Friday 5 December 2014

Monkey Morality?


Yet another case in the USA where people have tried to establish in a court of law that Chimpanzees have personhood (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/04/court-denies-legal-personhood-of-chimpanzees). This time the courts ruled that these primates (our closest surviving 'relative' in the Animal Kingdom) were not human because they would not be able to take on responsibilities along with the rights that granting them honorary human status would give them. I broadly support this view (although I do favour extra protections for this species) but it is a murky old area as the law does accept that humans do not lose their human status when massively intellectually impaired. The difficulty in this type of debate is where to draw the fuzzy line (all primates? all mammals? 'intelligent' species only- so chimps, dolphins and crows?). There are likely to be appeals, so this one will run and run.

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Some of My Favourite Pictures of Lepidopteran Larvae

Caterpillars of moths and butterflies from the UK and India