The salient question - which every human visitor to the zoo intuitively ask - is, who is behind the bars? Who is caged, and who is free?... On both sides of the bars primates can be observed making faces to each other. It is too facile to say that man is superior because he has made the zoo. We impose our special horror of barred captivity-a form of punishment among our species-and assume that other primates feel as we do.
Apes have for centuries managed to get along with human beings, as ambassadors from their species. In recent years, they have even learned to communicate with human beings using sign language. But it is a one sided diplomatic exchange; no human being has attempted to live in ape society, to master their language and customs, to eat their food, to live as they do. The apes have learned to talk to us, but we have never learned to talk to them. Who, then, should be judged the greater intellect?
The time will come when circumstances may force some human beings to communicate with a primate society on its own terms. Only then human beings will become aware of their complacent egotism with regard to other animals.
by S. L. Berensky
