People Like Us

Whenever I visit a primate display at a zoo, I am very uncomfortable. When I look at a gorilla, or a chimpanzee, or an orangutan, I see a person. Granted, it’s a person of different morphology and abilities than the human beings I know, but I see an expressive face with an inherent sense of self. I see an “I” behind the eyes of our ape cousins. Every intuition I have tells me that these are people.

And we have put them in prison so that we can ogle them (or, most ‘nobly,’ so that we can keep them from becoming extinct… because of our behaviors). Their freedom is gone and you can see it in their movements and in their demeanor. They are intelligent and feeling and inventive creatures and we have reduced them to objects of entertainment—or at best a kind of distanced admiration. We study them, we experiment on them, we use them.

To me, they are people, and this treatment is fundamentally unethical.

(Do you recognize this guy? He’s the one eating chips while he watches the game. He’s a little bit alpha, and maybe a bit of a wise-ass.)

In a zoo, you get fed regularly and you are safe from predators. But there are eyes on you always, and you have no say in what happens next.

Just as you and I know when we are being watched, so do the gorillas at the Albuquerque zoo. Most of the time they seem to try not to show it. When they do meet your eyes, you will know that they are not happy.

When they are not sparring with each other, when one is sitting quietly to itself, distinct personalities and states of mind emerge. In one, gentle sadness; in another, a contemplative nature; in a third, a frustrated need for decisive action.

Look how this young adult holds the thumbs of his feet. He wants to do something, but there’s nothing to do.

By the rivers of Babylon
Where we sat down
And there we wept
When we remembered Zion.
For the wicked carried us away
Captivity
Require from us a song.
How can we sing King Alpha song
In a strange land?
—Rivers of Babylon, The Melodians

[Update: Bob called my attention to this amazing video from YouTube. Watch and weep.]