Prerogatives of the apes

Earth Island Journal, Autumn, 2008

Spain may be better known as the home of bullfighting than as a bastion of animal fights, but that reputation may soon change.

Spain's parliament recently passed a law that bars harmful experiments on apes. The resolution, which grants to some primates the right to life and freedom, is apparently the first time that any national legislature has guaranteed such rights to non-humans.

The new law also prohibits apes from being employed in circuses, television commercials, or films. The estimated 325 apes that are kept in Spanish zoos will continue to live there, but many institutions will have to improve conditions to comply with the measure.

The groundbreaking law was sponsored by the Great Ape Project, which was founded by philosophers Peter Singer and Paola Cavalieri to advance the idea that our closest genetic relatives deserve fights that until now have been limited to Homo sapiens.

"This is historic ... in the struggle for animals' fights and in defense of our evolutionary comrades, which will doubtless go down in the history of humanity," says Pedro Pozas, the director of the Great Ape Project in Spain.

--REUTERS, 6/27