Some scientists think we should expand the definition of ‘person’ to include chimps:
"As a population of West African chimpanzees in the Ivory Coast that just two decades ago numbered 10,000 and accounted for half of the world’s population dwindles to just a few thousand, scientists are calling for a looser definition of personhood that would include our close evolutionary cousins.
. . .
"They are a people. Non-human, but definitely persons," said Deborah Fouts, co-director of the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute. "They haven’t built a rocket ship to the moon. But we’re not that different."
Fouts is one of a growing number of scientists and ethicists who believe that chimpanzees — as well as orangutans, bonobos and gorillas, a group colloquially known as great apes — ought to be considered people.
. . .
Some even suggest that chimpanzees and other great apes should be granted human rights . . . "
There’s a lot of bad science in the article, including an account of neurolinguistics that’s about 30 years out of date. Read it and be appalled.
(H/t: Conservative Hipster )
