Should Chimpanzees be given Human Rights?

"[Chimpanzees] are a people. Non-human, but definitely persons," said Deborah Fouts, co-director of the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute. "They haven't built a rocket ship to the moon. But we're not that different."
Fouts is one of a growing number of scientists and ethicists who believe that chimpanzees — as well as orangutans, bonobos and gorillas, a group colloquially known as great apes — ought to be considered people.
It's a controversial position. If being a person requires being human, then chimpanzees, our closest primate relative, are still only 98 percent complete. But if personhood is defined more broadly, chimpanzees may well qualify. They have self-awareness, feelings and high-level cognitive powers. Hardly a month seems to pass without researchers finding evidence of behavior thought to belong solely to humans.
Some even suggest that chimpanzees and other great apes should be granted human rights.

Monkeys... human rights?

Humans have great capacity for treating other humans as animals.  We all have the capacity to be brutes.  The picture is not meant to demonize the captors.  Rather, we should all put ourselves in that picture with our thumbs held up.  We are capable of treating humans inhumanely.  (Ethnically, I am 50% German.  But, I don't consider myself more likely to brutalize others than any other ethnic group.  Nor less!)

If we can brutalize humans, possibly we can brutalize animals?  I'm not sure about "human rights."  But, I do believe we need to seriously consider how we treat animals.

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/10/chimpanzees-not.html

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