From the article, paraphrased:
When Steven Wise, a 63-year-old legal scholar in the field of animal law, decided to poke around Circle L Trailer Sales to assess the living conditions of the Reindeer living on the company grounds, he was horrified to discover that a former circus chimpanzee named Tommy was forced to live in inhumane conditions:
A rancid milk-musk odor wafted forth and with it the sight of an adult chimpanzee, crouched inside a small steel-mesh cell. Some plastic toys and bits of soiled bedding were strewn behind him. The only visible light emanated from a small portable TV on a stand outside his bars, tuned to what appeared to be a nature show.
Being sufficiently moved by witnessing that heinous crime, Wise and a few cohorts strolled into the Fulton County Courthouse wielding a legal document the likes of which had never been seen in any of the world's courts, a legal package including a detailed account of the "petitioner's" cruel and unusual solitary confinement along with nine affidavits gathered from leading primatologists, underscoring the physical and psychological damages such living conditions endured by a being with such cognitive capability. Tommy would not, however, have anticipated that he was about to make legal history as the first nonhuman primate to ever sue a human captor in an attempt to gain his own freedom.
Granting rights associated with personhood to non-persons has been discussed extensively before, but would be giving personhood to animals be a dangerous slippery-slope? Would be the mark of a more humane and mature society?
(Score: 3, Funny) by tangomargarine on Monday April 28 2014, @03:15PM
Ethically? Intentionally? Chinchilla?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday April 28 2014, @03:18PM
Intentionally?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Techwolf on Monday April 28 2014, @03:19PM
Intentionally. Posting on a tablet is not ideal. Plus being a horriable speller doen't help much. While I'me good on computers, mechinicial, and other tech, language skills are sadly lacking in me.