Great primates recognize their image in mirrors and photographs, send kisses, get depressed and enjoy a friendly shoulder. For these reasons the members of GAP Project defend their rights.

By: Maíra Lie Chao

Couple Pedro and Vânia Maria Ynterian had just adopted Guga, a male chimpanzee, who is 9 years old today. They were driving along a road when a truck pushed the car out of the path. Then I yelled Oh, my God, Guga, who was still a baby, grabbed my hand as he wanted to show me safety, tells Vânia. Since then, every single day, I got more surprised with his intelligence. Every morning he saw me preparing breakfast. The first coffee, in fact, he was the one who drank with me. These and other stories made the couple to question if Guga was only a pet.

Living together with the chimpanzee made the couple to buy the cause of the rights of the great primates. Every time I knew an animal was being mistreated, I thought about Guga and about what could had happened with him in a situation like that, remembers Pedro. He could not stand that and started to provide new home for victims of mistreating.

Today, the businessman invests a great amount of his money in the 23 alqueires of Velho Jatobá Animal Shelter and GAP Sanctuary, in Sorocaba (SP). He spends at least 12 hours of his days there, taking care of the chimpanzees. After Guga, more 47 chimpanzees came, apart from dozens of tamarins, gibbons and others. One detail: Pedro knows the name of all his chimpanzees, and also their personalities.

Not by chance, his dedication to the great primates had been awarded and Pedro has been nominated the president of Great Ape Project – GAP International, which he is affiliated to, and this turned Brazil to be the headquarters of the organization. Created by philosopher Peter Singer in 1994, GAP is an idealistic movement that defends the rights of great primates. For those who do not know, there are five of them: men, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and bonobos (pygmy chimpanzees).

Originally, GAP does not focus on the rescue of the animals. But the members of GAP Brazil participate of the idealistic activities and also rescue those animals who are mistreated and do not have a safe home to stay, providing them all the support and comfort. Brazil is the most active country and develops a lot of activities concerned to the defense of great primates. It is also the only one that has sanctuaries affiliated to GAP, informs Pedro. There are four private sanctuaries that rehome 74 chimpanzees.

Pedro affirms that the coexistence with these animals makes anyone to believe that they are people. The businessman also points that he learns more with the chimpanzees everyday that passes, apart from always get astonished with their intelligence and abilities. Another day I was playing house with Guga. I took a pot, put grass in the water and started to cook. On the following day, when I arrived to greet him, he had already prepared the kitchen and was stirring the leaves soup, says proudly mommy Vânia.

In the sanctuaries, the chimpanzees are rehomed from zoos and circus, where, in general, they are tortured. In circus they have their teeth pulled out, are castrated (so that they do not become a threat) and can even develop other deficiencies. Hulk, for instance, was a victim of these kinds of aggressions. When they found him, he was blind due to a severe infection in his eyes. Lucky, the former owner sold him to Pedro. Later, an eye doctor operated him so that he could recover part of his vision.

A few years ago some local legislation that prohibits the entrance of circus with animals were approved in cities and São Paulo, Campinas (SP), Rio de Janeiro and Curitiba are some of them. This, supported by the pressure of non-governmental organizations and of the population, resulted in the fact that the circus owners want to get rid of their animals. Then, they negotiated the chimpanzees with the owners of the sanctuaries. Today, the relationship of Pedro with the circus owners is light. In the beginning he used to suffer death menaces and was even victim of an attack. When I started this work, in 2000, one chimpanzee was charged in an average of US$ 15.000 to US$ 20.000. To a circus it was not worth to sell its money source, remembers.

Although the chimpanzees are mistreating targets in circus, the businessman guarantees that it is in zoos that they suffer the most. Sometimes for the lack of company and other times, for the stress of being exhibited to strangers. In the circus they have a relationship with one person, that can be loving and kind. In the zoo everything is impersonal. And they suffer with the harassment of an ignorant audience. They are kept eight to nine hours exposed to people they do not know. Then they yell, throw things. They get so stressed that they end up getting nuts”, explains Pedro.

Chimpanzees are very intelligent beings. Putting them in these conditions is like closing a man in a cage”, argues the businessman. Every animal that had the diagnostics of high levels of depression or insanity came from zoos. When they arrive, they take homeopathy medicines, like Charles and Caco, who used to do self-mutilation (they used to bite themselves and pull out hair from their arms) to call attention. Here I have an asylum to the chimpanzees that I have rescued and that will never be normal again. I manage to improve their quality of life, but they will still be crazy. It is irreversible.

