Spain Moves to Recognize "Human" Rights in Great Apes

I have a new respect and admiration for the Spanish people and their parliament.  Last Wednesday, the Spanish Parliament became the first national legislature to support the legal rights of non-humans to life and individual liberty, and the right not to be tortured, when its environmental committee approved resolutions urging Spain to comply with the Great Ape Project (see story).  Apparently, under the new laws, keeping apes for circuses, filming and TV commercials will be a criminal offense. The resolutions have broad support and are expected to become law.

The Great Ape Project was founded in 1993 as an international organization of primatologists, psychologists, ethicists, and other experts who advocate a United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Great Apes that would confer basic legal rights on non-human great apes: chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans. The rights suggested are the right to life, the protection of individual liberty, and the prohibition of torture. [Wikipedia]

This feels like one of those thought-I'd-never-see-in-my-lifetime moments. I grew up in the era of Jane Goodall's National Geographic television specials about her work with chimpanzees. I remember learning about Koko, a gorilla taught to communicate with humans using American Sign Language. Then there was the classic film Planet of the Apes, which affected me profoundly as a pre-adolescent. It was probably the first film I watched that made me really start to think about what I'd been taught concerning what separates animals from humans. It was ahead of its time in many ways. One of the movie's great quotes comes from Roddy MacDowell's character, Cornelius, who reads from the sacred scrolls of the apes:

Beware the beast Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death.

Maybe Spain's parliamentary resolutions should make us rethink how we regard certain rights as being distinctly "human" in the first place. Wouldn't "natural Earth rights" somehow seem more fundamental and immutable, arising from what it means to be a living sentient creature on this planet, than anything distinctly "human" or man-made (which implies that such rights could just as easily be eliminated at the whim of humans)? Whether Spain's pioneering legislation will be a watershed for similar laws around the world remains to be seen. For now, the Spanish Parliament's action legally recognizing a few natural Earth rights in our great apes makes me feel just a little more . . . human. ¡Viva España!