This last week, the world has been in mourning for Koko the beloved mountain gorilla who learned to speak in American sign language. Koko was born on the 4th of July 1971, hence her name “Fireworks-child” (in Japanese), shortened to “Koko.” This fireworks child was a prodigy – she learned to play the recorder, and to sign over 1,000 signs and understand 2,000 words of spoken English. Koko was sad when she lost a pet, spoke about her longing for a child (the pet kitten was a close substitute) and talked about death and her own death. She also played with words and mixed them up in new combinations. She once described herself as a “fine-gorilla-person.”

Did humans teach Koko about language, or did Koko teach humans? Koko could speak in sign language,
but also more importantly, she could listen. When she listened, she interpreted things in her own way.
Despite criticism of the Koko project (which stated that Koko was mimicking her trainers), Koko
responded in unexpected ways. When she was asked where gorillas go to when they die, she said
“comfortable-hole-bye.” There were a few occasions when she expressed deep sadness and grief, like
when her pet kitten was hit by a car and killed.

Language is often used as an excuse to elevate humans above other animals. There were scientists who
felt Koko’s use of language was meaningless, as she didn’t learn grammar and syntax. But throughout
her life, Koko used sign language not as a lifeless toy or tool to get food and water, but a way to
communicate and describe her world. Communication –- rather than language –- was the key. Koko
and her researchers built a rapport together, where words could mean more than the dictionary
definition, they could mean complex emotional states and refer to shared understanding between
Koko and the researchers. Above all, what Koko taught us is that language is a human invention, but
communication is common to all animals. For that, we owe a debt to Koko, our Gorilla teacher.

Prof. Kevin Boileau

There are a number of points we at Freedom4Animals would like to make about the Zoo Director’s decision to choose the violent alternative in the zoo’s murder of Harambe, the innocent and imprisoned Gorilla.

First: Harambe never choose a life of imprisonment. Humans chose that for him. Because of that choice, we believe the Zoo owed him a fiduciary duty to protect his interests and his welfare always. The best choice would have been to send him to a sanctuary, but because the zoo chose to imprison him, the fiduciary duty follows.

Second: Because Harambe is a non-human primate he is not considered to be a “person” with due process, legal rights under the U.S. Constitution. Instead, under the “chattel” doctrine, he is considered to be property much like an orange or a chair, other than the enfeebled Animal Welfare Act which never protected him in a meaningful way. We find this intellectually dissatisfying because Harambe shares all the important traits that make humans human. He had a life plan; he had intention; he had moods; he was social; he required love and protection; he had autonomy and sentience.

Third: Many people are feeling outrage about the unjustified killing of Harambe because their morality diverges from what the law protects. They know something is intuitively wrong with the Zoo Director’s actions but they cannot articulate it in terms of rights and due process. Freedom4Animals will, therefore, speak for Harambe, our fallen cousin with DNA almost identical to ours.

Fourth: Humans base their legal rights on illusory and confusing notions about so-called natural rights. In reality, humans claim natural rights by fiat, and then find it easy to construct legal rights based on them. Within this worldview, humans always have greater ontological value than any other sentient and autonomous being. In cases of conflict humans, therefore, always win, and other beings always lose. This comes from the autonomous, acquisitive, possessive self of the Enlightenment, a philosophy that encourages humans to commodify everything and everyone around them, including non-human primates. In the case of Harambe, he was nothing more than a source of revenue to the North American system of zoos. The zoo director proved that on Saturday, the day after Harambe’s 17^th birthday.

Fifth: We propose a new kind of human subjectivity that chooses a gentler and kinder orientation toward other sentient beings, and which assumes ontological parity with other primates. This new way in the world we call vivantonomy, which espouses a philosophy of vivantology. It would also grant all primates the same kind of rights that humans enjoy. In that case, someone would stand in for Harambe and due the zoo and the mother for negligence or worse, obtaining justice for this beautiful, innocent primate who was guilty of no malfeasance of any kind. Without this form of justice, we believe that we only continue a new kind of holocaust against non-human primates, much like Nazi Germany did against Jews. It has the same logic and motivation.

Sixth: We propose a primate rights bill that prevent this sort of murderous behavior by a zoo director and which would also seek justice in a court of law for its violation. The title of our book is a Prolegomenon toward a Primate Rights Bill, which is on amazon.com, authored by Nazarita Goldhammer and Prof. Kevin Boileau at Freedom4Animals, two scientist-philosophers who are working tirelessly for theoretical and practical possibilities for human transformation. Our goal is to utilize all revenue from the sales of this book to introduce federal legislation that will close zoos and other legislation that will protect a new due process right for the important interests of all primates, human or non-human.

Seventh: The Zoo never exercised its fiduciary duty to Harambe after its original counterpart falsely imprisoned him from the first day of his precious life. The Cincinnati Zoo designed an enclosure that was the structural and negligent cause of Harambe’s intentional killing and, in fact, it did not protect against the negligent acts of the boy’s mother. Then, after this systematic treatment of Harambe as a commodification—it chose the violent alternative. When the Director directed the killing, he proved the value of Harambe’s life to the Zoo and to the people of Cincinnati.  There were many choices along the way that would have better protected Harambe. Now, in the 13^th hour of his life, he has no rights because he is a thing, no better than the feces of our capitalistic greed and our ignorance about the truth: Harambe was a person.

The question now is: What are we going to do about it?

Prof. Kevin Boileau

Co-Executive Director

Freedom4Animals

415.830.0065