What separates these primates from usω According to genetics, only 0,6% of DNA. This tiny difference does not allow them to speak, read and write. Well, they can even not to say words like you and I, but they understand our talk. When the veterinarian Camila Gentile got near Vitor showing wounds on her face and saying Look, I got hurt, the chimpanzee wanted to touch her face. But, for not having control over his power he could hurt, without any intention, the doctor. No, Vitor, it is still hurting. Do not touch, she warned. He got near one of Camila\’s scratched cheek and gave her a kiss.

They understand us very well. There are times that I get near the fence with a refreshment bottle. Then, I talk to myself out loud I do not find a glass here. Soon one of them brings me a glass, says Vânia.
And there is more: these animals are so intelligent that they recognize themselves and other primates in mirror and photographs. Billy, other chimpanzee from the sanctuary, sit on a little table near the fence and asked to see the photos that our photographer had taken. Karime showed them to him in the photo camera and Billy demonstrated to be extremely happy with that. To thank her, gave her a lovely kiss on the cheek.

Due to these human behaviors, Selma Mandruca, president of GAP Brazil and owner of a sanctuary in Vargem Grande Paulista, defends the chimpanzees legally, with a different nomination: humanized beings. She justifies affirming that they are not domesticated animals, like a dog or a cat, and also can not be called men. On behalf of GAP, Selma is giving support to the case of a habeas-corpus recently ordered for two chimpanzees, Megh and Debby, 3 and 4 years old.

This legal option was used for the first time to a primate in 2005. Female chimpanzee Suiça, 23 years old, had a crisis after the death of her partner in the zoo. Considering the fact that chimpanzees are social beings and do not manage to live alone, Suiça started to develop mental illness and the habeas-corpus ordered for her to leave the place and go to a sanctuary to live with their equals was approved. Unfortunately, she passed away one day before she would be released.

Megh and Debby\’s story is different. They were born in the zoo Paraíso Perdido, in Fortaliza, that had been closed by Ibama in 2006. The babies were donated to Rubens Forte, who took them to Ubatuba, north coastline of São Paulo state. But Ibama argued that the transport documentation was irregular and that the sanctuary could not home the animals. Then, Forte moved the sanctuary to Ibiúna and it had been approved by the institution. From this moment on the property had been target of lawsuits.

Aiming not to loose the guard of the chimpanzees, Rubens ordered a habeas-corpus in a Regional Justice Tribunal and it had been denied. To make things worse, a judge ordered that the chimpanzees should be reintroduced in their habitat – what is considered to be a death sentence. First of all, the natural habitat of the chimpanzees is Africa. Second, they were born in captivity and would not survive in the jungle by themselves. Facing this sticking point, Rubens ordered the habeas-corpus in the Superior Justice Tribunal. By that time one of the ministers decided to analyze the situation better.

According to GAP, this fact raises the discussion about the rights of great primates. As long as the habeas-corpus is a legal alternative conceded to humans, if it is approved this time, the executive in charge is recognizing chimpanzees as humanized beings. As a result, it is going to be forbidden the torture, the imprisonment, the commercial use and the experiment in which they are used as guinea pigs.

This is the main objective of GAP, because, as humanized beings, chimpanzees have rights that are not being respected, says Selma. After that, we will have legal arguments whenever we see an injustice committed against them. The result of this habeas-corpus order must be known by the beginning of the year.

Pedro Ynterian anticipates that in the legal area there are people who are for, against and the ones who are in doubt. We created a doubt in a lot of people\’s minds and this was exactly what we had intended to do. We have a debate that will raise a better conclusion than the one we have today, that the animal has no rights”, affirms. Today it is the chimpanzee that is practically human. Tomorrow, it will be the rest of the animals. Within a time every one of them will have to be respected.

THE DIFFERENCE IS VERY SMALL

The difference between the DNA of men and chimpanzees is small. But in these few genes lays the difference of a dominant species and one threatened to extinction. They allow our species to talk; in other animals, however, they only allow sounds, like grunts and yells, in the case of the ones who would be our ancestors.

German scientists discovered in the gene FOXP2, presented in all the mammals, a particularity that could have caused an important mutation, millions of years ago. The exact function of this gene is not completely known, but, in the apes exanimate (chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans) the amino acid sequence is almost identical and the proteins have equivalent structures. In men, on the other hand, the mutation of two unique nucleotides (the raw material of a gene) resulted in a different protein, which could even have a distinct function from the original.

