Gisela Kaplan and Lesley Rogers
The authors of Orang-utans in Borneo, published by University of New England Press, reply to Jane Bennett.
In the review of our book in WISENET Journal (Number 40, February 1996), conservation was raised as a pivotal issue. Conservation, although not the main theme of our book, was certainly an underlying theme and deserves further debate. We welcome the opportunity to do that. The orang-utan has been a particularly neglected ape, neglected in terms of scientific interest, neglected in terms of funding and in terms of world interest.
The area of conservation and primate rehabilitation has spawned a number of controversies, particularly with respect to the great apes. Questions include: how can we make decisions about species and rainforests of which we know so little; and how can one best bring home the message that the great apes will become extinct unless some drastic measures are taken now? By 'drastic measures' we do not mean preservation of orang-utans in zoos, awaiting better times when they might be released.
Our book attempted, at least in part, to promote the conservation of orang-utans through drawing attention to their similarity to humans and this, so the review alleged, does injustice to the orang-utan. This topic alone is dynamite because it raises the much more fundamental question on how science, philosophy and the world in general have viewed animals in the past and how we regard them in the present.
Not everyone believes that we have a need to save animal species, or especially the many thousands of species of the rainforest. There is a substantial international network of the economically powerful whose aims are profit centred to the extent that animals do not feature at all. To them, nature is a supermarket from which one plucks what is perceived to be required at the time and likely to bring profit, irrespective of whether doing so affects non-renewable resources and how much damage is created in the wake of 'enterprise'.
Further, there are breeding programs of selected species including orang-utans which at times imply that as long as we have the skill to reproduce and keep alive a species (and its DNA) in captivity it is of little direct concern whether the habitat of the species disappears temporarily. In better times 'we' may reintroduce them to the wild.
It is not entirely far-fetched to claim that this approach to preservation of an animal species is akin to the attitude one may hold towards plants. More perniciously, in fact, such exercises of preservation may perpetuate unchallenged the old cartesian view that animals are nothing but mechanistic beings. Animals in the view of many zoo personnel and a surprisingly large number of scientists have no consciousness, no feelings, no intent and no culture.
Publications that do attempt to debate attributing consciousness or emotions to animals are often either branded as radical or dismissed as unscientific. We do not mind being regarded as radical. We believe it is important at this crucial juncture of world history, in which an unprecedented number of animals and plants are disappearing every year, to point out for every species that a) they are important ecologically (ultimately also for human survival) and b) that the cartesian world view of animals is incorrect.
Our book has brought together all scientific knowledge so far at hand about the behaviour of orang-utans and it has done so with the intent that such knowledge leads one to conclude that orang-utans are complex, thinking, and feeling beings.
To acknowledge the similarities between apes and humans is, in fact, an important step away from the human-centric position which considers that humans are separated from all animals, including apes, by an insuperable divide. Over centuries it has been maintained that humans are endowed uniquely with superiority in intelligence, tool use, brain laterality and many other features. Such a constructed divide has allowed unquestioned exploitation of animals.
Many of the characteristics that once were thought to be unique to humans are now known to be present in animals. Brain lateralization is an example of this, as we discussed in the book. With the accumulating evidence of tool use in animals, memory ability, problem solving ability and other surprising aspects of complex cognition in animals, the absolute uniqueness of humans has disappeared. Our difference from other species appears to be a matter of degree, not of kind.
The reviewer has fallen into a very old trap. By pointing out similarities between humans and other apes one is in fact attempting to break the old human-centred divide. Needless to say this is not the same as anthropomorphism.
This is the picture forming on the basis of scientific evidence, but it must work in opposition to centuries of human culture that has placed Homo sapiens on a pedestal. Peter Singer has suggested that our attitude to animals has been shaped by the simple fact that we eat them. To him, this has shaped religious myths, popular prejudices and even scientific attitudes.
We have reached a time when these attitudes must change, and to convince people that to extend rights for equality to apes is a first step in the process. As the Great Ape Project outlines, the recognition of the similarity between humans and the other apes should allow us to extend to apes basic rights for survival, protected from abuse and in their native habitat. We should note also that, along with the protection of the orang-utan's habitat, countless other species that live in the same rainforest will be protected. To make this bridge from humans to the apes will, hopefully, lay the basis for changing attitudes to other animals also.
Jane Bennett has misunderstood this strategic approach. She claimed that conservation of orang-utans is 'hamstrung' by the reluctance of conservation agencies to be seen as anthropomorphic and unscientific if they support orang-utans and blames The Great Ape Project, and ourselves, for creating this situation.
While we find it difficult to believe that conservation organisations would have such a limited view, let us consider it nevertheless. Bennett concludes her review with a plea for protecting orang-utans so that future generations will have the 'opportunity to stalk the wild red ape in its own forest for poaching or for peace'. For poaching! No wonder she does not like idea of extending human rights to the apes!
This should make it clear that covering in our book the debate about the similarities between orang-utans and humans is not esoteric, as the reviewer suggests. It is a debate that will continue despite such attempts to marginalise it, and it is one that will, we predict, provide governments and conservation organisations with clear directives for preserving apes and the rainforest.
We agree with Bennett that rehabilitation centres are not the answer to conservation, and we made this very clear in our book. Rehabilitation centres are, however, a necessary response to the impact of logging and agricultural practices. Without them, what would happen to orang-utans orphaned by loss of their mothers in logging accidents or by being electrocuted by power lines, or to youngsters who were clever enough to escape the poachers? Should we close down rehabilitation centres and let these individuals die?
We are of the firm opinion that rehabititation centres should not be used as smoke screens for conservation of orang-utans and it is a tragedy that westerners will donate money for rehabilitation programs but not to conservation, and not to political action for stopping, or at least limiting, logging and the destruction of the rainforest through other human intervention. These matters are a good deal more complex than the reviewer presented them.
Political, ecological and conservation issues aside, as scientists and scholars we need to develop integrity in our work. Scientifically, our work and our arguments need to be impeccable -in the case of orang-utans we have now revealed another example of a species for which the articifically created divide between human and non-human primates cannot be upheld. Meanwhile the carnage goes on and this magnificent species is rapidly declining in numbers. What should follow the revelations of our book and others like it, is moral outrage.
Prof. Gisela Kaplan, Centre for Research in Aboriginal and Multicultural Studies, UNE
Prof. Lesley Rogers, Department of Physiology, UNE, Armidale
How to get a copy of this book:
Orang-utans in Borneo, by G. Kaplan and L.T. Rogers, University of New England Press, 1994. ISBN 1-875821-13-9. Can be ordered from University Partnerships, 1st Floor Richardsons Arcade, Beardy Street, Armidale, NSW 2350. Fax: (067) 72-5230.