Human rights... for Apes?

Funny, because by defination I would have thought that human rights could only apply to humans... :P

Anyways, apparently Spain has extended human rights to apes to prevent experimentation. This was promoted by the philosopher Peter Singer (who's worth reading) by arguing that apes, aside from being very similar to us in terms of genetics, also display the same emotions such as love, anxiety, fear, and even jealously and therefore should be protected by the same laws. Good point...

Here's the link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/26/humanrights.animalwelfare?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

Now, it is still legal to keep the apes in zoo's, and hopefully they will start putting some of our crazy's in there with them. Some of these apes are better behaved than people. Take for example this next article. Although he has bitten the fingers off a few people (he thought the red nails were candy) this ape is toilet trained and lives in a house with people who treat him as their child... thats better than the average homeless guy.

Here's the link:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25470323/

Of course, this ape is not in Spain, he's in California which means that he is not protected by these laws - im not sure the USA's stance on ape rights...but if you see him, just throw some change at him and pretend he is a homeless guy... he probably smells just as bad.

And in closing, I quote:

Q: Mr. Simpson, how do you feel about the safety of space travel?
H: It should be fine, as long as they don't send us to that horrible planet of the apes... wait a minute.. statue of liberty... that was our planet! You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you!

P.S. Here's a quote from me to my buddy about when we got a monkey at the zoo so pissed off he threw his own feces at us and the zookeeper kicked us out:
"If there's two things that monkeys understand it's laughing and pointing... and we were doing both... at him"