argue that it's the "vs" that is causing much if not most of the problem here, so "right vs wrong" isn't going to get you too far to a solution easily. Right and Left would no doubt argue that they are in the battle of Right vs Wrong, with their particular side being the right.
How about we all work together? Or at a minimum, lets try talking to each other without calling each other names, making wild claims, providing disingenuous stats/info or dragging the person on the other side through the dirt. If our children on the playground acted like our politicians we would reprimand them. Let's work on some common ground and work as one.
Sadly, I'd say we're probably long beyond the point where we can do anything other than bicker, fight and call each other names. The "war" has become part of the fabric of the system such that it will be hard to tease it out. Maybe a grand unifier will come along and not be sucked back to the common denominator. But it's hard to imagine.
So this court in Argentina declared:
1) This orangutan is a person
2) Decreed that she be banished from civilization immediately. I.E. "Freed"
Didn't anyone ASK this supposed person what they wanted?
Nature doesn't really gives a shit about diversity. It has killed more species over the existence of earth than humans will ever do. The only thing really wiped out by a nuclear holocaust would be the human race, and a few hundreds species of mammals. Which is, all things considered, just a dent in the amount of life present on earth...
I'm of the opinion that, if you need to kill an animal for food, clothing, etc, that's fine, but you shouldn't make it suffer while it's alive. So killing a chicken to eat it is fine. Keeping it in a tiny, dirty cage all its life while it is force-fed and injected in order to make it plumper is not fine.
You also shouldn't kill an animal "for fun." So shooting a deer in the woods is fine if you take it back and use the venison. Shooting a deer in the woods just because you like killing things is cruel behavior. (A teacher of mine used to tell the story of the time he shot a bird for fun and his father made him cook and eat it. He didn't shoot anything ever again unless he intended to consume it.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Law? How shortsighted! No; it's about what we value, and how we make choices about life and death, and what makes us human.
That woman opened up her body to her mate and that little person ended up there through no fault of its own. Mommy and daddy decided to ignore basic human physiology and now it is, in fact, the end of the story for that kid that ends up like it went through a blender. Your hand is a part of your body; ever tried to put your hand in a blender?
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
I would suspect that the ruling was in spanish and did not use the English word person. Perhaps it was persona? These ruling are somewhat about what words mean. Or what they meant to lawmakers when they wrote laws using those words. Argentine law is based on Spanish legal tradition and things like the Napoleonic code. (as opposed to English common law in the USA)
Most zoos nowadays (at least the ones I've visited) don't have the animals just sitting in metal cages for people to gawk at. The animals have mini-habitats to roam through, have appropriate items to play with, and food to eat. They have medical care (sometimes better than humans get). Yes, they don't have the freedom to roam that animals in the wild have, but they trade that off for freedom from predators.
Besides, zoos often help support efforts to conserve species and people like protecting animals they've seen. If you see a rhino and then hear there are only a thousand left because they are being hunted for their horns, you might kick in some dollars to a conservation effort. If the zoo simply had a poster of a rhino, you wouldn't be likely to donate anything at all.
As to whether I'd like to live my life how zoo animals live theirs? I'm not sure. I'm not going to pretend that zoo-life is completely idyllic, but it also isn't horribly abusive anymore. (At least not in modern zoos. If there's an "old timey animals in metal cage" sort of zoo, get the animals out of there now.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I'm not an expert, but I'd hope that they wouldn't just dump the orangutan into the wild and say "Good luck" as they drove off. There has to be sort of a middle-ground between zoo and the wild that the orangutan can live in to get acclimated. Perhaps a gated in area that is guaranteed to be predator free where her handlers can keep an eye on her and make sure she knows how to forage for food, etc. Then, when she's used to this, slowly introduce her to the wild.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Nobody has to take care of the orangutan for it to exercise this right. But for a baby to exercise its right to freedom, it has to be nurtured for around 18 years or so, and that's much too inconvenient.
