Ever Feel like Jane Goodall Amongst the Chimps?

Anybody who knows me knows that I have a fondness for monkeys. I'm not entirely sure of the reason for the fascination, but I light up whenever I see one; last night, seeing 'The Fall', I was more saddened by the death of the monkey than by the human's plight (I similarly found the monkey in Speed Racer to be the most engaging character). So you can imagine my delight in reading this article from Wired.com--Chimps: Not Human, But Are They People? The question posed in the title raises a variety of issues that I won't have time to explore fully, but suffice to say, it is equally fascinating for what it tells us about chimps, about ourselves and about our relationship to the world in which we live.

First of all, this is an entirely semantic question, turning on the definition of person. Naturally, therefore, I turned to dictionary.com and received an entirely inconclusive answer.

1. a human being, whether man, woman, or child: The table seats four persons.
2. a human being as distinguished from an animal or a thing.
3. Sociology. an individual human being, esp. with reference to his or her social relationships and behavioral patterns as conditioned by the culture.
4. Philosophy. a self-conscious or rational being.

With the exception of the 4th (the one I most closely adopt), they are built on the false dichotomy that humans have established between themselves and 'animals.' I hate to break it to some of you, but we are animals...enormously complex animals...yes; more complex than some... yes; we are animals nonetheless.

According to Deborah Fouts, co-director of the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute, "They are a people. Non-human, but definitely persons. They haven't built a rocket ship to the moon. But we're not that different." Indeed, the ways in which we delineate between humans and animals increasingly narrow the more understanding we gain of other species.

The ability to communicate used to be considered the sole realm of human beings, but Koko the gorilla belies that assumption. Scientists have known for quite some time that humans and chimps share both the Broca's and the Wernicke's area in the brain, both intimately involved in language. I wouldn't be surprised if the realm of animal language turned out to be considerably more vast than we acknowledge at this point; we have difficulty enough deciphering ancient languages in the absence of Rosetta Stones, let alone a completely foreign language of barks, meows, chirps or grunts. In fact, it says something about the cognitive capacities of apes that they can learn to communicate with us in sign language, but we haven't done likewise in their language; of course, this could potentially say something about our ability to teach relative to theirs...or, in my opinion more likely, our ability to listen and learn (also, who wants to spend time teaching the asshole that locked you in a cage?).

"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." Really though...is it that much of an abstraction? Or does it tell us something interesting about social relationships in the natural world that make-up sex seems to be universal?

Then I've heard 'people' make the claim that it is our ability to utilize tools that distinguishes us. However, chimps are known to fashion spears from tree branches, sharpening them with their teeth, and using them to hunt lesser bush babies. Dolphins too are known to use sponges to probe the sea floor for food. What's more, they pass this knowledge on to their offspring in an act of 'cultural transmission'-- the existence of culture being another distinguishing factor often propagated. In the same link as the preceding, "Michael Krützen referred to a 'cultural revolution' in Australian humpback whales, 'where one particularly popular song was replaced by a new one at sweeping speed.'" It is clear in many cases that cultures exist in the animal kingdom, as in the matriarchal, sex-based, bonobo culture.

Perhaps it is our much vaunted capacity for 'rational thought', or the ability to sublimate our baser, 'animalistic' instincts which separates us. Rationality, however, is purely subjective, much like the definition of person-hood, and differs from circumstance to circumstance and culture to culture. In terms of sublimation of our basic instincts, I have yet to see any of it in practice. When it comes down to the decisions that matter most (often those made under duress), more frequently than not we are ruled by fear, lust, and greed; we have simply become adept at justifying these subconscious impulses on a conscious level in a way which appears rational to our minds. Take for example any of the endeavours of the Bush administration which at one point were championed by groups on both sides of the aisle: institutionalized torture, the PATRIOT Act, the Iraq war, etc., etc...all built on fear and rationalized in one way or the other.

Is it our complex economic systems? Aside from the complete and utter failure of it in recent weeks, it appears that other primates too can master the use of money, and their use of it again tells us a significant amount about ourselves. After training capuchin monkeys to use silver tokens as currency, "...Chen saw something out of the corner of his eye that he would later try to play down but in his heart of hearts he knew to be true. What he witnessed was probably the first observed exchange of money for sex in the history of monkey-kind. (Further proof that the monkeys truly understood money: the monkey who was paid for sex immediately traded the token in for a grape.)" It is telling that the researcher appeared more ashamed of the act than the monkeys engaging in it.

Prompted by the decimation of the West African chimpanzee population on the Ivory Coast, the (originally cited) article asks: "But should we feel more concern for the chimpanzees than for another animal — as much concern, perhaps, as we might feel for other people?" Coming from the metaphysical underpinnings that I do, that there is only one thing out there and we are all part of it (more on that in another post I suppose), I say no, but only because I ascribe no greater inherent value to any life relative to another. The inclination to do so, however, comes from the same part of human nature that anthropomorphicizes "God" and demonizes minorities; the idea that things that are like you are good and have more inherent worth than things which are dissimilar, which are to be feared. Back to the previous question, this is actually a long standing criticism I have had of many animal rights or similar organizations; they are too often dedicated to saving only the cute and cuddly. Few dedicate their lives to the preservation of slime molds, although fungi are absolutely vital to ecosystem balance (the Earth would very quickly be overrun by dead matter were it not for them).

In a separate article on Wired, researcher Jared Tagliatela commented, "Human language has a lot of properties that we haven't found in chimpanzee communication, but I'd say the difference is more one of degree and complexity, not necessarily of absolute kind." I argue that this is true of every trait in the whole animal kingdom. The only defining trait of humankind is our ability to completely alter the face of the Earth (which is really only an offshoot of our degree of technology so it could be argued against as well)...and we're all seeing how that's turning out.

This article in the Guardian reports, "Great apes should have the right to life and freedom, according to a resolution passed in the Spanish parliament, in what could become landmark legislation to enshrine human rights for chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and bonobos. The environmental committee in the Spanish parliament has approved resolutions urging the country to comply with the Great Apes Project, founded in 1993, which argues that 'non-human hominids' should enjoy the right to life, freedom and not to be tortured." Interestingly, we are still debating the right to not be tortured for humans and, while the resolution rightly prohibits product testing and their use in films and circuses, it curiously allows their imprisonment in zoos. Apparently, the members of the Spanish parliament have never seen the "People Are Alike All Over" episode of the Twilight Zone.

I'm often fond of quipping that I sometimes "feel like Jane Goodall amongst the chimps," and have been accused of elitism as a result. This statement says more, however, about my interest in the array of behavior exhibited by my fellow homo-sapiens (and all other animals for that matter)than it is meant to denigrate them. To assume otherwise amounts to species-ism, a denigration of the cognitive capacities of our closest relatives (we share 98% of our genetic material with chimps).

When you think about it, they really are "so like us."