issue: animals
Thursday 19 August 2010
Orang-utans are not remotely like humans
Experts should know better than to claim that great apes can communicate in a similar way to human beings.
Monday 21 June 2010
Why we are different from apes
Guest blog post, Eureka Zone, The Times
Wednesday 5 May 2010
Chimps don't mourn like humans
‘Chimps “feel death like humans”‘, the BBC reported last week. And according to Scientific American: ‘Like tool use and self-awareness, distinct grief and mourning might be just one more thing we share with our closest living relatives.‘ No it’s not, says Helene Guldberg.
Thursday 29 April 2010
Monkeys mourning? Don’t make me laugh
A handful of chimp mothers carrying around their dead babies is not evidence of ‘human-like’ qualities.
Friday 26 June 2009
Restating the case for human uniqueness
A brilliant new book cuts through all the media-oriented research about ‘clever chimps’ using tools, doing maths and feeling human emotions, and reminds us that, in truth, there is nothing remotely human about primates.
Thursday 19 March 2009
Chimps are like humans? Stop monkeying around
This week it was revealed that chimps use sticks to smash open beehives. But there’s nothing remotely ‘human-like’ in such behaviour.
Thursday 22 June 2006
Stop weeping over whaling
The attack on Japan for continuing to hunt whales is cultural imperialism dressed up in PC lingo.
Friday 2 June 2006
'Animals are less valuable than human beings'
Leading researcher John Martin tells Helene Guldberg why it is morally justifiable to cause heart attacks in rats - and why he isn’t scared of animal rights extremists.
Thursday 3 November 2005
Man is more than a beast
The primatologist Frans de Waal says we should get in touch with ‘our inner ape’. Speak for yourself.
Friday 29 July 2005
Singer on 'speciesism': a specious argument
In his new book In Defense of Animals, Peter Singer reduces the value of human life to a tick-list of capabilities.
Friday 26 November 2004
Stop apologising for animal experiments
We don’t need more laws against animal rights activists, but a more robust defence of animal experimentation.
Tuesday 24 February 2004
Why humans are superior to apes
The fashion for equating chimps with children is based on a degraded view of humanity and an ignorance about animals.