Assuming that you're referring to actual babies that have been born, then they still have human rights that their parents or legal guardians can't deny them. For example, you can't lock up your kid in a cage, even though other more reasonable limits on the freedom of movement are allowed. Generally speaking, it's okay so long as it's in their interest. Similarly, in this story, they're not letting the orangutan go where it wants, but admitting that the current arrangement is definitely not in its interest.
Assuming that you're referring to actual babies that have been born...
It seems you too are missing the point, just like the aptly named Anonymous Coward above. Why was this actual baby born, or why should it not be? The criteria used to answer this question is at the heart of the matter, and you're standing on legal definitions.
"Congratulations, new human! We've decided not to run you through the blender! Since you've made it this far, here are your inalienable rights!"
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
Or give him a football scholarship.
Have gnu, will travel.
thank you for explaining what I was getting at better than I did.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Black bear "habitat" in nature is a few square kilometers. There is no way you'll make me believe that packing a couple of bears in a few hundreds square meters is "recreating their habitat"... I don't see the point in "protecting" the last few hundreds animals of a given species, the genetic diversity of the species is just not big enough to let the specie survive altogether. As I previously mentioned, I don't specifically care about a species dying because of humans. Nature, in the grand scheme of things will kill us all in a few billions years anyway, and earth "as-we-know-it" disappearance from the universe will not matter anyway. The only thing that really matter is what MY life, and the life of my kin in the next one or two generation will be. Beyond that, we're all fucked anyway (just because cheap energy will disappear one day). So I don't really mind driving a SUV and eating black bear, moose, cat or dogs for dinner.
You yourself talked about "until they reach 18 years of age"; abortion is clearly but one aspect of this, and arguably not the biggest one by far (there are far more children who are born, but have their rights limited until they are of age, than aborted fetuses).
I didn't want to touch on abortion for the simple reason that it's vastly more complicated - there's the issue of when you start considering a fetus a person (it is obvious to any rational person that a fertilized egg or an embryo is not a person in any meaningful way, while a pre-birth fetus is; but where do you draw the line in between?). There's also the sticking issue of the fetus, regarding of any rights it may have as a person, potentially infringing on its mother's rights to her body. Reconciling those two rights is not obvious.
In any case, none of this has anything to do with this particular case.
I'm fine with what you say, but I don't mind giving a animal antibiotics to prevent herd/flock infections, which can happen whenever more than one animal is raised in the same area, even if the space of confinement is larger (even a free range). You act as if giving a vaccination to a child was a heinous thing - after all, they've gotten... dum, dum, dum... injected!
That is all.
It's seems perfectly plausible to me that an adult great ape might be a "person" but a blastula with a couple of dozen cells is not, nor a one ounce fetus at the end of the first trimester. The baby's brain at birth will weigh more than a dozen times that at birth.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Okay. So now Sandra is entitled to welfare and liable in civil suits as well as criminally responsible.
Neither necessarily follows as a consequence of personhood. Children cannot be held liable in civil suits and in most cases very young ones cannot be held criminally responsible, not because children aren't human, but because they can't reasonably be expected to take a responsible, independent part in human society.
Welfare for animals is not a consequence of animal personhood, but a consequence of humans taking animals from their natural environment. Once you have custody of an animal, by the norms of our society you are responsible for that animal's welfare. When I catch a fish which I don't plan to release, I pith it with a sharpened screwdriver, not because the fish has human rights, but because letting an animal die a slow and painful death when it's easy to kill it quickly and painlessly is needlessly cruel.
I have thought on this often and equality to humanity should be measured in terms of what sets us apart from Sandra. The ability to abstract and to use language is one part of that. The ability to abstract and to use language is one part of that.
