Author: Patricia MacCormack, Professor of Continental Philosophy, Anglia Ruskin University

The Spanish government has announced plans to ban harmful experiments on great apes as part of a wider initiative to give them increased rights closer to the ones humans enjoy. These plans are forward thinking compared with most of the rest of the world but the move is a double edged one. Bestowing human rights on great apes because of their similarity to us creates a new criteria – other animals can only be free of pain and suffering if researchers can prove they are human-like. Great apes are the subset of non-human primates which include orangutans, gorillas, bonobos and…