In the early summer of 2006 the Spanish government confirmed that it was considering regarding the great apes as ”legal persons”, thereby bestowing on them all the rights known at that time as human.
Almost immediately animal rights activists began dying, as elation, combined with the ubiquitous physical awkwardness of those who adore animals, turned tragic. Fourteen perished in Brazil, as an inexpert group hug sent them crashing through the termite-ravaged floor of the their rainforest-canopy hutch. Two jubilant Norwegians, manning a supply station in northern Canada, conspired to fire a celebratory flare into a vast underground fuel tank, taking 9 000 harp seals, 14 polar bears and a weather balloon with them.
Back in Spain, however, the reaction was less whimsical. The church was outraged, asking how it was supposed to correct simian sin when the new congregation seemed interested only in candle-tapers, which it used to hunt fishmoths in the corners of confessionals.
But the groundswell of support for assimilation and recognition could not be ignored. Within two years, leading intellectuals were insisting that many of their best friends were apes, and no exclusively human dinner gathering (and they were all exclusively human) was complete without some tender tale of young Raul, who had delicately picked up all the Lego pieces with his feet, or Conchita, who would throw a beanbag across the conservatory when she was feeling marginalised. How fascinating they were. How heart warming. How funny …
Spain’s youth were passionate about simian fraternity to the point of spontaneous combustion. Denouncing human culture as cerebro-fascist, leading youth commissars called for a new society in which young persons would be free to eat with their hands, to drag their knuckles on the floor and not be judged, to live in a jungle-gym, to whoop at will, to have sex with multiple partners, and to defecate noisily whenever the urge arrived. When asked to explain how this utopia differed from youth culture in its current form, the commissars said that their specialness was not being validated and left to put on a bow tie and start the night’s pizza round.
But there were problems. Human rights brought limited human responsibilities and while gorillas and chimps proved fairly adept at certain professions — brick-tossing, bellows-pumping, politics — orangutans seemed unemployable. Placid and shy, with an unnerving ability to climb silently up the nearest drape and disappear, the ”Orangemen”, as they were now known, simply refused to turn up for interviews.
Five years after recognition, Spain’s welfare system was creaking, with an estimated two million Orangemen on the dole, spending their weekly cheques on fags and inner tubes.
By the time Cheetah Goya was tried for tearing off Mrs Velasquez’s arm during a one-sided whist marathon, tempers were fraying. The trial itself was hugely controversial. Asked if he intended conducting his own defence, the chimp, Goya, nodded vigorously and continued to nod throughout a barrage of incriminating questions. En route to the holding cells it was discovered that the defendant had been trying to dislodge a peanut from his molars. A mistrial was declared and Goya signed a five-figure book deal, by smearing a lollipop across the proffered contract and nodding again, this time the result of a firmly entrenched Coco Pop.
The apes are great, to be sure. Their rights are inalienable and their persecution is an abomination. But what right do we have to graft them to our morality, with all its necessary limitations? Can we offer the right to life and dignity, but deny the right to education and freedom of movement? Can we promise rights on the basis of species, only to enforce them on the basis of nationality? Or are we just monkeying around?