Willowbank Wildlife Reserve Frees its last Prisoners

The South Island's only two chimpanzees, will jet off today for their new home in Australia.

But, this is no journey of freedom for Charlie (pictured above, looking a bundle of joy) and Samantha, both imprisoned at Willowbank Wildlife Reserve since 1985.

They are merely swapping the bars and cages of Christchurch, for the bars and cages of Mogo Zoo, in New South Wales.

The arrogant hairless monkeys of Australia, can take their turn demeaning them, athromorphising their characteristics.

Watching them play, eat, fight and fuck.

English-speaking Australian chimps, can continue to employ the wanky names, Charlie and Samantha, their antipodean brothers branded them with.

Not happy with destroying their habitat, slaughtering chimpanzees and great-apes in the wild, the talking bipedal chimps see it as their right to enslave their closest relatives as well.

Charles and Samantha, may well possess the same IQ as a 3 to 4 year old human-chimp, but none of their rights.

Why not be done with completing the dissent of man, by stripping naked some individuals with downs- syndrome, and placing them in a zoo, for our titillation?

Let’s have some Alzheimer’s sufferers as the front-people, on adverts for breakfast-tea.

But until chimpanzees get these things called souls, like their fellow hominidae, who just happen to make the rules on the planet - the hairy chimps are doomed to be treated like shit.

After-all it’s our God-given right.

Human Rights for Chimps!

About 6 million years ago, what we now call Chimpanzees, and what we call ‘human’ ancestors, diverged.

Chimps went their way and we went in our own direction.

The split led to various,obvious differences.

Chimps are covered in hair, humans much less so.

A chimp’s brain is about one-third the size of an average human brain and we walk on two legs, whilst chimps typically walk on all fours.

Despite these obvious differences in terms of Genomes, Humans & Chimps are 98.3% identical.

99.4% of the crucial stuff.

Chimpanzee’s like their closest relatives are capable of compassion and joy, aggression and sadness.

Chimpanzee’s, are capable of sophisticated cooperation, hunting, sharing food, using different objects as tools etc.

Chimpanzee’s, can educate other chimpanzee’s.

Female Chimpanzee’s, have been observed ‘selling’ sex for food.

Chimpanzee’s, copulate in different positions, for pleasure only rather than procreation.

Chimpanzee infants stay around their mothers till around 12 years old.

The list of what we arrogantly call ‘human traits’ goes on.

Yet the hairless human Chimps have arbitrarily decided the sanctity of life, only applies to them and not their primate brethren.

Have you ever wondered what gives ‘human’ chimps the automatic rights to torture and imprison other chimps, at a scale that puts the indulgences of Nazi Germany to shame?

A Bonobo chimp may share the same I.Q as a five year old human but none of their rights and entitlements.

It’s fine by humans to conduct cruel and painful experiments on Chimpanzee’s but not a fellow five year old homosapien.

If we are so abjectly inclined towards manifesting our intellectual superiority - why not strip naked a group with downs syndrome, toss them behind the bars at a zoo, so humans without chromosomal disorders can gawk & laugh at their behaviour?

Even the most ardent Christian or Muslim now accepts it not just God that makes the wind blow, a plant grow but evidently it is only God that can create this undetectable thing called ‘a soul’ and care and nurture them.

It is religious doctrine that has created and continues to perpetrate the chasm that separates the hairless chimps from the hairy ones.

Chimps may act like humans, share a great percentage of what we like to call human genomes – but they don’t have souls.

It is these things called souls that have lead humans to differentiate ourselves to a ‘God given’ position - that’s one that sanctifies barbaric cruelty against Chimpanzee’s.

Along with every other creature on the planet Chimpanzee’s are ‘souless’ beasts.

Nothing but mere ‘animals’.

So when did humans become human enough for God to warrant us being infused with these indefinable things souls?

Homohabilis perhaps?

Australopithecus may be?

Was it a Cro-Magnon toddler that first ran up to his mother and said “Hey look Mum I’ve now got a soul”?

But any critical thought along this tact would drag us from the hard facts of bio-chemistry, molecular biology etc and into the superstitious, scientifically-unfounded realm called theology.

Without the ability to sell your soul a one way ticket to eternal life the very foundations of religion would crumble.

Unfortunately for the hairy Chimpanzees that walk on all fours there are enough hairless bipedal chimps, stupid enough to believe in things called ‘a soul’.

Surely it’s about time we woke-up as a species and accepted - however reluctantly it must be for those who believe in books like The Bible - that we are all just intelligent bipedal chimpanzee’s!

Get over this chimp phobia!

Think for one moment what a Chimpanzee sees when he looks at a human?

By in large they see this narcissistic and cruel unit of rival chimps - best avoided.

When this realisation of where we fit into the earth’s species is adopted by enough of us – then may be we’ll begin treating not just Chimpanzee’s better, but other creatures as well.

And when we reach this level of human development, and get our true role imprinted inside our oversized craniums we might, just might, start treating our fellow bipedal chimps and the environment better as well.

Fat chance of this happening, whilst religion is still on the scene.