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The Great Ape Project

In the past three decades, scientists in a wide range of disciplines, from genetics to experimental psychology, have demonstrated that our close relatives, the other four great apes (gorillas, bonobos, common chimpanzees and orang-utans), are far more "human" than we have ever been willing to admit. They are closer to us genetically than the current taxonomic classification shows, and they share practically all of the mental abilities which we are taught to believe are uniquely human, including self- awareness, intelligence and even rudimentary human language abilities.

It is true that no chimp will ever write plays or operas -- but neither will 99% of humans. It is equally true that most nonhuman great apes are at least as intelligent as a human toddler and have a similar complexity of emotion and personality to that which we recognise in members of our own species. Yet despite their great similarities to us in these core human qualities, the nonhuman great apes have not been accorded the ethical and legal protections which we reserve for ourselves. Today the surviving nonhuman great apes subsist in shrinking rainforests, or in laboratory cages, enduring acts of human-inflicted cruelty or neglect which no member of our species would be expected to tolerate.

The Great Ape Project (a concept, a book, and an international movement), initiated by Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer, has been launched by some of the world's foremost scientists and philosophers (including Peter Singer, Jane Goodall, Richard Dawkins, and Jared Diamond) to redress this injustice and also to alter our perception of humanity's place in nature. The aim is to elevate gorillas, bonobos, common chimpanzees and orang-utans from being degraded circus and laboratory animals, or distant endangered species, to having the status of moral and legal "persons" in an extension of the human community.

The international Great Ape Project (GAP) movement is dedicated to obtaining a United Nations resolution that will extend the community of equals to include all great apes. In particular, the resolution would extend the right to life, the protection of individual liberty, and the prohibition of torture to all members of the community of equals. The GAP movement's primary objective is to change the status of great apes from property to person.

This should have obvious benefits for all great apes and should also underline a philosophical point which many environmentalists are making these days: that human beings are part of the community of life and very closely related to some of its most endangered members.

We have summarised the work of various writers to provide a brief review of the scientific evidence which bears on this issue. Consider the implications, not only for the nonhuman great apes, but for our perceptions of ourselves and the legal and moral systems which we espouse.

What is a "person"? If we classify a being as a "person" simply because he/she is a member of our own species, we are being morally arbitrary -- no less than if we accorded personhood on the basis of race or sex. If we define a person on the basis of mental qualities, whatever qualities we might choose to use in an objective description of "person" (qualities such as intelligence, self-awareness, and a balance of rationality and feeling), scientific research in the last two decades has revealed that those qualities are clearly present in all great ape species.

In addition, the traditional taxonomic distinction between "apes" and humans misrepresents the biological facts. Humans are genetically more similar to common chimpanzees and bonobos than common chimpanzees and bonobos are to gorillas. In other words, chimpanzees and bonobos are actually on the "human" branch of the evolutionary family tree. Some scientists are now working on establishing a formal taxonomic revision that would place the two species of chimpanzees with humans in the genus Homo.

In appearance and intellect, bonobos bear a striking similarity to our human ancestors. One bonobo in particular, Kanzi, has demonstrated: the ability to understand and respond to complex spoken human language; the acquisition of an extensive productive vocabulary through (non-tutorial) social interaction; the ability to use, and more important, to invent syntactic rules; and the ability to learn to make stone tools through observation and creative ingenuity.

Nonhuman great apes in the wild communicate using a combination of vocalizations, gestures and eye movements. We know very little about their natural communication systems or the range of information that they are able to convey. Experiments have, however, demonstrated that chimps are able to communicate a variety of information about distant hidden items.

As with humans, nonhuman great apes vary considerably in their apparent intellectual capability. Despite the fact that IQ tests generally favour the Anglo-European human culture, when IQ tests have been administered to language- trained nonhuman great apes, the apes have sometimes scored surprisingly well. Of course, intelligence is not a "thing"; it is a mixture of abilities, many of which are not assessed by IQ tests. Nonhuman great apes tend to perform best in spatial tasks and problem-solving tests -- as do some human great apes.

A quality closely associated with intelligence is self- awareness -- knowledge of one's self as a separate being or entity. Once thought to be a defining characteristic of humanity, self-awareness is now known to be shared by all the great apes. Philosophers argue that rationality and self-awareness are the essential features of the concept of person: features which have been demonstrated to be common to all the great ape species -- and which perhaps belong to other species as well.

However, most human societies (Western human civilization in particular) have portrayed our species as totally distinct, entitled to rightful dominion over all other species and the natural world. This "anthropocentric", or human-centered, world view is responsible for such a radical transformation of the planet and its inhabitants that the wellbeing of even our own species is now threatened.

By changing human perceptions of our closest relatives, the Great Ape Project will enable those surviving in the wild to be better protected, and those in captivity to be treated with dignity and compassion. A practical outcome of this will be the release of captive great apes into territories in countries with emancipation legislation. (Special provisions will be made for those apes which have become habituated to human society.) Emancipated great apes will be assigned human guardians to safeguard their interests and rights, in the same way as the interests of young or intellectually handicapped members of our own species are guarded.

The emancipation of captive great apes will not only relieve great suffering, it will begin to redress the terrible wrongs inflicted on generations of innocent persons. And it is a direct challenge to the anthropocentric/human-centered world view that is causing so much damage to our planet.

Further information, including full references, can be obtained by emailing leonard@tui.lincoln.ac.nz. or contacting Barbara Leonard, 25 Ramahana Rd, Christchurch 2.