Do Animals Need Rights as People?

Animal rights: Jane Goodall

In 2016, I was called on to the TV show the one show to discuss a film that I had just produced about a gorilla that could speak (or was speaking) to people which was called Koko.

The One Show is a daily talk show of the British with an impressive and daunting viewership of 5 million individuals. It was my first experience on live TV and chances are that I will not be invited to do it again.

The preparation had been extensive. I had been sent a set of questions in advance and prepared answers to these.

I had been to hair and make-up, who delivered me looking uncharacteristically presentable to the famous One Show couch.

My fellow guest was Steve Davis, the world champion snooker player, who was satirised as Steve 'Interesting' Davis by Spitting Image. He had run with it and was launching his autobiography — 'Interesting'.

I did not get the time to discover by myself whether his persona was real because right after my butt hit the couch, the live show countdown commenced.

Nerves began boiling in my stomach. I asked myself whether anybody on the show had lost all his power of speech, and I happen to be the first.

We had made a movie about a gorilla called Koko who had been adopted as a baby by a PhD student by the name Penny Patterson, out of the San Francisco zoo. Penny had been the one who taught Koko sign language, fell in love with her, and their lives were together since then.

The story had a lot of scandals. In order to showcase the apes to sign, they must be connected to humans, a factor that renders the choice extremely difficult to provide them with normal relations with other apes in the future.

This wasn't something I wanted to go near in a seven-minute segment on The One Show, but an interesting background was unfolding in Kokos' story.

The sentience and communication abilities Koko displayed were relevant to an unfolding debate over animal personhood rights.

Should animals be treated as persons?

At the time we made the film, a lawyer named Steven Wise was working on a campaign to establish personhood rights for some sentient animals. At present, animals are not considered 'people' in the eyes of the law, instead 'things', with no rights to life or liberty.

Steve's group were working with scientists to show that great apes, cetaceans and elephants can be considered sentient, and being kept alone is a type of torture for them.

The group had established a number of victories for confined animals- In 2017, an Argentine chimpanzee called Cecila was recognised as a legal person and removed from a zoo to a sanctuary.

I was asked, 'Do you think animals should have personhood rights?'

I panicked. Who wanted to know what I thought?

I managed to blurt out.

'Anything that makes us think about how these animals experience life is a good thing.'

My reply was limp, ambiguous.

I had had a voice, and I flunked it.

There is one woman who never dropped a chance to speak up for those who couldn't speak for themselves.

A champion for the unspeaking

I lost a hero on October 1st, 2025. Jane Goodall was an adult life proponent of non-human primates.

She showed human animals show sentience, family relationships, an ability to plan, work together and regulate their behaviour.

"No other living animal has assisted us in comprehending the fact that there is no clear boundary between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom as chimpanzees have helped us to realize."

In response to the question, she was not ambivalent in regard to what we ought to do.

"The little I can do is to speak on behalf of hundreds of chimpanzees currently cowering, wretched and hopeless in their metal cages, with murderous dead eyes. They are not able to defend themselves. Unless we do something to take the side of these creatures we are mocking the entire idea of justice."

Jane wasn't diplomatic, careful. That which had to be said she said.

"I do not want to bother myself to be careful of what I say. It does not take a lot to be a difficult lady actually.That's why there are so many of us."

I wish I had evoked Jane when I had that moment of voice.

Rights to a home

The legal battles have mostly been fought over animals kept in our care, but there's a fascinating corollary to giving animals human rights. If non-human rights extended to wild living apes, could they claim rights over the land they inhabit? The right to continue to play a role in the forest that they live in and protect?

Allowing animals such rights would deprive the mining firms who would clear forests to get coal or oil.

The best thing that can be employed against deforestation is non-human rights which would save us all forest fires, climatic changes and planet degradation.

A step backwards

At a time when our own UK government is talking about eroding human rights in a response to anti-refugee sentiment, we might want to think about where we want rights in the world to reside.

Companies can claim personhood rights- to sue, to do business.

Do we want the power on the planet to rest with the living members of humanity and other sentient beings who live on it?

Or corporate bodies with profit motives?

The more rights we give to individuals trying to forge a living on the planet, the less ability faceless corporations have to wipe them away.

The voice she left us

In the words of Jane Goodall.

"Surely we should treat (animals) with the same consideration and kindness as we show to other humans; and as we recognize human rights, so too should we recognize the rights of the great apes"

So yes, animals need personhood rights. And so do we.

The non-human rights organisation is continuing to campaign for rights for animals.

Without Jane, they need all the support they can get.