Chimpanzees: Not Human, But Are They People?

[Stealth Hunter]

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2...nzees-not.html

As a population of West African chimpanzees dwindles to critically endangered levels, scientists are calling for a definition of personhood that includes our close evolutionary cousins.

Just two decades ago, the Ivory Coast boasted a 10,000-strong chimpanzee population, accounting for half of the world's population. According to a new survey, that number has fallen to just a few thousand.

News of such a decline, published today in Current Biology, would be saddening in any species. But should we feel more concern for the chimpanzees than for another animal — as much concern, perhaps, as we might feel for other people?

"They are a people. Non-human, but definitely persons," said Deborah Fouts, co-director of the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute. "They haven't built a rocket ship to the moon. But we're not that different."

Fouts is one of a growing number of scientists and ethicists who believe that chimpanzees — as well as orangutans, bonobos and gorillas, a group colloquially known as great apes — ought to be considered people.

It's a controversial position. If being a person requires being human, then chimpanzees, our closest primate relative, are still only 98 percent complete. But if personhood is defined more broadly, chimpanzees may well qualify. They have self-awareness, feelings and high-level cognitive powers. Hardly a month seems to pass without researchers finding evidence of behavior thought to belong solely to humans.

Some even suggest that chimpanzees and other great apes should be granted human rights. So argued advocates for Hiasl, a chimpanzee caught in an Austrian custody battle, and the framers of an ape rights resolution passed by the Spanish parliament. The question of rights is practically thorny — how could a chimp be held responsible for, say, attacking another chimp? — but the fundamental question isn't practical, but rather scientific and ethical.

"They have been shown to have all kinds of complex communication and cognitive powers that are similar to humans," said Yerkes National Primate Research Center researcher Jared Taglialatela. "They have feelings, they have ideas, they have goals."

The capacity of chimpanzees to feel, vividly illustrated when primatologist Jane Goodall documented the grief of a chimp named Flint for his mother, is the least ambiguous of chimpanzee characteristics. More ambiguous is their ability to think abstractly and empathically.

"They don't have time. They can't talk about yesterday or tomorrow. Their communication is very much instantaneous: 'A neighbor is coming, let's go. A female's in heat, so check me out.' It's not, 'How are you today?'" said Pascal Gagneux, a University of California, San Diego primatologist. He considers chimpanzees to be persons, but fundamentally different from humans by virtue of their profoundly different communicative range.

But Fouts, who has trained her chimpanzees to use sign language, disagrees. "They do remember the past. When people come that they haven't seen in many years, they use their name signs," she said. Taglialatela echoed Fouts. "I don't know if they think about what they want to be when they grow up," he said, "but they understand the concept that something will happen later."

Taglialatela has shown that chimpanzees utilize parts of their brain similar to our own Broca's and Wernicke's areas, which in humans are considered central to speech production and processing. When communicating, chimpanzees choose circumstance-appropriate forms: gesturing by hand to someone who looks at them, or calling out to someone who looks away.

"We're seeing this rich communicative repertoire. It's not simply, 'I see a piece of food and make some emotional sound,'" he said. "They're using different perspectives to communicate."

Researchers have also found that chimps use hand gestures that vary according to context. The same gesture can be used for purposes as diverse as requesting sex or reconciling after a fight, a linguistic subtlety that suggests a capacity for high-level abstraction.

Chimpanzees even appear capable of altruism, being willing to help strangers in the absence of anticipated reward. But their empathy, said Gagneux, who proposes treating research chimps in the manner of human subjects incapable of giving informed consent, does not translate to compassion.

Of course, compassion is hardly universal among humans. "How many times do you find yourself seeing someone on the news, or walking by someone on the street, and being apathetic towards them?" said Taglialatela.

And Fouts, who said that chimpanzees "feel pain and anger and love and affection and the kinds of feelings we feel," said that her sign language-trained chimpanzees can indeed inquire about the well-being of their handlers.

"They don't use it very often, but it doesn't mean they don't understand," she said.

So what of the situation in the Ivory Coast, where chimpanzee numbers have plummeted so dramatically that researchers say they're not merely endangered, but critically endangered? Should they be mourned as animals, or people?

Perhaps semantics are irrelevant.

"This is a tragedy, for lack of a better word," said Taglialatela.

Shame they're dying off. I was happy to hear that, in Africa, they found tens of thousands of great apes that had hidden away in the jungle, allowing them to be removed from the list of endangered species.

