Great Ape Project

Founded in 1993, the Great Ape Project (GAP), calls for an extension of moral equality to

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encompass all great apes (both species of chimpanzee, gorillas, and orangutans), not just human beings. This international collection of primatologists, psychologists, ethicists, and other experts argues that we should expand our moral community to include these animals because of their similarities with humans. GAP is advocating a United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Great Apes that would confer certain moral equalities to great apes, these include the right to life, the protection of individual liberty and the prohibition of torture (see Declaration on Great Apes). The organization also monitors individual great ape activity in the United States through a census program. Once rights are established GAP would demand the release of great apes from captivity; currently 3,100 are held by humans, including 1,280 are in biomedical research.

Related Topics:
Chimpanzee - Gorillas - Orangutans - Primatologists - Psychologists - Ethicists - United Nations - Declaration on Great Apes - United States

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The book published in 1993 (also of the same name), edited by philosopher Peter Singer and Paola Cavalieri, features contributions from thirty-four recognized authors, who have submitted articles voicing their support and reasoning for the inclusion of great apes into the sphere of moral equality. The authors urge a non-exclusivist focus upon the fact that we are human beings and instead a recognition that we are intelligent beings with a varied social and emotional life that may be analguous to other animals. If great apes display these attributes they deserve the same consideration we extend to members of our own species.

Related Topics:
Peter Singer - Paola Cavalieri

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The book highlights findings that support the capacity of great apes to possess rationality and self-consciousness, and the ability to be aware of themselves as distinct entities with a past and future. Documented conversations (via sign-language) with individual great apes are the basis for these findings. Other subjects addressed within the book include the division placed between humans and great apes, the species as persons, progress in gaining rights for the severely intellectually disabled (once an overlooked minority) and the situation of apes in the world today.

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