The rights of chimpanzees (and other sentient animals)

You’ll know Peter Singer as an Australian moral philosopher who does practical philosophy: stuff that helps us figour out how to lead better lives in the real world.  One of his well-known books is Animal Liberation (1975), which argued for animal rights from a utilitarian perspective. Though that perspective has been criticized, there are other philosophical arguments for animal rights.

Singer describes himself as a “flexible vegan” who occasionally eats dairy products. But he wears no animal products, i.e., stuff made of leather. He’s also against many forms of animal experimentation. Even if you think it’s okay to cage and make animals suffer to test drugs/vaccines intended for humans, I think most of us would find it unconscionable to test things like cosmetics on animals. And indeed, animal-free cosmetic testing has burgeoned in the last few decades, due largely, I think, to Singer’s book.

Which brings us to an article Singer wrote on his Substack “Bold Reasoning“, a site to which you can subscribe, even for free. Reader Keith brought the article below to my attention, and it’s heartbreaking (to me at least), but will surely make you think.

Although I’m not a vegetarian, I don’t eat much meat and am trying to eat less. I am a pretty staunch opponent of zoos and aquariums because they often restrict animals to the point where they become neurotic.  They are not needed for science (most zoos and aquaria don’t do or publish any science), and as for conservation, well, you can watch a video made in the wild if you want to teach people to conserve animals.  The sarcastic H. L. Mencken had a pretty good take on this stuff in his short essay “The Zoo” from 1918.

Singer’s piece begins with the story of a chimp taught some American Sign Language, who signed “Key Out” several times, meaning that the chimp knew that the key would let him out of his cage.  Maybe that was not the chimp’s intent, but it well could have been. Singer then moves to a recently-settled court case involving seven chimps held captive in Michigan—and not for research purposes—who were the subject of an unsuccessful lawsuit.  I quote Singer (his words are indented):

Bruno’s [the signing chimp] story is key to understanding the case that recently came before the Michigan Supreme Court.

The case concerns seven chimpanzees held at the roadside zoo called the DeYoung Family Zoo in Wallace, Michigan. The Nonhuman Rights Project, which brought the legal action on their behalf, calls them the DeYoung Prisoners.

The seven DeYoung Prisoners cannot make that request in American Sign Language. Nor can they walk into a courtroom and ask a judge to hear them. The Nonhuman Rights Project is asking the law to consider their claim to the fundamental right that all persons have, not to be deprived of their bodily liberty without sufficient cause.

Only one of the seven is publicly identified by name. Louie was brought to the DeYoung zoo in 2010, when he was six weeks old. He was used for at least the first two years of his life as a prop in paid photo opportunities. Photographs and videos show him restrained on a fixed leash and made to interact with children and other zoo visitors.

The evidence submitted in the case indicates that Louie later spent many years without the companionship of another chimpanzee.

The other six chimpanzees are identified in the complaint as Prisoners B through G. Five were previously held at the Missouri Primate Foundation, a chimpanzee breeding facility that supplied animals to the exotic-animal trade and entertainment industry. Another was born at the DeYoung zoo and was removed from her mother while still an infant.

Chimpanzees are profoundly social beings. Martha Nussbaum, who submitted an amicus brief supporting the case, noted that they naturally live in communities that may include between 20 and 200 individuals, moving among different social subgroups and forming complex relationships. The DeYoung Prisoners, by contrast, are limited to their small group of seven—when they have access even to one another.

In December 2023, The Nonhuman Rights Project filed a habeas corpus complaint on their behalf.

Habeas corpus is the legal procedure through which a court examines whether an individual is being lawfully confined. The Nonhuman Rights Project asked the court to require the roadside zoo to justify the chimpanzees’ confinement and, ultimately, to order their transfer to a chimpanzee sanctuary accredited by the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries.

The case does not claim that chimpanzees are human beings. Nor does it ask that chimpanzees receive every legal right possessed by humans.

It asks a narrower but fundamental question:

Can these chimpanzees be recognized as legal “persons” for purposes of habeas corpus—that is, are they entitled to ask a court to examine whether their confinement is lawful?

Recognizing them as persons for this limited purpose would give them the opportunity to have the legality of their confinement considered.

Note that these chimps, highly sentient and social beings, were confined purely for breeding with the ultimate aim of entertaining others or going to zoos. (In my view, no chimp belongs in a zoo.)  There were no medical or research benefits to be gained. Yet a week ago the Michigan Supreme Court ruled against the “person” suit by refusing to take up the appeal after the “personhood” claim had been denied by a lower court. And this even though Singer himself and Martha Nussbaum filed amicus brie and Jane Goodall testified for the plaintiffs.

. . .The lower court reasoned that legal rights belong only to beings capable of taking on legal duties—for example, by understanding society’s laws and agreeing to follow them. Because chimpanzees cannot do that, the court concluded that they cannot be legal persons entitled to seek habeas corpus.

Justice Elizabeth Welch dissented from the Michigan Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the case. She argued that the law should not be frozen by centuries-old ideas about animals as property, especially when modern science has revealed so much about chimpanzees’ minds and emotional lives.

She wrote that the evidence shows chimpanzees can “think, feel, love, grieve, and yearn.” She also referred to my book The Expanding Circle, which examines how moral progress has often required us to extend our concern beyond boundaries that earlier generations took for granted.

Justice Welch’s dissent does not free the DeYoung Prisoners. But it recognizes that calling an intelligent, self-aware, emotionally complex being “property” does not answer the question of whether that being has an interest in freedom.

Whether or not you can take on legal duties, which in the construal above surely does not apply to severely mentally ill or autistic people, cannot be a consideration for whether you can cage people, so why is it even a consideration for other animals, especially ones capable of humanlike suffering? One can of course do experiments to see what kind of habitat/life animals prefer, simply by giving them a choice, and such experiments have been done, showing things like chickens prefer more natural habitat than battery cages (see here).  Singer continues:

. . . . The seven DeYoung Prisoners remain confined.

Justice Welch’s dissent deserves to be widely read as it gives serious legal and moral consideration to a claim that American courts have so far rejected.

Read Justice Welch’s dissent in full.

The court’s website may be inaccessible in some countries, so I am also reproducing Justice Welch’s dissent in full below. [JAC: you can also read the dissent at the link.]

It’s a very good dissent, and includes these words:

Plaintiff, its expert witnesses, and supporting amici present considerable and seemingly undisputed scientific evidence that chimpanzees possess autonomy, self determination, and numerous advanced cognitive abilities.1 The evidence demonstrates that chimpanzees are remarkably intelligent, that they are self-aware, that they plan for the future, that they exhibit empathy and compassion toward other living beings, and that they grieve the loss of loved ones. Based on the evidence presented, chimpanzees appear unsuited for confinement.

Confinement for entertainment is doubly wrong, for there is no utilitarian benefit for “entertainment” that can plausibly outweigh the suffering of confined chimps.  And the “conservation” excuse holds no water for me.

Singer notes that you can sign a petition to transfer these chimps to a sanctuary, and the link is below. I have signed it.

Louie and the six other chimpanzees remain confined at the DeYoung Family Zoo. The Nonhuman Rights Project is calling for them to be transferred to an accredited sanctuary, where they could live in an environment suited to their social, physical, and psychological needs.

Sign the petition to demand their freedom.

The way we treat animals is one of the things that in the future will likely be seen as immoral (another is our refusal to let suffering and terminally ill patients get medical assistance in dying).  We are by no means sitting on an ethical “adaptive peak” in which movement in any direction leads to a decline in morality. Steve Pinker has documented the general increase in morality over time in several of his books.