Brent, Louisiana Painting Chimpanzee, Wins 1st Prize In Art Contest
By JANET McCONNAUGHEY 08/29/13 08:05 PM ET EDT
NEW ORLEANS -- A painting by a 37-year-old Louisiana primate who applies color with his tongue instead of a brush has been deemed the finest chimpanzee art in the land.
Brent, a retired laboratory animal, was the top vote-getter in an online chimp art contest organized by the Humane Society of the United States, which announced the results Thursday. He won $10,000 for the Chimp Haven sanctuary in northwest Louisiana.
A Chimp Haven spokeswoman said Brent was unavailable for comment Thursday. "I think he's asleep," Ashley Gordon said.
But as the society said on its website, "The votes are in, so let the pant hooting begin!" – pant hooting being the characteristic call of an excited chimp.
Five other sanctuaries around the country competed, using paintings created during "enrichment sessions," which can include any of a wide variety of activities and playthings.
Chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall chose her favorite from photographs she was sent. That painting, by Cheetah, a male at Save the Chimps in Fort Pierce, Fla., won $5,000 as Goodall's choice and another $5,000 for winning second place in online voting, Humane Society spokeswoman Nicole Ianni said.
Ripley from the Center for Great Apes in Wauchula, Fla., won third place and $2,500.
More than 27,000 people voted, Ianni said in a news release. The organization is not giving vote totals "to keep the focus on the positive work of the sanctuaries and not necessarily the `winner,'" she said in an email. The sanctuaries care for chimpanzees retired from research, entertainment and the pet trade. Chimp Haven is the national sanctuary for those retired from federal research.
Other submitted paintings were by Jamie, a female at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest in Cle Elum, Wash.; Jenny, a female at Primate Rescue Center in Nicholasville, Ky.; and Patti, a female at Chimps Inc. in Bend, Ore.
A profile of Brent on the Humane Society's website says he has lived at Chimp Haven since 2006, is protective of an even older chimp at the sanctuary and "loves to laugh and play." It continues, "Brent paints only with his tongue. His unique approach and style, while a little unorthodox, results in beautiful pieces of art."
Cathy Willis Spraetz, Chimp Haven's president and CEO, said she chose a painting by Brent partly because of that unusual method. She said she later held a canvas up to the mesh of his indoor cage so she could watch him at work.
Some other chimps use brushes or point to the colors they want on the canvas, but Brent comes up to smush pre-applied blobs of child-safe tempera paints with his tongue, she said.
"If we handed the canvas to them where it was on the inside, they might not want to hand it back," she said. "They might throw it around and step on it."
Bid in New York to Extend Legal Rights to Chimps Fails, Again
"Nearly 3,000 Wild Great Apes Stolen Each Year
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By REUTERS JAN. 2, 2015, 5:05 P.M. E.S.T.
(Reuters) - Less than a month after a New York state appeals court ruled that chimpanzees do not have legal rights and cannot be released from captivity, a case involving a second chimp has been dismissed.
Wise has said that Kiko, who is owned by primate expert Carmen Presti, is deaf from abuse suffered during the making of a Tarzan film and lives tied to a chain in a cement cage in Niagara Falls. He asked for Kiko to be released to a sanctuary in Florida, saying that private captivity is unsuitable for chimps because they are autonomous creatures.
The court in Rochester said Friday that habeas corpus may only be used when a person seeks immediate release from unlawful imprisonment, and not where a petitioner wants only to change the conditions of confinement rather than the confinement itself.
The Nonhuman Rights Project, the group founded by Wise that brought the lawsuit, said in a statement that it would ask New York's top court to review the decision.
"For 200 years, New York courts have used (habeas corpus) to move an individual from a place of less freedom to more freedom," the group said.
Presti, Kiko's owner, did not make an appearance in the case and could not be reached for comment.
In an earlier case brought by Wise, over a chimp named Tommy, an Albany appeals court ruled on Dec. 4 that primates cannot be afforded legal rights because they do not understand the responsibilities that follow.
The cases are among the first in the world to seek legal personhood for animals. While Wise has not been victorious, a judge in Argentina on Dec. 21 ruled that an orangutan living at a zoo was a "non-human person" unlawfully deprived of its freedom and ordered it released to a sanctuary.
