Great apes for animal rights: A successful but controversial strategy

Gonzalo Corti, UNL

2025

Although consideration of non-human animals has existed to a greater or lesser extent throughout human history, there has been a huge growth in concern about animals in the last 50 years in what we now know as the Western world.

There are numerous ways in which this consideration about other animals translates into people’s actions and daily lives, ranging from adopting pets as part of the family to adopting a vegan lifestyle, including other consumption restrictions, protectionism for homeless animals, and a wide range of actions and principles that put into practice a different way of regarding (some) animals in our lives and social organizations.

On the legal front, the most significant development, a little over a decade ago, was the recognition of the rights of some great apes, with whom humans share the Hominidae family. The signature of these judicial strategies is that -when defending animal rights- they focus primarily on the basis of similarity to humans and only secondarily on the criterion of sentience, which constitutes one of the cornerstones of the animal rights movement.

Since the animal rights “revolution” of the 1970s, led by Peter Singer, sentience has been consolidated as the primary criterion for defending equality between humans and other animals. In simple terms, sentience today is understood as the capacity of a being to feel pleasure and pain and to perceive itself as an individual subject with individual interests.

However, although there is broad consensus within animal rights activists on the use of sentience as an argument for struggle, actions to protect great apes have relegated this basis to the background, with the idea that genetic similarity between humans and other great apes is the key to sustaining legal recognition of their status as persons or subjects of rights taking center stage.

Since the end of the last century, a network of international judicial activism in support of great apes began to consolidate. Its main representative is the Great Ape Project. Through this network, groups of people organized in different countries around the world to initiate multiple legal actions for the release of great apes deprived of their freedom in zoos or similar facilities. 

The first successes of these judicial strategies occurred in South America. In 2005, in Brazil, a court declared Suiza the chimpanzee a subject of human rights, although Suiza was unable to benefit from the ruling because she had been killed days before the verdict. Then, in 2014, an Argentine court declared that Sandra the orangutan, a captive at the Buenos Aires Zoo, was a subject of human rights, thus enabling a habeas corpus action.

 Juzgado de Primera Instancia en lo Contencioso Administrativo y Tributario n. °4

Ph. María Carman

This news was widely celebrated within the international animal rights movement, although for primarily colonialist reasons it did not have much impact in the global north. But the peculiarity here is that the greatest legal success of the animal rights struggle was not due to its main foundations.

In principle, this can be explained by some comparative advantages of hominist arguments. One of them stems from the scientific certainty of the genetic similarity between humans and the rest of the great apes. This type of evidence from the natural sciences is usually much better received by the courts than ethical-philosophical evidence. Furthermore, the undeniable physical similarity causes public opinion to react favorably to these movements: a good photo can sensitize a broader audience than those normally involved in these debates.

But at the same time, the strategy of genetic similarity has a great advantage when it comes to the analogical application of legal norms and institutions originally designed for human beings. Proof of this is the use of the writ of habeas corpus, which has historically been used for the release of human beings deprived of their liberty and was easily adapted for the release of great apes imprisoned in zoos or theme parks. Judges and legal practitioners seem to show less resistance to using legal analogy in these cases than for other animals.

However, as a counterpoint to these advantages, we find the fact that the struggle of the great apes offers arguments that are only valid in this case. Genetic similarity may well be useful for the liberation of a chimpanzee, but it is hardly acceptable for the protection of an octopus. Furthermore, in a deeper sense, these foundations are clearly anthropocentric. The reason for this consideration is its resemblance to us, which clearly implies that it is humanity that is indirectly at the center of the scene, which is openly rejected by the Animal Rights Theory and their proposal to eradicate anthropocentrism.

In short, it is highly significant that the first judicial achievements of animal rights movement were not achieved on the basis of the movement’s strongest foundations, but rather on others that are secondary and sometimes even contradictory to animal rights. Of course, these judicial rulings were celebrated throughout animal rights movements and have now generated a momentum that has led to numerous new recognitions of legal subjectivity for other animal species. It is possible that, even for the least accepted reasons, the animal rights struggle has achieved significant attainments that strengthen its projection and future. It remains to be seen whether this successful shift of the animal rights strategy can be incorporated into the larger animal rights struggle without its internal contradictions affecting the health of the movement. Time will tell.

Further reading and resources:

Asociación de Funcionarios y Abogados por los derechos de los animales y otros c/ GCBA s/ amparo. Expte. A2174-2015/0, Ciudad de Buenos Aires, 21 de octubre de 2015. https://underconstitucional.blogspot.com/2015/10/orangutana-sandra-sentencia-de-primera.html 

Carman, M., & Berros, M. (2024). El diseño de un dispositivo de inclusión en torno a los grandes simios: el caso de la orangutana Sandra y la chimpancé Cecilia en Argentina. Derecho PUCP, (93), 281-312.

Singer, P. (1975). Animal liberation: a new ethics for the treatment of animals. New York Review, New York.