RDS/BLOG

Only members can comment. Not a member? Please submit your registration for validation. | Log In |

Apes can't ape

By GeorginaTheGiraffe | Filed in Debate / Ethics /

It is always fascinating to see how antivivisection groups jump on the results of animal behaviour research to push their case that animals are morally equivalent to humans. For example, the latest report by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV), The Use of Primates in Experiments supposedly

‘explains the latest knowledge about the significant capacities of non-human primates - capacities once thought to be unique to humans’.

The report claims, for example, that

‘many primates share with humans the ability to remember past events, to have desires, to anticipate and plan for future events, to communicate, form concepts and have complex emotional and social experiences’.

We have no doubt that much of this is true. But we certainly wouldn’t take the word of the antivivisectionists alone. After all, for over 100 years they have simply rejected all evidence of the medical and scientific benefits of animal research, yet accept uncritically any animal behaviour research which apparently supports their position.

We guess that animal behaviourists would have a strong motivation to make their findings sound impressive. The BUAV report states that

‘even honeybees have now been shown to exhibit learning abilities formerly ascribed only to vertebrates’.

After so many million years of evolution we would expect insects to display complex behaviour and abilities. But doesn’t it sound dull to simply point out that honeybees exhibit honeybee-like behaviour. How much more exciting to ascribe honeybees a new and higher level of learning ability.

We are no experts on animal behaviour, but when it comes to the claim from the BUAV that ‘great apes use keyboards’, they are clearly not talking about apes in the wild. This activity must require a great deal of human intervention, which affects the interpretation of the results.

Once again, it is time for plain speaking to cut through some of the complex language the antivivisectionists used to describe animal behaviour. As Stuart Derbyshire pointed out in a paper for the Institute of Ideas, chimpanzees are doing much the same in the wild now as they were 100,000 years ago. All the research on animal behaviour cannot change that simple fact. As the Guardian Media Guide pointed out in its preamble to the Channel 4 documentary What Makes Us Human,

‘apes cannot ape, which is why they’re hanging from car tyres eating bananas and we’re running the world’.

And Channel 4, in popular style, lists 10 things that make us human. Our guess is that any sensible person could instantly recognise these distinctions between humans and animals.

Comments

Page 1 of 1 pages of comments • Follow through:

We received this by email from peter@passwordpublish.f9.co.uk. We assume it’s a comment on Apes Can’t Ape, but is neither constructive nor reasoned. It’s not even factually accurate. But still, at least the name-calling doesn’t descend to use of four-letter words (bar one near the end if you can be bothered to read that far). We have reproduced it in its entirety (in two parts as long comments are not allowed).

Your site is an interesting insight into the fascist minds of the experimenters. While criticising opponents at every opportunity, you display all the characteristics of a self-decieving minority, desperate to bolster your morally indefensible stance by any means.

I hold no delusion I can convince any of you of how wrong you are. It really is about inner feelings, humanity, compassion and empathy, all of which you demonstrably lack. I pity you for this. Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that what you have is all there is to be human though. There are levels in evolution, it does not proceed evenly. Ultimately it is about the complexity of brain processing, and the way each individual brain has learned through its lifetime and arrived at conclusions.

Let me just tell you about dogs, a species which is experimented on and which is thought lower down the scale from hominids. Dogs feel pain, both physical and emotional, this any dog ‘owner’ will tell you. They have a memory - they remember people they met two years ago, they remember places, they remember traumas. One of my dogs was rescued, ill treated as a puppy including being shut in a kitchen all day with a Rottweiller which bullied him and ate all his food. After seeing a Rottweiler years later, he had bad dreams that night; twitching, howling, whimpering. He suffered from memories just like us.

My other dog I have had since a puppy, she is well balanced, confident in the love she receives, strong willed, sometimes naughty, sometimes contrite, always eager to do things, relieved and happy when one of her human family returns after an absence, unhappy when left alone. They also clearly care for each other like adopted brother and sister. You may attempt to dismiss all this as homocentric nonsense, but I know it all to be a true and accurate account of reality. They are not humans, nor are they like humans, but they are sentient, intelligent, emorional beings with a mental life, and the ability to suffer. I am also sure - while lacking any personal evidence but merely out of logic - that other mammals are pretty much similar, differing only in degree. Going back far enough, we are all descended from the same mammals. It could even be true of other non-mammalian animals. Have you had any experience with parrots? Their abilities don’t stop at mimicry. There is good evidence that they actually use the language they hear and repeat appropriately.

Peter

... to be continued.

Posted by RDS Blog Editor / September 07, 2006 | Thursday | 04:00 PM |
Continuation of email from peter@passwordpublish.f9.co.uk

What you should all remember is that your behaviour in adopting the stance you do, is no less species driven than that of the wildebeest. You, a naked ape, think you are so special and important that you have not only invented a god who created you in his image for some special purpose, but you think it is right to do anything you wish to any other species, including driving them to extinction, merely because they are not like you.

But really your only argument is might is right, a truly fascist attitude which led Dr Mengele to experiment on what he regarded as barely human, lesser humans. You are part of that slippery moral slope, you teeter on the edge trying to pretend there is no slope.

By your attitude, it is ok to experiment on the mentally deficient, those in a coma, prisoners, those of diminished intelligence, perhaps inferior races. Anyone, in short, you have power over. Because you can imprison a dog against its will, deprive it of a normal, emotional, experiential existance and subject it to any invasive surgery and chemical assault you deem is important to your career, doesn’t make it acceptable or right.

You will always be seen as morally inferior, lacking in what we real humans take for granted. Don’t kid yourself that you are winning the argument, you are failing to convince anyone, as the species evolves further, there will be proportionately less who don’t find you repugnant. You are already viewed by a majority as clinging to a backward, Victorian, attitude to science for deviant reasons which say more about you than science. Your abuse of argument in defence of your perversion cuts no ice with sensible, rational people with real feelings and the ability to think. You ignore all the failures of animals testing, such as Thalidomide, and continue with the fiction it is important to further advances in medicine. Even if this were true, I would still dismiss it, and yes, even if I or someone I loved would benefit from whatever wonder magic bullet you thought you were inventing.

For now you can only understand feelings on a theoretical level, and I partially don’t blame you for that as the teaching of science has always lacked a moral/ethical segment which is why so many scientists have difficulty with this side of human reality. If you need to understand it intellectually, try reading about morality, try reading about animals, try interacting with an animal in a meanigful way. Risk finding out the truth and then see if you want to continue. Ah but that is a risky idea isn’t it?

Sneer at your critics all you like if it makes it easier for you to live with the knowledge that you are an inadequate, unfeeling shit. But you know deep down how low down the food chain you really are.
Peter

Posted by RDS Blog Editor / September 07, 2006 | Thursday | 04:03 PM |