Focusing on the 95 to 98.7 percent of DNA they share with humans, their close emotional bonds, as well as the capacity of great apes to “feel fear and happiness, create tools, use languages, remember the past and plan for the future,” the Great Ape Project1 is lobbying for the kind of diminished rights provided “human children, prisoners, the insane, and the senile,” including the right to life and liberty and freedom from torture. The project’s directors, Princeton ethicist Peter Singer and Italian philosopher Paola Cavalieri, regard apes as sharing in a “community of equals” with humans. In June 2008, the Environmental Committee of the Spanish Parliament passed a resolution binding the country to the principles of the Great Ape Project; the legislature was given sixteen months to pass enabling legislation. Spain’s Catholic bishops objected that the vote undermines “a divine will that placed humans above animals.” We are back to the questions raised in Chapter 3, concerning whether or not an essential human nature exists. Australian animal rights activists are trying to have a chimp named Matthew Hiasl Pan declared a person so that donations to a cash-strapped animal rescue center might be made in his name. Their appeal has reached the European Court of Human Rights. Keep in mind that people in persistent vegetative states have legal rights and even corporations have been recognized as persons, with “free speech and equal protection rights, and the ability to sue and be sued.” Where do you stand?