Are Chimpanzees people too?
Recently I saw a programme on TV about how closely related humans are to chimps. They posed the theory that 'chimps are people too', I wasn't sure that I agreed. The argument they used was that chimps share 99.4% of human crucial DNA, they share more characteristics with humans than they do with gorillas.There are many chimp fans fighting for their cause to have them classed as people, they say chimpanzees have language and social culture. One dubious scientist treated chimps like part of her family, you can't help but think it's a bit sick; they don't have a choice in being experiments let alone baby substitutes for a mad woman. There was one particular experiment to test how cooperative chimps are with each other; They had a machine to dispense chocolate drops in two ways, using a stick to either lift a lever or by poking the stick into the machine. One chimp was taught to get the chocolate by poking the machine and separately the other chimp was taught to lift the lever. Both chimps learnt perfectly how the machine worked. The poking chimp was put into a group of chimps and the lifting chimp was put in another group of chimps. Both groups learnt from the trained chimps to figure out how to work the machine to get their reward. I was very impressed by the fact that all the group members figured out how to work the machine only in the way that they had seen the trained chimp do it. The poking chimps only poked and the lifters only lifted so they must have learnt from each other. I still don't think they should be classed as humans and I think that there are still fundamental differences people and chimps. Email this story to a friend  Add this link to:            
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