Paula Stibbe, a language trainer from the UK living in Austria, has taken on the difficult task of fighting for personhood for chimpanzee Hiasl. EVANA asked Paula about her friendship with Hiasl and the development of the court proceedings.
SOURCE: http://www.vgt.at/presse/news/2008/news20080520_en.php
EVANA: Paula, how is your hairy friend Hiasl doing?
Paula: Thanks for asking! Hiasl is doing as well as any wild animal kept in captivity can. Now the summer is over, he is finding the days a bit boring. He spends less time outside during the winter months. It can get pretty cold in Vienna. His companion chimpanzee, Rosi normally takes to her bed over the winter and can only be coaxed out with visits from human friends or special treats.
EVANA: When did you get to know him? And how?
Paula: Well, back in around 2000, when I was fresh in Austria, I volunteered to do a great ape censor for the Great Ape Project. They were collecting data on captive great apes all over the world to have a record of who was where and what conditions they were living in. I visited zoos and research institutes meeting the various great apes being kept in Austria. Meeting the chimps in the research centre is a bit of an exaggeration, what actually happened is that I was led around in the ground floor of a building where under my feet there was thick glass allowing me to see down into the chimpanzees in their individual cages in the basement! I had read enough about chimpanzees to know that I was not being overly sentimental about not wanting to literally walk all over them! I was horrified, many of the chimps leapt up to their ceilings, banging their fists against the glass. Others cowered in the corner, hugging their knees, hardly daring to look up. Anyway, I am very happy to say that those chimps were “pensioned off” by the lab and now they live in groups at an Austrian safari park.
Now to come back to Hiasl…he and his companion Rosi were ordered from Africa by the same lab mentioned above to be used as research tools. This was back in the early 1980s. The Viennese Animal Protection Society received a tip off that chimps were due to arrive at the airport and they alerted the authorities, who duly confiscated the two baby chimps on arrival. Hiasl and Rosi had survived the traumatic journey from Africa to Europe and they were taken into the care of the society’s animal sanctuary. It was at the sanctuary that I first met Hiasl. After checking me out from a distance, he came over and invited me to play a game of tug-of-war by passing me the end of a sheet and bobbing his head up and down.
EVANA: What is the sanctuary like?
Paula: Hiasl has lived at the Viennese Animal Protection Society (WTV) sanctuary now for around 25 years. The WTV was the first animal protection organization in Austria, it was founded 160 year ago! WTV’s sanctuary is located on the Vienna city border and like virtually all sanctuaries trying to take care of unwanted and abused animals, WTV has financial problems which sometimes threaten its very existence. While Hiasl remains safe as long as the present management presides, what I am concerned about is what could happen should the sanctuary ever go into receivership. This has almost happened on past occasions. My fear is that receivership officials would be duty bound to repay debts by selling assets. Many wild animals could be considered assets, including chimpanzees. What would stop Hiasl being sold to a circus or a research lab in a country where the law permitted chimps to be used in this way?
EVANA: All friends of chimps are amazed and delighted that the Tarzan star Cheeta is still alive as of 2008 at the age of 76. How old is Hiasl?
Paula: Hiasl is still a spring chicken in comparison, we are fairly sure that he is 27.
EVANA: Do you visit him often? Does he recognize you? Did you manage to establish a personal contact with him?
Paula: I drop by and see him usually twice a week. We have a special greeting which has developed over the years; Hiasl tweaks my nose between his index and middle finger. I would say there is a friendship that has built up over the years. This is certainly the case on my part. It would be good to think that he also regards it as a friendship however; Hiasl is a wild animal. I wouldn’t assume to know what constitutes a friendship for chimps! The two chimpanzees have an outdoor enclosure and an indoor one. When I visit I go to the inside enclosure where we can interact through metal bars. Chimpanzees are very strong, they are also known for being impulsive and as Hiasl and Rosi haven’t been used to direct contact to humans i.e. without bars since they were small there seems to be no point taking any risks by going into the enclosure with them.
EVANA: Recently young chimpanzees have outperformed human college students in tasks requiring remembering numbers. Do you think that the intelligence of chimps behind bars is compromised?