Well, what about people with aphasia? Do they lose their human status because they can't use language? Also, when reasoning about the abstraction capabilities of great apes it's important not to reason from assumptions. I've had the good fortune to work with primate field researchers, and there's good reason to believe that chimpanzees (for example) plan ahead; this necessarily involves a concept of "self" and "other", "now" and "in the future", all of which I think can reasonably be called abstractions, in fact I'd say they're the key ones. "Freedom" means nothing to an animal that has no concept of self or future.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I think (though could be mistaken) from the general tone of his sentiment, was his objection with them being injected with things such as steroids to keep them essentially impervious to the degradation they would otherwise suffer in their little confined space. Though, I've seen chicken houses in the midwest. They don't bother with injections. The necessary ingredients for superchickens, with their 3 legs, stunted wings, and 6 month lifespan are all in the food. Plus they're packed far too tight for injections. There's no room for cages.
You understand only a small portion of evolution. You clearly don't understand what genetic drift is or genetic diversity. I assure you that only the most fittest surviving can have very major consequences a few generations down the road, as any animal breeder can tell you.
God dammit, my kingdom for mod points
Law? How shortsighted! No; it's about what we value, and how we make choices about life and death, and what makes us human.
That woman opened up her body to her mate and that little person ended up there through no fault of its own. Mommy and daddy decided to ignore basic human physiology and now it is, in fact, the end of the story for that kid that ends up like it went through a blender. Your hand is a part of your body; ever tried to put your hand in a blender?
That's the way you see it and you're trying to present it as fact. It's not. It's interpretation.
Don't believe me? Have your appendix burst. Suddenly you'll see a very real circumstance where removal of a body part is trivial and not a matter for ethical consideration.
You've decided that "personhood" begins at conception. Well, other people don't see a single fertilized cell as a human being. This isn't a topic that can be defined in rigid blacks & whites. At the single-cell stage, what you've got is a non-viable life form.
Here's another way to look at it... if you take a full-functioning adult human, scoop out their brain and leave the rest on life support, do you have a person anymore? I'd hope we can agree the answer is no. Well then, at the single-cell stage, you don't have a brain, so you don't have a person. Somewhere along the line, cell-division starts to specialize and eventually there's a little bundle of brain cells. Say there's... a hundred specialized brain cells. Nothing that is capable of cogitation, so again, I'd think we can agree that we don't have a person. Somewhere along the line, things gather enough complexity to support personality, thought, self-awareness, and personhood. That may - or may not - be at 9 months/birth. To allege that a person exists much prior to birth is... questionable, not a given.
"Oh no... he found the
[nt]
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
There are in fact actual studies into the moral senses of animals. While they might not closely resemble human notions of morality, there is behavior in animals that roughly resembles it. For example, in a study in which two dogs were offered treats in exchange for pet tricks like handshakes or rolling over, they gave one dog a very juicy morsel of meat for a reward, and when the second dog was offered something dry and flavorless for doing the same trick, the dog turned its nose up at the reward. The lesson there is that dogs at least have a sense of fairness. I'm sure there's something to all those stories about pets alerting their owners to grave danger and things of the sort, and pet owners have some tales to tell as well.
While I'm not sure that's sufficient for going into this territory of "non-human persons", there is strong evidence animals are capable of emotions, compassion, and even morality.
If you're going to use the compassion angle, a 20 year old orangutan most likely has self awareness and memories. Can the same be said about what you're referencing?
Who is killing babies?
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Vegans, they're all the same.
So ready to talk about how these horrible meat eaters are horrible people for eating meat, but not once have I ever met a vegan who wanted to discuss my theory that plants are part of a superintelligent planetary organism and that animals, which have their own minds and are therefore not connected to the planetary mind, are actually the most humane (not to mention tasty) things to eat, and that it's the vegans who are the real monsters.
