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# Er sjimpanser mennesker?
- URL: https://tjomlid.com/er-sjimpanser-mennesker/
- Published: 2008-06-19T11:14:09.000Z
- Updated: 2026-03-08T23:18:00.000Z
- Author: Gunnar R. Tjomlid
- Tags: Bloggpost, PublishedPost, #substack, #substack-type-newsletter, #substack-access-only_paid, #Import 2024-12-22 18:32

![080528 Matthew Chimp 01](https://tjomlid.com/content/images/2026/03/https_3a_2f_2fsubstack-post-media-s3-amazonaws-com_2fpublic_2fimages_2fb790b89d-0fc0-4c5b-a2be-23c8b930abd2_163x110.jpg)

[Dette](http://www.livescience.com/animals/080529-chimp-human.html?ref=tjomlid.com) synes jeg er et svært spennende tema:

> Matthew, a 26-year-old chimp, is headed to court in Europe as part of a human effort to classify him as a person.  
>  
> Beyond the legal challenges, anthropologists say chimpanzees are not humans, though without a clear definition of what it means to be human, backing that claim up is a challenge perhaps fit for some great courtroom drama.  
>  
> \[...\]  
>  
> "*One of the hard things is there is no single characteristic that has been found that makes humans truly unique,*" said Sarah Brosnan of Georgia State University. Brosnan studies social behavior and cognition in non-human primates.  
>  
> Making matters worse, chimps show a smorgasbord of behaviors once tagged to humans only, including altruism, tool-use, an ability to learn from their kin and deal-making behaviors.  
>  
> Looking to genetics for an answer is also thorny. If you were to line up any string of nucleotides (structural units) from a chimp's DNA with the corresponding human strand, about 96 or 98 out of 100 of the nucleotides would match up.  
>  
> "*Nobody is going to look at a human genome and a chimp genome and mix them up,*" Brosnan said. "*But human genomes are different from each other, so it depends on where you draw the line.*"

Jeg har sympati for ideen om å gi enkelte dyr "menneskerettigheter" basert på deres selvbevissthet, følelsesliv og evne til å føle bevisst frykt og smerte, men åpner man først opp for en art - hvor setter man da grensen?

> If Matthew the chimp were declared a person, scientists foresee it would open a messy can of worms.  
>  
> "*In general, I don't think that it's a good idea to grant chimpanzees legal human rights,*" Mitani said. "*Chimpanzees are well-known to kill each other. What would we do to perpetrators of those 'crimes?'*"  
>  
> And what about other animals, like dogs and dolphins: A chimp-is-a-person ruling could trigger similar court cases in support of non-human animals getting human status, said Brosnan and other anthropologists.