Paula: This is such an interesting question. We know that chimps living their own life in the wild with other members of their species have cognitive abilities that have resulted in nothing less than humans having to re-think the notions of what it is that is supposedly unique to being human. Chimps make and use tools and not only that, but different groups of chimps in different locations have different ways of making and using tools. This last point is what we humans define as culture, and there it is, displayed in non-human animals!
The lynch pin for all this being able to happen is that chimps are social beings who learn from others. Now what happens to chimps who are ripped out of their environment as babies, many even witnessing the murder of their mother and or other group members? Well, they miss out on the essential learning phase which teaches them how to be a successful chimp. This is not something that can be given back to them. It is extremely difficult to re-introduce captive chimps back into the wild because they have not learnt the skills they need for getting by in their own environment.
The fate for a captive chimp can be varied. The best he or she can hope for is some kind of setting with other chimps and minimal human intervention. Some zoos and sanctuaries have achieved this whereby large groups of chimps have the run of an island. They are then free to form and move between different chimp groups as they would in the wild. In this way they also learn from each other.
At the other end of the scale there are research labs, circuses and poorly equipped zoos. Only the luckiest of chimps in these places will live with other chimps, their days will be monotonous and their surroundings non-stimulating, not to mention the experiences they suffer during experimentation and training. These conditions not only stunt the chimps’ development, but they are also responsible for some serious abnormal behaviour.
Then there is the whole issue of encultured chimps. This term refers to captive chimps which have been brought up in a human environment. Typically chimps brought up in private households reach a stage where they become unmanageable and after forming strong attachments to humans they are passed onto an uncertain fate. There is another large group of captive apes that are also encultured; they are being used to study language. They have been brought up as human children and use sign language or symbols on display pads which represent words. Whether it is acceptable to use apes for this purpose or not is debatable, but what is truly astonishing is that many of these chimps identify themselves more with humans than chimps. The female chimpanzee Washoe, for example, called other chimps “black bugs” when she met them for the first time!
(Fouts, Roger. Next of Kin: My Conversations with Chimpanzees. New York: Avon Books, 1977).
SOURCE: http://www.vgt.at/presse/news/2008/news20080520_en.php
EVANA: Paula, how is your hairy friend Hiasl doing?
Paula: Thanks for asking! Hiasl is doing as well as any wild animal kept in captivity can. Now the summer is over, he is finding the days a bit boring. He spends less time outside during the winter months. It can get pretty cold in Vienna. His companion chimpanzee, Rosi normally takes to her bed over the winter and can only be coaxed out with visits from human friends or special treats.
EVANA: When did you get to know him? And how?
Paula: Well, back in around 2000, when I was fresh in Austria, I volunteered to do a great ape censor for the Great Ape Project. They were collecting data on captive great apes all over the world to have a record of who was where and what conditions they were living in. I visited zoos and research institutes meeting the various great apes being kept in Austria. Meeting the chimps in the research centre is a bit of an exaggeration, what actually happened is that I was led around in the ground floor of a building where under my feet there was thick glass allowing me to see down into the chimpanzees in their individual cages in the basement! I had read enough about chimpanzees to know that I was not being overly sentimental about not wanting to literally walk all over them! I was horrified, many of the chimps leapt up to their ceilings, banging their fists against the glass. Others cowered in the corner, hugging their knees, hardly daring to look up. Anyway, I am very happy to say that those chimps were “pensioned off” by the lab and now they live in groups at an Austrian safari park.
Now to come back to Hiasl…he and his companion Rosi were ordered from Africa by the same lab mentioned above to be used as research tools. This was back in the early 1980s. The Viennese Animal Protection Society received a tip off that chimps were due to arrive at the airport and they alerted the authorities, who duly confiscated the two baby chimps on arrival. Hiasl and Rosi had survived the traumatic journey from Africa to Europe and they were taken into the care of the society’s animal sanctuary. It was at the sanctuary that I first met Hiasl. After checking me out from a distance, he came over and invited me to play a game of tug-of-war by passing me the end of a sheet and bobbing his head up and down.
