xenologer: (Speak)
Spanish parliament to extend rights to apes

Spain's parliament voiced its support on Wednesday for the rights of great apes to life and freedom in what will apparently be the first time any national legislature has called for such rights for non-humans.

Parliament's environmental committee approved resolutions urging Spain to comply with the Great Apes Project, devised by scientists and philosophers who say our closest genetic relatives deserve rights hitherto limited to humans.

(snip)

"We have no knowledge of great apes being used in experiments in Spain, but there is currently no law preventing that from happening," Pozas said.

Keeping apes for circuses, television commercials or filming will also be forbidden and breaking the new laws will become an offence under Spain's penal code.

Keeping an estimated 315 apes in Spanish zoos will not be illegal, but supporters of the bill say conditions will need to improve drastically in 70 percent of establishments to comply with the new law.


This is so cool. There's another sort of creature on Earth that can think, that can reason, that can read. They do these things at least as well as human children, if not better. So it's good to see them getting some legal rights somewhere.

Date: 2008-06-26 02:11 am (UTC)From: [identity profile] virginia-fell.livejournal.com
I'm not really a primatologist, but from what I've learned about apes... one reason it's hard not to anthromorphize them is that they're very much like humans already.

The fact that they can be taught to spell, the fact that they pass on knowledge from generation to generation (and more complicated things than, say, a cat teaching her kittens to use the box), along with the fact that their "language" might be more specific than we assume (chimps played the calls other chimps made were able to point to the food the chimps in the recording had been responding to), means that their intelligence likely gives them an ability to learn somewhere in line with a human child at the least. The same could be said of many birds (which suggests to me that we shouldn't be experimenting on them either). The average octopus is also really freaking smart.

I agree that we should concentrate primarily on human rights as applied to humans, as a sort of "clean up your own backyard first" deal. On the other hand, if we can acknowledge that animals shouldn't be tortured or experimented on, it erodes whatever case might be made for doing it to people.

It sounds weird, but it's what happened with children. If I recall it was the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals that heard the first child cruelty case in England. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSPCC) It was only after that that people started wondering whether young humans might have rights sorta like adults do. It seemed to have started with, "well, you can't even do this to an animal, so..." and went from there.

Date: 2008-06-26 02:18 am (UTC)From: [identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/_jeremiad/
I don't know about the UK, but I do know the first child abuse case heard in America was that of Mary Ellen Wilson and it was indeed heard by the Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

I get what you're saying. It makes sense. I'm not sure I agree with it, or that it's a very good use of resources, but that's my completely subjective, biased opinion.

Date: 2008-06-26 02:20 am (UTC)From: [identity profile] virginia-fell.livejournal.com
Yeah. I mean, it's pretty fucking pathetic that it takes advances in animal rights to get people thinking "maybe we shouldn't do this to each other either," but evidently that's how it works. *sigh*

Date: 2008-06-26 02:32 am (UTC)From: [identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/_jeremiad/
Thinking about historical precedent, your logic makes perfect sense.

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