Granting rights and personhood to animals
A chance rendezvous in the African bush and how it contributes to a legal fight for a new relationship between humans and animals.
"I saw this dark shape, hunched over a termite mount, and I peered with my binoculars. It was fortunately, one adult male whom I'd named David Greybeard, and I saw that he was picking little pieces of grass, and using them to fish out termites from their underground nest. At that time, it was thought that humans and only humans used and made tools. When I was a school, we were defined as 'man: the toolmaker', so that when Louis Leaky, my mentor, heard this news he said, 'Ah, we must now redefine man, redefine tool, or accept chimpanzees as humans."- Renowned Primatologist Jane Goodall
Jane Goodall got a big laugh with the proposition that chimps may be something significantly more than bright apes. But the idea didn't seem all that funny in a New York court this week. Ms. Goodall is on the board of The Non-Human Rights Project. The group filed a clutch of lawsuits seeking to grant certain chimpanzees the legal status of "persons."
The judge rejected the suits. But they may represent a milestone in a decades-long battle to establish greater rights for non-humans.
Steven Wise is founder and president of The Nonhuman Rights Project. He's also a adjunct professor of animal rights law who has taught at several U.S. universities, including Harvard. Today, Steven Wise joined us from Coral Springs, Florida.
This past weekend, the case of chimps who-would-be persons was all the buzz at the world's first conference all about the topic of nonhuman animal personhood. It took place at Yale University, and was put on by the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies thinktank.
George Dvorsky chairs that thinktank. He's a writer and a futurist. We reached him in Oakville, Ontario.
For more about human's relationship with chimps and other primates, here are some Ted Talk videos with Frans de Waal & Jane Goodall.
What's your opinion on this issue -- Do you think chimps or any other animals should be regarded as persons in the law? Or do you think it's a ridiculous proposition? And would you be prepared to change your lifestyle if we did extend personhood to animals?
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This segment was produced by The Current's Peter Mitton.
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