[Skybird]

Even dogs have individual personalities.

I find it amusing that we have SETI to listen out to space for other life, and assume we could recognise it - when we even cannot correctly identify the complexity of lifeforms sharing this very same planet with us. It is absurd. That is like dreaming of a thorough debate with a Nobel prize winner for mathematics, while not even being able to master multiplications up to 10x10.

Other apes are on my mind as well, not only shimpanzees, namely Gorillas and Orang-Utan. But so many other animal species could be mentioned as well. I am sure there are speices who are aware of both their own individual identity, and the difference between life and death. And sense of humour I have even seen in cats, and budgerigars.

There is always a danger of antropomorphising, but I don't do it when saying the above. Sometimes the behavior of a dolphin jumping out of the ocean has no deeper biological purpose than to vent his joy to be alive and being able to do that: jumping into the sky and enjoy the ride and the play of light on the water around him.

before we are even able to recognise an alien intelligence, we need to learn how to recognize "intelligence" on just our own planet. and that ranges from individuals over swarm collectives to system interactions.

[Sailor Steve]

I would hate to see the species die out, and I have formed relationships with dogs and cats, and observed varying levels of intelligence.

But my bottom line is this: They are intelligent enough that we can communicate with them on basic levels, but can we actually talk with them? They aren't capable of discussing ideas and philosophy with us, nor as far as we can tell with each other. Nor do we believe they sit around discussing whether we are 'persons'.

I believe animals at that level deserve a chance to live their lives for other reasons than our gratification, but are they persons? I guess that will continue to depend on how we define what a person is.

[Letum]

There are two issues.

"Person" can mean either:

The legal status that most (but not all) humans have and some financial/business
organizations have. In some countries you can declare your self not to have
a person, which gives you certain legal entitlements and removes others.

Or

It can mean you are sentient enough to be accorded certain degrees of morality
that humans share.


I am for the former and against the latter.
I am happy for a chimp to have a bank account in it's name as if it where a
business. I am not happy for chimps to get out of being exploited for the benefit
of humanns.

[Frame57]

Websters defines a person as being a human being. So, no they are not people or persons, but animals.

[joegrundman]

Originally Posted by Frame57

Websters defines a person as being a human being. So, no they are not people or persons, but animals.

you didn't read the rest of the definition

[Stealth Hunter]

Originally Posted by Frame57

Websters defines a person as being a human being. So, no they are not people or persons, but animals.

Well, they're 98% like us DNA-wise... so, yeah, they're a form of humans, just lagging behind us in the evolution chain.

[baggygreen]

Are we not much less alike than we were to neanderthals?

We use neanderthal today as a derogatory term, indicating someone who is not a human. Primates, regardless of their spots on the evolutionary tree, are still not people. Most animals are capable of independent thought, and in any domesticated animal we can see different character traits, if we look for long enough. Independent thought does not make a creature a person. Nor does having a 98% genetic similarity.

That 2% difference is what makes us people. it is the 2% which sets us above the other animals on the planet. It is that 2% which gives us thousands of languages, philosophy, (for better or worse) religion, manufactured goods, the pyramids, agriculture, yada yada.

[Stealth Hunter]

We may actually be part Neanderthal. Didn't you watch the National Geographic program on it, Neanderthal Code?

[baggygreen]

No, can't say I saw it.

Wouldnt surprise me though, the 2 species were certainly closely enough related to interbreed.

[nikimcbee]

Originally Posted by Stealth Hunter

We may actually be part Neanderthal. Didn't you watch the National Geographic program on it, Neanderthal Code?

That was a great show. Very thought provoking. When they said Neanderthals were short, stout, and had big noses, I said to myself;" I hope my friends at work aren't watching this, I'll never hear the end of it." :rotfl:

[porphy]

Interesting article and topic indeed.

Reports show that you can interact with a dwarf chimpanzee much like with a 2,5 year old child. Of course, they can't talk, their throat and mouth won't allow that. But they can learn and understand lexigrams, which each covers a few words. They also express themselves with the lexigrams in ways that wasn't taught to them. In short they have much more capability of language use, notice both natural and with instruction (as humans), than has been thought.

One thing surprised the researchers. The chimpanzee that was taught lexigrams actually started to understand speech as well (this is not responding to commands), this was not intended, but apparently the chimp learn to understand a language in many ways similar to a human (as we don't learn only through instruction either). The chimp in question now can understand simple English speech (like a basic storyline), and recognizes about 3000 spoken words.

