Planet Debate 2011 September/October l-d release Animal Rights
Zoo Confinement for Great Apes Immoral
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- Failure to Extend Liberty Rights to Great Apes Threatens Future Existence
- Denial of Basic Liberty Rights for Great Apes Immoral
Zoo Confinement for Great Apes ImmoralIMMORAL TO OVERRIDE AN ANIMAL’S FUNDAMENTAL LIBERTY INTEREST WITH TRIVIAL HUMAN ENJOYMENT FROM ZOOS Mark Rowlands, Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of Hertfordshire, 2002, Animals Like Us, p. 154 Most people visit zoos for a “day out.” They go to be entertained, and zoos that wish to remain financially secure need to cater to this. So, most zoos have some sort of “children’s corner,” etc. And even highly rated zoos like San Diego have or have had dancing bears and the like. But while being entertained is surely an interest of human beings, it is not on a par with our interest in autonomy. Being autonomous is a vital interest, being entertained is not. It’s as simple as that. It would, in the impartial position, be irrational to choose a world where the vital interest of autonomy was routinely overridden by a relatively superficial interest in entertainment: you might turn out to be one of the things whose autonomy is overridden. Therefore, it is, in the real world, immoral to endorse an institution that is based on the idea that vital interests can be overridden by superficial ones. And the “entertainment” defense of zoos is based precisely on this idea. ZOOS IMMORAL—SHOULD BE ABOLISHED Mark Rowlands, Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of Hertfordshire, 2002, Animals Like Us, p. 159 The existence of zoos sacrifices some of the most vital interests of animals to try to promote interests of humans that are either not vital or are not effectively promoted by zoos. It would be irrational, in the impartial position, to choose a world where this sort of trade-off happens. Therefore, it is immoral, in the real world, to endorse this sort of trade-off. Zoos are morally illegitimate, and should be abolished. Failure to Extend Liberty Rights to Great Apes Threatens Future ExistenceTHE FAILURE TO EXTEND PROTECTIONS AGAINST ARBITRARY DETENTION TO GREAT APES HAS LED TO THE UNNECESSARY DETENTION OF A SUBSTANTIAL NUMBER OF THEM Charles Siebert, Freelance Writer and Director, July 24, 2005, New York Times Magazine, p. 30 There are an estimated 2,500 captive chimps in the United States, a number that’s difficult to pinpoint because of the many private breeders still turning out baby chimps, mostly for private ownership or use in entertainment. Of the 1,500 or so laboratory chimps, nearly half are no longer being used for experimentation. Lab chimps today are largely confined to behavior studies and hepatitis and malaria research, and an even greater number may soon be rendered unnecessary for research by advances in DNA analysis and computer modeling. As for the remaining refugees of entertainment and private ownership, their ranks continue to swell even though chimps are unmanageable much past the age of 6 and despite the fact that advances in computer animation may soon obviate the need altogether for actual animal performers. EVEN THE BEST ZOOS IN THE COUNTRY DAMAGE THE INDIVIDUALS THEY CONFINE AND ENTRENCH AN ANTHROPOCENTRIC ETHIC THAT IS BOTH IMMORAL AND THREATENS OUR VERY SURVIVAL. Dale Jamieson, Professor of Environmental Studies and Philosophy at New York University. ?Against Zoos?. In Defense of Animals. 1985 http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/jamieson01.htm] Many of these same conditions and others are documented in Pathology of Zoo Animals, a review of necropsies conducted by Lynn Griner over the last fourteen years at the San Diego Zoo. This zoo may well be the best in the country, and its staff is clearly well-trained and well-intentioned. Yet this study documents widespread malnutrition among zoo animals; high mortality rates from the use of anaesthetics and tranquillizers; serious injuries and deaths sustained in transport; and frequent occurrences of cannibalism, infanticide and fighting almost certainly caused by overcrowded conditions. Although the zoo has learned from its mistakes, it is still unable to keep many wild animals in captivity without killing or injuring them, directly or indirectly. If this is true of the San Diego Zoo, it is certainly true, to an even greater extent, at most other zoos. The second consideration is more difficult to articulate but is, to my mind, even more important. Zoos teach us a false sense of our place in the natural order. The means of confinement mark a difference between humans and animals. They are there at our pleasure, to be used for our purposes. Morality and perhaps our very survival require that we learn to live as one species among many rather than as one species over many. To do this, we must forget what we learn at zoos. Because what zoos teach us is false and dangerous, both humans and animals will be better off when they are abolished. Denial of Basic Liberty Rights for Great Apes ImmoralSOME WILL RESPOND TO THE EVIDENCE THAT THE BASIC AUTONOMY INTERESTS OF GREAT APES HAS BEEN VIOLATED THROUGH CURRENT DETENTION POLICIES BY ARGUING THAT THE INTERESTS OF THESE CREATURES ARE OF NO MORAL CONCERN TO US. WE FIRMLY DISAGREE. GREAT APES EXHIBIT MANY OF THE CHARACTERISTICS OF PERSONS Charles Siebert, Freelance Writer and Director, July 24, 2005, New York Times Magazine, p. 33] The sophistication of the chimpanzee mind has been well documented in the near half-century since Jane Goodhall’s pioneering studies of chimps in the wild. Chimps learn and use American Sign Language. They have been taught to do math fractions and have demonstrated the intelligence level of a 5-year-old. They have a clear sense of self-awareness. Hold a mirror in front of a chimp with a toothache, and he’ll immediately set about pulling back his gums to find which tooth it is that’s hurting. Chimps feel sorrow and remorse. They will mourn the death of a friend or relative. They are even thought now to have the rudiments of their own culture. “When we went and started looking at different populations of chimps across Africa, we found variations in behavior that could not be explained in the useful biological ways,” William McGrew, a field primatologist and professor of anthropology at Miami University in Ohio, told me. “They are passing on behavioral patterns that seem to vary from place to place, and group to group, and from generation to generation, and we were sort of forced in a way into the cultural analogy as a way to explain it because the traditional biological ways for explaining it wouldn’t suffice.” THE EXCLUSION OF GREAT APES FROM LEGAL PROTECTIONS IS ARBITRARY, UNJUST AND IMMORAL. Gary L. Francione, Professor of Law, Rutgers University, 1994, The Great Ape Project: equality beyond humanity, eds. Cavalieri & Singer, p. 253] Moreover, the great apes possess these characteristics in substantially similar ways. That is, there is a high degree of similarity among the great apes in terms of mental capabilities and emotional life – characteristics which, for most of us, are central to the notion of “personhood”. And it is in this respect that exclusion of any great ape from the community of equals must be viewed as being arbitrary and irrational, and not merely morally unjustifiable.
Gary L. Francione, Professor of Law, Rutgers University, 1994, The Great Ape Project: equality beyond humanity, eds. Cavalieri & Singer, p. 256-7 The Declaration of Rights is a sensible attempt to recognize what we have for too long ignored: that certain nonhumans must be regarded as “persons” for purposes of obtaining legal protection of their fundamental rights. Indeed, not to accord such protection to all great apes is irrational in light of the demonstrated mental and emotional similarities among all great apes. It is, moreover, particularly unjustifiable under a legal system that already regards some nonhuman entities as legal persons. These nonhuman entities are regarded as persons not because they share any salient aspect of personhood; rather, their status is derived from the need for modern capitalistic legal systems to provide for investor protection. If however, we regard the term “personhood” even in a weakly objectivistic manner (i.e., as a concept with determinative conditions of application) there can be no doubt that personhood is a term that must be applied to all great apes.
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