How they "think"........Judge Hears Arguments On Granting Chimpanzees Human Rights

Judge Hears Arguments On Granting Chimpanzees Human Rights - BuzzFeed News:
"A New York City judge heard arguments over the rights of two chimpanzees, Hercules and Leo, that animal rights advocates hope to free from Stony Brook University.
Last month Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Barbara Jaffe granted a hearing on the chimpanzees’ habeas corpus petition, leaving Stony Brook University to defend keeping them in captivity.
Habeas corpus is a legal petition that detainees use to seek relief from unlawful imprisonment, and by granting habeas corpus to chimps, Jaffe endorsed the idea that they deserve the rights of human beings.
The chimpanzees are kept at the Long Island university, which is part of the State University of New York (SUNY) system, where they are used in locomotion studies.
Steven Wise, a lawyer for the Nonhuman Rights Project argued on Wednesday that chimpanzees are “autonomous and self-determining beings,” that they have “personhood” rights.
“They are the kind of beings who can remember the past and plan for the future,” Wise said in court as to why detaining the animals was wrong.
“The chimpanzees are in prison, being exploited by Stony Brook, and they don’t even know why they are there.
We only do that for our worst criminals around us.”
Wise later argued that Hercules and Leo are “essentially in solitary confinement, at the mercy of their keepers.”..."