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Oversexed, talky and inspired
Three new cookbooks run the gamut from the ridiculous to the truly essential.
By Ann Hodgman
[02/04/00]

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"Playing Botticelli" by Liza Nelson
Fans of Anne Lamott will go for this novel about the inevitable clash between an ex-flower-child mom and her desperate, rebellious daughter.
By Fiona Morgan
[02/03/00]

My favorite author, my worst interview
I worshipped militaristic Mormon science-fiction writer Orson Scott Card -- until we met.
By Donna Minkowitz
[02/03/00]

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"The Verificationist" by Donald Antrim
Another tour de force of antic surrealism mixed with melancholy, this one viewed from the ceiling of a pancake house.
By Andrew Roe
[02/02/00]

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From the New Yorker to the rez
Former "Talk of the Town" reporter Ian Frazier talks about hanging out with the Oglala Sioux.
By Craig Seligman
[02/01/00]

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Other contributors to "The Great Ape Project," including such primatologists as Jane Goodall, Geza Teleki and Roger Fouts, describe a growing certainty that the apes are astonishingly like us and unquestionably entitled to protection. The project's "Declaration on Great Apes" asks to extend "the community of equals to include all great apes: human beings, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans" in granting us all three rights -- the right not to be killed, except in circumstances such as self-defense; the right to liberty (except when criminally liable or for the protection of others); and the right not to be tortured. This last includes most painful experiments, except when the subject has given informed consent. And since the other apes can't give informed consent, that leaves humans as the only great apes you can hook up to the shock device. I don't know about you, but I generally turn down offers of that kind.

Rattling the Cage: Towards Legal Rights for Animals By Steven M. Wise, foreword by Jane Goodall Perseus Books, 332 pages Nonfiction Buy this book at B&N.com

In the late 1990s, New Zealand and Great Britain banned experimentation on great apes, though neither nation has granted them legal personhood. Even Richard Dawkins, a famously unsentimental biologist, supports the declaration. Dawkins examines the biological facts of our close relationship to the other great apes and concludes that they are more like us than they are different. Most supporters of the declaration argue not from molecular similarity, but from mental similarity. Much of this discussion comes from philosophers, who litter the animal rights movement with their terrifyingly Germanic prose. Philosophers in general love to propound definitions of what it is to be a person, and philosophers who support animal rights find that the more we learn about the other great apes, the more they seem to meet the criteria.

The line that divides humans from other animals gets moved every time we learn more about the animals. Man is the animal that uses tools -- what, you say chimps, otters, even birds use tools? Man is the animal that makes tools. What, wild chimps make tools? Well, man is the animal that demonstrates mental meta-representation, self-conception, conscience, logical and mathematical ability, the knowledge that minds exist, and symbolic and nonsymbolic communication. And should be able to dance backward in high heels, presumably.

No one argues that the other great apes are as capable as we are at this stuff (which might be why we picked these criteria), but as psychologist Robert Mitchell writes, "The great apes seem to differ from human beings by degrees [of self-consciousness] rather than in kind."

Mitchell's research focuses on imitation and deception, subjects that cast light on animals' self-images and on their knowledge of other minds. He relates the story of a young bottlenose dolphin in an aquarium trying to get attention from some people on the other side of the glass. Seeing one of them blow a cloud of cigarette smoke, she went to her mother, took a mouthful of milk, swam back to the glass and puffed it out so it made a cloud around her own head. It's cute, but it also demonstrates "communication via simulation and non-natural meaning."

Deception also demonstrates interesting things about consciousness of self and others and perhaps an explicit "theory of mind." H. Lyn White Miles, a sociologist and psychologist, worked with an orangutan, Chantek, who knows some sign language. Chantek stole a pencil eraser, popped it in his mouth and pretended to swallow. To prove it, he opened his mouth and signed "food eat." But in fact -- the liar! - - he had concealed it in his cheek, where he kept it until he could stash it in his bedroom.

One can't get too outraged about the theft of the eraser or Chantek's grossly dishonest testimony, but the matter of deception raises the issue of responsibility. Primatologist Frans de Waal, who has done extensive research on the lives of captive chimpanzees and bonobos, argues that "rights are part of a social contract that makes no sense without responsibilities."

If Chantek bites someone who tries to take his eraser, should he be held responsible? What if he kills someone? Or, in the example given by de Waal, if a cheetah attacks a gazelle, can a lawyer representing the gazelle sue the cheetah?

De Waal hopes that we can ensure decent treatment of animals not by giving them rights and lawyers, but by advocating a sense of obligation and an ethic of caring. De Waal also objects to "the animal rights movement's outrageous parallel with the abolition of slavery," which he calls not only insulting but also morally flawed. "Slaves can and should become full members of society," he writes. "Animals cannot and will not."

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