But the question is, are they persons? This usually kicks of all kind of ways to compare animals to humans (who also is an animal, of course). DNA percentages, capability of feelings, cognitive abilities, social interaction etc... If they can be said to be persons, should they have rights? Should we treat them better? And the only way to solve this seems to be the search for a waterproof reason, or a couple of them. This is a old question indeed and open up to the general question of how we treat animals of all kind.

But most people don't need any reasons of that kind to act decent in everyday life among humans , or even to his pet. (a few maybe could have use for it ) We usually don't ask for these kind of reasons in legal court either. So, I don't ask myself, is this a person? Does this man in front of me really fit the definition of a person? I wonder if his DNA is up to it? Can he reason in a good way? Would he be able to develop or engage in science and philosophy? What if I'm evolutionary superior to him? (This is a question which really is questionable from a biological point of view, as modern biology have tried to rid itself from the 1800-centuray image of human as the crown of evolutionary tree). The point is that the whole question always slips down the slippery slope of reasons, and in the meantime the industrial treatment of animals continue every day, or as the case with some species, they risk to go extinct in the near future. The ethics is usually the reason why the person question is raised, unless you find wordplay and definitions the most interesting thing to entertain yourself with.

I recently read John Michael Coetzee and his short piece The Lives of Animals and it really captured the above situation. It's about a female novel writer who delivers a lecture about animal rights and vegetarianism at the philosophy department at university, and then goes to have a post lecture dinner... (Nice setting, as you can guess ) It really is worth reading if you are interested in finding something which opens up a new way to look at the questions at hand. But don't expect to find a list of argued reasons in favor for this or that, although many classical reasons are displayed. More like, expect to find yourself in a real ethical dilemma, and then try to acknowledge what this really means to you.


cheers Porphy

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by baggygreen

Are we not much less alike than we were to neanderthals?

We use neanderthal today as a derogatory term, indicating someone who is not a human. Primates, regardless of their spots on the evolutionary tree, are still not people. Most animals are capable of independent thought, and in any domesticated animal we can see different character traits, if we look for long enough. Independent thought does not make a creature a person. Nor does having a 98% genetic similarity.

That 2% difference is what makes us people. it is the 2% which sets us above the other animals on the planet. It is that 2% which gives us thousands of languages, philosophy, (for better or worse) religion, manufactured goods, the pyramids, agriculture, yada yada.

All the many things we use to destroy ourselves, you mean?

I wouldn't be so proud on genes being like they are. For evolution, we are no successful design, we are just a test run of a draft design that apparently has led into a dead end. the most successful design of life on this planet you find in the realms of one-cellular life forms. we will never overcome it, but it can easily overcome us.

So don't be so easy about declaring mankind to be set above all other life on earth. I personally find the lifeform of sharks for example far more impressive - their design is so perfect that they haven't chnaged since millions of years. Or isopods (woodlouses? -> Asseln). One of the most succesful designs of evolution on planet earth. Bacterias live practically everywhere on this planet, in the coldest and in the hottest places, in boiling liquids and at pressures that would turn every sub into a frisbee and every human body into white-bled mince. they - notz us - are the true rulers of this planet.

Homo Sapiens still needs to prove his design advantage, and so far it seems that the individual tool-related intelliegnce we are so proud of is not an advantage but an obstacle for our survival as an evolutionary design.

Such things and their assessments need to be approached from a less antropocentric perspective. and human philosophy and woprks of arts - in the end are not interresting for evolution or nature, but only for the human mind itself that hs created them. Already for the dog living with the owner of that mind in the same household, it all means nothing. and for the germs on planet Mars ( ) it means nothing as well.

Fact is that we cannot recognize an intelligence that is too different from our own, and that can - but must not - include descriuptions of "below us", or "above us".

[Letum]

Originally Posted by Stealth Hunter

We may actually be part Neanderthal. Didn't you watch the National Geographic program on it, Neanderthal Code?

The latest studies seam to suggest that it is unlikely that there was any genetic
mixing after the divergence from the common ancestor. It's still a hot topic tho.

Back on topic:
A nice animation about humans/monkeys

[Frame57]

Originally Posted by joegrundman

you didn't read the rest of the definition

There are four listed in Websters and they all reference a human being.