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Author Topic:   Apes are People too !
Omnivorous
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Posts: 3992
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 7.5


Message 17 of 19 (307871)
04-30-2006 8:29 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by ohnhai
04-26-2006 10:08 PM


Discomfitting reminders
Giving other primates rights instead of extinction sounds like a good idea to me, but I don't think the idea will ever garner enough support to become reality.
They are our "living link" with the tree of life, with all the emotional, implicating baggage of fossil "missing links"--there is no greater proof in nature of our common biological heritage; no other being is so likely to elicit the "I AM NOT AN ANIMAL!" gut response, because no other animal reminds us so clearly that we are, indeed, just another animal and one very like these.
An indifference to their apparent fate, and even the notion that the best place for other primates is as experimental subjects in our labs, reflects the discomfort they create among deniers of our evolutionary origins. It takes a massive amount of denial to reject our obvious relatives, a denial that perhaps would prefer to see them removed from the world.
All the great apes are gravely threatened. They are too close to us to be accepted simply as animals, and too far to be embraced by many as family. They are most likely doomed.
Of course, if we could teach them to carry weapons and kill on command, we might give them the right to drink weak beer in their camps at 18.

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 Message 1 by ohnhai, posted 04-26-2006 10:08 PM ohnhai has not replied

  
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