State of the Apes
Is this a person? Earlier this week, a New York judge agreed to hear arguments regarding the possibility of granting Chimpanzees subjected to medical experiments status as 'legal persons' for purposes of defending them against such experiments. This comes a few months after an Argentina court granted an Orangutan 'basic rights' resulting in freeing the animal from a zoo. These small steps are perhaps symbolic of slowly changing global attitudes toward animals with higher capacity for behavior and expression. Certainly such rulings would seem absurd a century ago. Apes are genetically our biological cousins and are increasingly viewed as possessing greater (human-like) intelligence and emotional range compared with other animals. They seem to possess the qualities of what humans typically define as a 'person.' It has been observed for years that certain apes use tools to accomplish tasks. They can improvise very well, as was seen a few days ago whe