![]() Poachers shot and skinned her, and cut off her feet and hands as trophies. As often happens when aging chimps outlive their usefulness as study subjects or become hard to handle as pets, her owners sent Lucy to a chimp rehab center in Africa. She greeted her human teacher every morning with a big hug and two cups of tea she made herself at the stove.īut acting "almost human" didn't protect Lucy as legal rights might have, says Wise. Smart and personable, Lucy learned American Sign Language. "Both my son Christopher and your average adult chimpanzee obviously meet any minimum rational standard for entitlement to basic legal rights."Ĭonsider Lucy, a 6-year-old chimpanzee legally kept as a pet and test subject. "Chimps have 98.7 percent of DNA in common with humans," says Wise. And they can communicate in sign language at the level of a 3- or 4-year-old child. Research by Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham, among others, has shown that, even in the wild, they demonstrate an idea of the future and remember the past. Some talking points: Chimps have complex social interactions. "Certain species are capable of complex emotions, can communicate using language, and have a sense of self," says Wise, "all characteristics that once defined humanity." If some species of "nonhuman animals" can be shown to be smarter, more aware, more humanlike than previously recognized, they arguably deserve legal rights, he says. In lawyerly fashion, Wise has buttressed his case with science's latest discoveries about animal cognition and behavior, most of it universally accepted, some controversial. Some think the case he's taking nationwide may become one of the groundbreaking civil rights battles of the next generation. Now he is the latest luminary of an animal rights movement better known for starlets posing naked to protest furs than for lawyers arguing science. He's a professional at drawing hard lines. Pallid, wearing a dark suit and a loosened tie, Wise looks Establishment. ![]() They came to hear Wise make his controversial case for extending legal rights to some animals, the argument he lays out in his new book, "Drawing the Line: Science and the Case for Animal Rights." "I don't see a difference between a chimpanzee," he states unequivocally, "and my 4 1/2-year-old son."Īt Politics and Prose bookstore this warm Friday evening last month, it's a coffeehouse-activist audience of about 40 that's versed in animal rights rhetoric.
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