Allan Haverholm

I honestly thought I’d seen the last media coverage on Santino the chimp when I wrote my previous post on him. Or, at least, I thought the low point had been reached.
People’s capacity for simplification and their hunger for lowbrow entertainment have no limits, though, and in today’s Swedish Metro he pops up again.
The headline to the pictured article reads “He applauded the queen”. Queen Silvia visited the Furuvik zoo where he’s kept, and the subject has changed from his paradigm-changing display of foresight onto that of her royal safety.
Reduced from a creature capable of abstract thought that may parallel our own, he is now described as a stone-throwing monkey that “didn’t get the oppurtunity” to take a swing at her highness.
Just as the press ignores that two weeks ago, Santino was cause for rethinking our view of how chimps (and possibly other animals) perceive the world, it is also forgotten that the poor guy has been neutered to counter his hostility toward guests.
I could go on about our devotion to royal bloodlines as a metaphor of how mankind see ourselves in relation to animals, but I can’t be bothered.
Nor will I draw parallels between the effects of castration on Santino’s behavior (and the loss of insight into the animal mind that that entails) and the way comfy, celebrity chit-chat disguised as reportage numbs the public mind and keeps the readers from having an opinion about anything outside primetime TV.
I’m really too sad and disillusioned, and yes, I just might go hug a tree now, thankyouverymuch.

Tags: animal rights, chimp, consciousness, media, Santino

Santino, a chimp in a Swedish zoo, has been discovered to be gathering stones and concrete fragments after opening hours, shaping them into disc-shaped projectiles in anticipation hurling them at the next morning’s crowds of gawkers.
His calm preparations for the morning’s bursts of anger and resent clearly show more foresight and conscience of his situation than a certain former US president, and has led behavioral scientists to conclude that Santino has an abstract “inner world” that animals (or Dubya) have not previously been considered capable of.
Obviously, this raises questions as to our right to keep animals imprisoned for display, and as the song goes, “if you tolerate this, your children will be next.” Extending the US comparison to a logical end, if we subject thinking creatures to that kind of treatment, the North American government might justify Gitmo by selling guided-tour passes to the public.
All jokes aside, if there is further proof of animals’ ability to think abstractly, ie. planning ahead, having an imagination, considering different scenarios depending on the outcome of events … If that is the case, we as a race will have to consider expanding the limits of civil rights gradually, as species by species may display characteristics that we in the past have thought unique to humankind.
Recently, the *current* American president was (consciously or unconsciously) likened to a chimp; an insult by the ruling paradigm, but not so much if Santino’s behavior is a common trait among chimpanzees. Quite generally, chimps are considered to possess mental abilities of a three-year old human. I happen to be the father of a boy that age, and I would contest his human rights with any means necessary.
In the very recent past, non-Caucasian families of humanity were held to be of inferior stock to the Western breed, and accordingly kept as slaves, or persecuted, or merely suffered lowercaocial standing and marginalization. There is a thin line between being sold as slave labor and being put on display for a minor fee. Either way you’re reduced to a trade good.
Now may be a good time to add that I eat meat, wear leather, and have always defended my right to do so, provided the animals whose bodily remains I have consumed were treated decently. That definition of “decency” may have to change now.
And Santino? Was of course castrated immediately to ensure the safety of the zoo’s paying visitors.

The Guardian

Tags: animal rights, chimp, consciousness, media, Santino