The Great Ape Project (GAP), founded in 1994, is an international organization of primatologists, anthropologists, ethicists, and other experts who advocate a United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Great Apes that would confer basic legal rights on non-human great apes: chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans.
The rights suggested are the right to life, the protection of individual liberty, and the prohibition of torture. The organization also monitors individual great ape activity in the United States through a census program. Once rights are established, GAP would demand the release of great apes from captivity; currently 3,100 are held in the U.S., including 1,280 in biomedical research.
Read more about Great Ape Project: Great Ape Project (book), Declaration On Great Apes, Opposition
Famous quotes containing the words ape and/or project:
“What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment. And just that shall man be for the superman: a laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“From a bed in this hotel Seargent S. Prentiss arose in the middle of the night and made a speech in defense of a bedbug that had bitten him. It was heard by a mock jury and judge, and the bedbug was formally acquitted.”
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)