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GIGO

Should one permit experimentation on a two-year-old? Should we let two-year-olds be tortured? Should they be able to be killed without any form of comment or condemnation? Few would support these ideas, yet increasing amounts of evidence suggests that we are doing something comparable with regard to our treatment of the great apes.

Work in the area of language and symbolic communication, as well as concepts of theory-of-mind and self-awareness suggest that our close cousins could be regarded as exhibiting the sort of communication abilities and sense of self that we find unremarkable in our own two-year-olds (well, mostly unremarkable).

The Great Ape Project NZ Inc has been working on having the new Animal Welfare Bill extend certain rights to the non-human members of the Hominidae family -- the great apes, or chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orang-utans. These rights are the right to life; the right to freedom from cruel and degrading treatment; and the right to freedom from experimentation.

The project members argue that scientific research over the past 50 years has shown consistently that the great apes share all of the major intellectual and emotional qualities that are usually appealed to when assigning basic rights to human beings. If these criteria are to be consistently applied, then the new scientific information compels us to apply them to the great apes as well.

It is important for a campaign such as this to maintain scientific credibility if it is not to be lumped in with the more outrageous or unreasonable claims of some extreme animal welfare groups. GAP do not argue that all human legal rights are appropriate to the great apes, being well aware of the limitations in abilities that our close kin have. Overstating those abilities does not help -- the recent Internet interview with Koko, the signing gorilla, and her mentor Dr Penny Patterson probably disappointed more people than it inspired. Yet we have to acknowledge the abilities that they do have, and decide what sort of legacy we wish to leave to the children of all Hominidae.

Vicki Hyde is the editor of New Zealand Science Monthly.