If you've read the blog through the years, then you know that I am enamored with primates. I am in full support of human beings expanding our understanding and concepts about other members of the animal kingdom. It's time for us to cease allowing concepts of human self-centered ignorance to be the framework of our thinking.
Today, new fields of science such as ethology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethology#Etymology) are revealing that there is so much more to be learned and acknowledged, than what most people have believed about animals.
The lawsuit discussed in this article signals the initial steps towards a 'new way of being in the world', for primates~ both those in front of the cage and as well as those behind the bars of the cage.
Like the green wire-mesh cage that confines him, Tommy the chimpanzee is deemed “property,” not a person. A New York State appeals court made that clear last week when the five-judge panel denied a 26-year-old ape personhood and release from his enclosure.
“Both as a matter of liberty and a matter of equality, you can’t say that an autonomous person doesn’t have any rights simply because he is a chimpanzee,” Wise told Wired. “He is remarkably like us, and he suffers like us.”
But to Wise's dismay, the court argued that because chimpanzees cannot bear legal duties or be held accountable for their actions, they couldn’t receive personhood. Unlike humans and corporations, which can recognize the law and choose whether or not to abide by it, chimpanzees cannot know the law and cannot choose to follow or go against it. As such, chimpanzees cannot be held responsible for their actions under the law, and they cannot be given personhood.
“In our view, it is this incapability to bear any legal responsibilities and societal duties that renders it inappropriate to confer upon chimpanzees the legal right— such as the fundamental right to liberty protected by the writ of habeas corpus—that have been afforded to human beings,” Judge Karen Peters wrote in a statement.
Tommy's owner, Patrick Lavery, said he was pleased with the case's outcome. Lavery holds Tommy alone in a warehouse on his reindeer ranch, but insists that his family has taken good care of the retired circus performer for the past 10 years. “Tommy’s got an excellent home, and he never knew what it was like to have a home where he was loved and cared for before,” Lavery said to The Guardian. But the NhRP believes that Tommy would be better off at a primate sanctuary in Florida. Lavery told the Associated Press that he expected the outcome of the appeal and was pleased by it. “I just couldn't picture any court granting habeas corpus for an animal,” he said. “If it works for one animal, it works for all animals. It would open a can of worms.”
Although worms aren't one of the creatures that NhRP is fighting for, the group has identified several animals such as elephants, whales and dolphins, that deserve personhood. They argue that emerging research has reshaped how scientists recognize these animals' intelligence and emotions, and that the law to protect them should evolve as such. The NhRP said it will now take its appeal to the state's highest courts in an effort to free Tommy.
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