Wise has not claimed that Kiko and Tommy were mistreated by their owners but said the cases challenge the very idea that chimps can be held in captivity.
He has said he will bring similar cases on behalf of elephants, dolphins, orcas and other intelligent animals.
The case is Nonhuman Rights Project v. Presti, New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Fourth Department, No. 14-357.
(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner; Editing by Ted Botha and Leslie Adler)
Chimpanzees granted petition to hear 'legal persons' status in court
New York judge grants order to show cause in case of Hercules and Leo, chimpanzees used for medical experiments and defended by attorneys
The judge’s argument in this case and others is that chimpanzees are intelligent, emotionally complex and self-aware enough to merit some basic human rights. Photograph: Martin Meissner/AP
Alan Yuhas in New York @alanyuhas Tuesday 21 April 2015 21.39 EDT Last modified on Wednesday 22 April 2015 15.49 EDT
For the first time in US history, a judge has granted two chimpanzees a petition – through human attorneys – to defend their rights against unlawful imprisonment, allowing a hearing on the status of “legal persons” for the primates.
On Monday, Manhattan supreme court justice Barbara Jaffe granted a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of two non-human plaintiffs, Hercules and Leo – chimpanzees used for medical experiments at Stony Brook University on Long Island. On Tuesday afternoon she struck the words “writ of habeas corpus” from the order, in order to clarify that she had not meant to imply the chimpanzees have legal person status.
The attorneys who brought the petition forward, part of the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP), argued – before the judge struck the words – that under New York .. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/new-york .. law, “only a ‘legal person’ may have an order to show cause and writ of habeas corpus issued in his or her behalf. The court has therefore implicitly determined that Hercules and Leo are ‘persons’.”
After the amendment to the order, NhRP adjusted its stance, noting “these cases are novel and this is the first time that an order to show cause has issued. We are grateful for an opportunity to litigate the issue of the freedom of the chimpanzees.”
“This is one step in a long, long struggle,” said Steven Wise, the lawyer leading the effort, before Jaffe amended her order. “She never says explicitly that our non-human plaintiffs were persons but by issuing the order … she’s either saying implicitly that they are or that they certainly can be. So that’s the first time that has happened.
“It feels great. We knew it was going to happen sometime,” he added. “Even though we’re scattered all around the country we all gave each other a high five over the phone.”
He said he suspects that Eric Schneiderman, who will represent Stony Brook as attorney general of New York, will argue that “Hercules and Leo are things and that they’re not persons, and that’s where the battle lines are drawn. Are they persons or are they not persons?”
“In our view,” the judges wrote, “it is this incapability to bear any legal responsibilities and societal duties that renders it inappropriate to confer upon chimpanzees the legal rights … that have been afforded to human beings.”
In another decision, a separate appeals court argued that taking a different chimpanzee, Kiko, to a sanctuary amounted to another form of imprisonment, and that habeas corpus amounted to an inappropriate remedy.
NhRP hopes to move the chimpanzees to the Save the Chimps sanctuary in Fort Pierce, Florida, where more than 250 chimps live on a series of islands .. http://www.savethechimps.org/about-us/faq/ .. along the Atlantic coast.
Opponents of Wise’s fight for limited rights for chimpanzees warn that the judge’s granting of the petition does not mean she endorses “personhood” for chimpanzees. Richard Cupp, a law professor at California’s Pepperdine University said “we should avoid reading too much into this document ordering a hearing.”
“It seems quite unlikely that a judge would intend to make such an exceptionally controversial decision that a chimpanzee is a person without even hearing arguments from the other side,” Cupp said. The suggestion that nonhuman animals are persons is “new terrain for judges”, he added.
Cupp and others argue that chimpanzees may deserve greater protections, but not rights. “No one should ever regard animals as if they were stones,” Richard Epstein, a New York University law professor told the Guardian .. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/08/tommy-gloversville-new-york-chimp-legal-person .. last year, but he said that Wise and his cohorts go too far into a labyrinth of questions about what separates humans from nonhuman animals.
NhRP has appealed against the decisions in Kiko and Tommy’s cases, and its next hearing on behalf of Hercules and Leo is scheduled for 27 May.
This article was appended to reflect Justice Jaffe’s amendment and the changed statement of NhRP on 21-22 April.
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