Later, during a research with a group of people who presented imperfections in this gene, the scientists discovered that they had difficulty to say some words – in general, they were not able to pronounce them or did not fix the correct sequence of the phonemes. It was then concluded that FOXP2 can be a gene involved in word production, particularly in the delicate muscle movements necessary to talk. It is not the gene of the language, because this process is much more complex than pronounce words, but surely it is a associated gene very important that was formed in the last 200 thousand years, when Homo sapiens started to spread all over the world.

Scientists from Detroit University (USA) also examined a hundred of genes of men, chimpanzees and other animals and got to the conclusion that, in fact, the chimpanzees are much closer to men, from DNA point of view, than the other animals.

The studied genes were those that lead to the production of proteins, called code genes. The genetic distance between men and chimpanzees revealed to be so small that both should be classified as the same species – something like Homo macacus, if Latin allowed that.

The rules of zoological classification are that two species with a common ancestor should share the same gender. And the genetic distance is so small that it can only be explained with the existence of a common ancestor.

In other words, chimpanzees are our cousins, so we had the same grandparents in a certain moment of our zoological tree. Scientists consider that this moment is situated around 6 millions years ago. By that time, men and chimpanzees got separated from gorillas. Before that, men, chimpanzees and gorillas had separated from orangutans. Therefore, with we would have great grand parents in common and with orangutans, great-great grand parents. But as long these are more distant, the genetic neighborhood does not oblige us to include them in the gender Homo.

While gorillas are reserved and orangutans are rowdy, chimpanzees are loving, happy and calm. Chimpanzees like a lap just like our babies, hug the keepers they saw the day before as they had not meet for years. And like to learn new things. A chimpanzee is able to memorize the figures presented in a screen and associate to the words that identify them. Flower, tree, chair, table – one can name any figure of the screen that the chimpanzee, after having learnt it, point it with no mistake. It can also be abstract figures, like triangle, or symbols, like the triangle inside a circle. To confirm, the figures have their position changed and the chimpanzee continues to guess it right.

And this is not all. At centre Great Ape Trust, in Iowa (USA), Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and her team develop studies with chimpanzees bonobos – a species of lower stature, and because of that is called as pygmy chimpanzee, originated from Congo, Africa. The centre is a school where the students are the bonobos, in several levels of learning. The class rooms reproduce areas of jungle similar to the ones in Congo. In the external area there is a forest similar to the natural habitat of these chimpanzees. In a video produced in this forest, a bonobo is taken by his teacher to do a picnic.

In a glade, the teacher asks for the chimpanzee to prepare the fire, in which spits with pieces of cheese are going to be cooked. He starts to get branches and sticks. He breaks the bigger branches in two, snapping it on his knees with the precision of a man. He does a little mound, putting together some dry leaves and paper delivered by the teacher. When everything is ready, gets near the teacher and looks into his pocket until he finds a lighter. He puts fire on the paper, light in and off continuously, so he does not burn his fingers, and soon the sticks are burning up.

When the foundue is ready, the teacher offers a spit to the chimpanzee, who denies if for being very hot, but in a row he blows the cheese to cool it before eating. At the time they have to leave, the bonobo gets a bucket, fill it with water and burn the fire out, taking care not to let any coal on. After that he goes to the car, a kind of buggy, sits in the drive seat, puts the gear and get away into the woods, leaving the teacher behind.

But not only are the similarities between men and chimpanzees astonishing. Orangutans from Sumatra, Borneo and Malaysia are also capable of showing that they are not people by a very few difference. It has already been identified 24 examples of cultural transmission among them. One of the most amazing cultural inheritances is the fact that, after eating, orangutans clean their mouths with trees leaves. They also use them to drink water, doing a shell with it. And they know that, to raise the sound, they just need to put them on their mouth and scream. They also do that with the hands, putting them in a shell form in front of the mouth, like us when we want to call someone.

Orangutans know how to use tools to eat and drink. The neesia fruit, a very high tree from Asiatic southeast, has a lot of spins in its skin, but the juice is overwhelming. To drink it without getting hurt, orangutans pierce the fruit with a little stick and suck the juice that flows from it. Orangutans are threatened to extinction because of the deforestation of the region. Like chimpanzees and gorillas, they can not talk. But they have a lot of stories to tell Homo sapiens.

Planeta Magazine – January 2009 – Editión 436 – Pages 30 à 35