Stony Brook University Chimps Denied Human Rights


I’ve reported previously about Stony Brook University chimps Hercules and Leo. The chimps have been at the center of a legal campaign launched by the Nonhuman Rights Project, wherein it has been argued that Hercules and Leo were held captive by Stony Brook University in what is, essentially, solitary confinement. The Nonhuman Rights Project argued that Hercules and Leo were “autonomous and self-determining beings” and stated that Stony Brook University had imprisoned the chimps against their will.

stony brook university chimps
Photo credit: Thomas Lersch / Wikimedia Commons

The Nonhuman Rights Project fought to take Hercules and Leo from Stony Brook University and send them to a sanctuary in Florida. Unfortunately, a Manhattan judge did not grant the request.

Stony Brook University came out the victor in this conflict, but New York State Supreme Court Justice Barbara Jaffe relented that, while she ruled in favor of Stony Brook University, she did so because she was bound by a previous decision from a state appeals court that dismissed a similar case from the Nonhuman Rights Campaign.

Justice Jaffe stated in her ruling on the case that definitions on personhood and who can receive personhood could evolve, signalling that her decision for Hercules and Leo may not be the last court decision on the matter of extending human rights to animals.

The Nonhuman Rights Project intends on appealing the decision.


It may be some time before animals such as chimps are reclassified from “things” to “persons.” I would like to think that such a development would take place during my lifetime, seeing as, in this author’s opinion, we are a civilization that has moved beyond the need to hold animals captive for experimentation — at least animals that display human-like tendencies and have sentience.

If this keeps up and places like Stony Brook University persist in their freedom of holding animals captive for experimentation, one day we may all be enslaved by giraffes.

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