14 DAY TRIAL // Animal rights activists will be glad to hear that the US Fish and Wildlife Service is considering listing both wild and captive chimpanzees as endangered animals.
Presently, only chimps living in the wild are classified as such and benefit from legal protection.
Captive chimps are not listed as endangered, which is why they are often abused by people who carry out laboratory experiments on them and by entertainers who teach them to perform various tricks and then parade them in front of an audience.
Should captive chimpanzee be classified as endangered, abusing them in the aforementioned ways would be illegal, Tree Hugger explains.
Commenting on the US Fish and Wildlife Service's announcement, Jane Goodall said that, “This decision gives me hope that we truly have begun to understand that our attitudes toward treatment of our closest living relatives must change.”