Our efforts to protect primates will be much more effective if we dismantle the artificial line that we have created between ourselves and other animals.

Nonhuman primates have been crowded out of diminishing forests, hunted for food or “medicine,” kidnapped for the lucrative pet/tourist trade, and bred for science. As a result, every primate species on the planet—aside from human beings—is either endangered or threatened.

Nonhuman primates are many and wondrous, yet few and endangered.

The lives of anymals matter not just to us—not just in light of our selfish interest in diversity—but to them.

Scientists treat animals like petri dishes—recording emotional distress and physiological terror like weather fluctuations on a barometer.

Might does not make right; self-interest—even desperate self-interest—does not justify exploiting others.

Increasingly we come to understand that any difference between human and nonhuman primates does not necessarily show humans in a complimentary light.

We are morally required to stop systematically exploiting others, whether chimpanzees or pygmy lemurs, chickens or chinchillas. Nonhuman animals are also persons who fare better or worse depending on the way we treat them, we must begin to give them the respect and dignity that persons deserve

If we are going to save endangered primates, we must first recognize that they are individuals much like human beings, who prefer to be free to live their lives independent of exploitation.