TODAY I WITNESSED a remarkable and disturbing sight. Kanzi is a bonobo chimpanzee who can prepare a meal for himself. He collects kindling and chooses a suitable spot for his purpose. Kanzi then uses a lighter to ignite the kindling and begins collecting old branches and breaking them into suitable lengths for his purpose. He then builds up the fire and places an iron grill above the flames. A frying pan appears, along with the food he plans to eat; he gathers a suitable toasting fork from the many fallen branches that surround him. Kanzi pins a marshmallow to the improvised toasting fork and proceeds to cook it. After he has finished, he tips a bottle of water over the fire to extinguish it.
Our treatment of our (evolutionarily speaking) first cousins has improved greatly since we found it amusing to see them performing at tea parties in zoos throughout the country back in the 1950s and 60s. Then they were more ridiculed than admired for being man’s nearest relative.
Thankfully we now know better – or do we? Today we have far better living conditions in our zoos and parks, and have primate keepers who care deeply about their charges. Being a keeper today is not a ‘job’, but a vocation, for they are paid little in comparison to nurse for instance – more like the charges in a nursing home for the elderly.
But when it comes to the primates much more is needed. All of the ape families need close and open contact with humans. Which is something modern zoos prohibit in their attempt to reconstruct the conditions such primates would find in the natural world. Such institutions demand that their primates, like all other animals in their care, should be stimulated on a daily basis by making them seek out their food. While in the case of most species, this is indeed a good idea; in the case of chimps it becomes nothing more than a modern variation on the old tea party phenomenon.
Our naturalists proudly boast that, genetically speaking, the apes are our nearest relatives in the natural world. So why treat them as if they fall well below such a prestigious position; by treating them like any other species?
The ape has the mental facility and the physiology to learn from us. To deny them this facility by treating them in captivity as they would be treated by their natural environment, is like denying a human its education.
THE WORLD OF PRIMATES is different from other species; just as our species is different from primates themselves. But our primate cousins share our facility to learn over time. Providing that time is spent in the right environment, we can see more Kanzi’s emerge from a new relationship with their human cousins if we connect with them socially.
Rather than distancing ourselves from them in order to keep intact their ‘natural order’, we should gently and gradually introduce them to the greater learning they are capable of, through human contact. We are retarding them at the moment by replicating for them their natural environment in our zoos and parks. They, like humans, have brains that need to be stimulated, not by ever ingenious methods of giving them their food, but by teaching them the things Kanzi proves they are capable of.
We are not allowing our first cousins to realise their potential by treating them as any other species in park or zoo. We need to move on to a higher level in animal care where the great apes are concerned. They must be given every opportunity at contact with humans. Humans must be their teachers, not only their carers. We humans must realise that the brain of any primate is different from any other species in its capacity to learn. Instead of treating the primate (of which, remember, we are also part of the same family)as a species equal to any other, is ignoring our human kinship with them.
The higher primates like Gorillas, Chimpanzees, and Orang-utans, need to be liberated from their natural environments; not forced to endure them. If those people who, like myself, believe our cousinship with these primates is so close; then we must treat them with a certain reverence, and seek to advance their learning, as we ourselves have managed to do for thousands of years.
Kanzi, as well as other primates, have proven their worth. They at this stage, may not understand their worth, but, given their association with humans over many generations of human contact, may learn to value their worth to the point of contributing an opinion, not through vocabulary, but through sign language.
We have the opportunity to elevate our immediate cousins to share the throne of wisdom that for many millennia the human species has solely occupied. They may not ever indulge themselves in the great works of literature, science, philosophy or maths; but compared to those species below them, they stand like giants, if not equal to humanity then surpassing any other species. Which means that this in itself merits our involvement.
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