They're horrible, horrible, close-minded people. They simply refuse to entertain any hypothesis which might make them question why they eat what they eat. After all, a planetary mind filling the telepathic aether with endless cries of pain and doing everything it can from volcanic eruptions to climate change to get rid of this horrible infestation of vegans is nothing compared to their precious feelings.
if you take a full-functioning adult human, scoop out their brain and leave the rest on life support, do you have a person anymore? I'd hope we can agree the answer is no. Well then, at the single-cell stage, you don't have a brain, so you don't have a person. Somewhere along the line, cell-division starts to specialize and eventually there's a little bundle of brain cells. Say there's... a hundred specialized brain cells. Nothing that is capable of cogitation, so again, I'd think we can agree that we don't have a person. Somewhere along the line, things gather enough complexity to support personality, thought, self-awareness, and personhood. That may - or may not - be at 9 months/birth.
Keep in mind that the difference between your two examples is that - all things being equal - one will result in a new brain being formed, and thus is different from the other which will never grow a new brain.
In other news, there's a new librarian at the National Library of Buenos Aires. When asked about his perspective of the future of the library, the new librarian commented: "Ook!".
Ook indeed, Sir, and congratulations on your new position.
"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." -- Terry Pratchett
My objection to injecting animals to alter them to produce more meat for humans doesn't translate to an objection to injecting humans with vaccines. I'm firmly pro-vaccine. Vaccines are given to prevent disease. The injections animals are given are only intended to change their natural course of development so as to have their bodies produce more meat that people can eat quicker. These are two very different kinds of injections.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Please don't misunderstand me.I was one of those kids who brought home every wounded or orphaned animal I found as a kid and raised or nursed them back to health. I haven't changed much and have kept animals most of my life and feel they should be treated well. But to claim they have a sense of "humanity" is a little strange to me and anthropomorphizes most (if not all) beyond reason.
Did the dog in the example you mentioned not take the flavorless treat because it thought it was "unfair" or because it simply didn't find the treat appealing? Even if it was due to it being unfair, that's hardly a human only trait. My daughter had a pet rat who would turn down treats it liked if it thought you had something else that it liked even better.
Dogs have been domesticated for a very long time. Longer than recorded history. When I was young I read that dogs wagging their tails when they are happy was not something that they naturally did. I never really believed it. But I had a wolf hybrid, when I was in my late teens, who didn't wag his tail. I also found a stray German Shepherd who was on his own for most of the first two years of his life. He never wagged his tail either. I currently have a two year old Doberman who was given virtually no human or animal contact for the first 9 months of her life and was in a shelter for over a year after that. I've had her for close to a year now and she has just recently started wagging her tail(nub) as she's seen our other two dogs doing it.
Dogs are pack animals and have a very strict hierarchy. They protect the pack and, in most cases, their humans are the alphas.
Typically, animals in zoos do have smaller habitats. The question is why they need so much habitat in the wild. If it's to have enough territory to find stuff to eat, then a smaller habitat with feeding should do nicely.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Did you ask them or did you draw that conclusion from the point you were trying to make ? While I can live in a 10sq.m. apartment (I have), I would definitively enjoy multiple hundreds-acre properties... Somehow, even human, as they grow in success, like to have bigger and bigger "living space".
I don't have any rights because of my consciousness, my emotions, or my intelligence, I have rights because I was born of two humans. It does not matter if I was brain dead, it does not matter what my genetics, my form, or my brain looks like. It is possible my exact dna could be grown a lab, and I would not even be considered a person, but instead a possession. So by what legal reasoning could an Orangutan be considered a person, any more than a rock? How does a court have any say, this seems like something that up to the law makers, not the law enforcers.
Is it completely different in Argentina? Do they base personhood off of intelligence or something? Are retarded humans considered Animals there?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Orangutina?
Aorangutina?
Argengutanga?
Ah, nevermind.
where's his stockholders? who's his CEO? what lobbyists does he hire?
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
You chose to do it. End of sympathy.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Nice twist.
I'm speculating here, as are you. I'm coming up with a possible reason an animal might be content with a smaller habitat than is natural, and you're projecting your desires on non-human animals.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes