primate rights

You stated that you understand that sign language is not a trick in your premise five, but contradictory to that statement, your premise one includes sign language as a "stupid trick". "Or any other stupid tricks of that sort doesn"t make them any closer to a human than other trained animals." So if I"ve offended your "intelligence" somehow, I shall not point out your obvious argumentative flaws. 1.By the logic you are using, people are only highly trained animals. They learn to do things like drive, fly, etc. because other people teach them how based on the made-up standards of society. Whether they can be taught those things, I do not know, I"m sure they hold the metal facilities in order to do complex things. 2.What you would deem animal cruelty is not what others might see it as. The group fighting for Tommy"s rights see Tommy being held in cages in solitary confinement as though he were a prisoner. More often than not monkeys "behave" around people, trained or not, unless they feel threatened. It"s more likely for a human to commit a crime or do something wrong, than a monkey. 3.Again, you cannot just assume that monkeys do not have the ability to do something. They have the complexity for sign language, they might have the ability to understand basic mathematics. First off, a police officer would be asking the question "why"?, not anyone in court. Secondly, if the monkey knew sign language, the officer could just ask that way. Society also has in place protections for people who do not speak or understand English, for example Miranda Rights, because just because someone doesn"t speak English or understand the American legal system doesn"t mean that they are not entitled to their rights. Thirdly, and most importantly, for anyone to answer the question why, they would incriminate themselves, and they have the legal right not to answer. The Fifth Amendment protects people from that specific circumstance. No one actually has to cooperate with the police, and they are innocent until PROVEN guilty, and it would be the polices" job to prove beyond reasonable doubt that that crime was committed by a monkey, so unless you"re saying monkeys cannot have rights because police officers can no longer do their jobs then this argument is irrelevant. 4.Those animals do not have nearly as many similar traits to humans as monkeys do. The fact that they can do this one thing does not take away from the fact that this is another example of the similarity between humans and other primates. 5.To your question, "can they cook?" the answer is yes. Kanzi, a bonobo chimpanzee, taught HIMSELF how to start a fire and cook things using sticks to hold it over the fire. And as for the reading/writing question, the answer to that would be yes as well, studies show that baboons can distinguish printed English words from nonsense sequence of letters. If they were taught like children then I"m positive that scientists could develop that skill. And to refresh your memory, I referenced Koko in my first round. There is a difference between Koko signing a response and a parrot mimicking the sounds you make or a dog following people"s eyes or being trained with treats. Koko would be asked a question, and with no help from people, answer that question with a relevant response. Not only that but if she were watching television and saw something upsetting then she would sign "sad" or some such word, it is not a trick or nonsense, its progress. 6.Not only were blacks not considered people during the time of slavery, they WERE THOUGHT OF AND SEEN AS ANIMALS, even by credible scientists. They were less than people, hence the 3/5ths compromise, and treated as animals. What"s racist to say is "the obvious is that the white man was a redneck a**hole." First of all, not all white people even owned slaves. Secondly, not all black people were slaves, some were slave owners. Thirdly, slaves were sold to Europeans by African Chiefs, and they were already enslaved to their chief. And you seem to be thinking of slaves as though they are modern black people. No, barely any slaves could read or write, let alone both, and they could not speak proper English. They could only do any of that after they were TAUGHT. 7.Had I not explained why it was irrelevant, you would have tried to argue that it was. 8.You keep trying to hold monkeys and humans to a different standard for the same actions. No, people, no matter how bad, were not justly killed without a proper trial, but monkeys would have been shot on sight. If primates were given rights then they would be put to trial too. So it seems redundant to say that they can"t have a trial because they don"t have rights but they don"t have rights because they can"t have a trial.