EVANA: What is the sanctuary like?
Paula: Hiasl has lived at the Viennese Animal Protection Society (WTV) sanctuary now for around 25 years. The WTV was the first animal protection organization in Austria, it was founded 160 year ago! WTV’s sanctuary is located on the Vienna city border and like virtually all sanctuaries trying to take care of unwanted and abused animals, WTV has financial problems which sometimes threaten its very existence. While Hiasl remains safe as long as the present management presides, what I am concerned about is what could happen should the sanctuary ever go into receivership. This has almost happened on past occasions. My fear is that receivership officials would be duty bound to repay debts by selling assets. Many wild animals could be considered assets, including chimpanzees. What would stop Hiasl being sold to a circus or a research lab in a country where the law permitted chimps to be used in this way?
EVANA: All friends of chimps are amazed and delighted that the Tarzan star Cheeta is still alive as of 2008 at the age of 76. How old is Hiasl?
Paula: Hiasl is still a spring chicken in comparison, we are fairly sure that he is 27.
EVANA: Do you visit him often? Does he recognize you? Did you manage to establish a personal contact with him?
Paula: I drop by and see him usually twice a week. We have a special greeting which has developed over the years; Hiasl tweaks my nose between his index and middle finger. I would say there is a friendship that has built up over the years. This is certainly the case on my part. It would be good to think that he also regards it as a friendship however; Hiasl is a wild animal. I wouldn’t assume to know what constitutes a friendship for chimps! The two chimpanzees have an outdoor enclosure and an indoor one. When I visit I go to the inside enclosure where we can interact through metal bars. Chimpanzees are very strong, they are also known for being impulsive and as Hiasl and Rosi haven’t been used to direct contact to humans i.e. without bars since they were small there seems to be no point taking any risks by going into the enclosure with them.
EVANA: Recently young chimpanzees have outperformed human college students in tasks requiring remembering numbers. Do you think that the intelligence of chimps behind bars is compromised?
Paula: This is such an interesting question. We know that chimps living their own life in the wild with other members of their species have cognitive abilities that have resulted in nothing less than humans having to re-think the notions of what it is that is supposedly unique to being human. Chimps make and use tools and not only that, but different groups of chimps in different locations have different ways of making and using tools. This last point is what we humans define as culture, and there it is, displayed in non-human animals!
The lynch pin for all this being able to happen is that chimps are social beings who learn from others. Now what happens to chimps who are ripped out of their environment as babies, many even witnessing the murder of their mother and or other group members? Well, they miss out on the essential learning phase which teaches them how to be a successful chimp. This is not something that can be given back to them. It is extremely difficult to re-introduce captive chimps back into the wild because they have not learnt the skills they need for getting by in their own environment.
The fate for a captive chimp can be varied. The best he or she can hope for is some kind of setting with other chimps and minimal human intervention. Some zoos and sanctuaries have achieved this whereby large groups of chimps have the run of an island. They are then free to form and move between different chimp groups as they would in the wild. In this way they also learn from each other.
At the other end of the scale there are research labs, circuses and poorly equipped zoos. Only the luckiest of chimps in these places will live with other chimps, their days will be monotonous and their surroundings non-stimulating, not to mention the experiences they suffer during experimentation and training. These conditions not only stunt the chimps’ development, but they are also responsible for some serious abnormal behaviour.
Then there is the whole issue of encultured chimps. This term refers to captive chimps which have been brought up in a human environment. Typically chimps brought up in private households reach a stage where they become unmanageable and after forming strong attachments to humans they are passed onto an uncertain fate. There is another large group of captive apes that are also encultured; they are being used to study language. They have been brought up as human children and use sign language or symbols on display pads which represent words. Whether it is acceptable to use apes for this purpose or not is debatable, but what is truly astonishing is that many of these chimps identify themselves more with humans than chimps. The female chimpanzee Washoe, for example, called other chimps “black bugs” when she met them for the first time!
(Fouts, Roger. Next of Kin: My Conversations with Chimpanzees. New York: Avon Books, 1977).
READ THE NEXT HERE:
0 comments:
Post a Comment