Gone Ape

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- The eight bonobos at the Great Ape Trust of Iowa howled Tuesday as they watched two trumpeter swans dip into a lake for the first time. Who can blame them? Not only will the apes get new neighbors, they'll get a chance to name the rare birds. "They were very excited," said scientist Karyl Swartz. Read the rest here.

I don't mean to disparage our "most humanlike" friends, but I never had to help my children name an animal by holding up signs or providing them a list from which to choose. These are grown apes with "sophisticated language skills?" If they are so sophisticated why not ask them to post names for the swans on their blog or at least to write down their own list!

These animal intelligence reports are always so overblown. Don't people realize that Lassie, Flipper, Mr. Ed, etc. couldn't really do all that stuff themselves? It was all the stupid humans standing around who wrote, directed, and filmed them who made them look so smart. It reminds me of the absurd statement on the PETA website (find it yourself, I refuse to link to it) that pigs are smarter than 3-year-old children. Now, I've had a few 3-year-old children and they are pretty darn smart. (And these are boys I'm talking about; we all know girls are much smarter.) Here is the statement of Dr. Donald Broom on the PETA site: "[P]igs have the cognitive ability to be sophisticated. Even more so than dogs, and certainly 3-year-olds." Also, fish are "so good-natured," and cows "are all individuals."

This might sound good to some people (maybe you) but it is exactly this minimizing of the uniqueness and exceptionalism of humans that leads to caring for animals and killing people. The same types who decry the horrors of meat-packing think that an unborn child's survival depends on nothing but the "choice" of the mother. This is a little crass, but Jesus came to us as a man, not a lamb. He ate fish and other meat. He stood up for little children (against his own disciples), and drowned a large herd of pigs. Let's keep our warm fuzzies about animals in perspective, please.