All Your Eggs in One Basket

The weather has been getting much warmer. It is almost like summer weather sometimes, even though it's still April. Bow enjoys the warm weather and spends a lot of time out-of-doors. Also there are summer treats readily available now, like watermelon, which Bow loves.

Out in the woods. mayapples are blossoming. As their name implies, this should be happening in May.

The bees are very busy in my backyard, and they manage to coexist peacefully with my dogs, enjoying the dandelions that I permit to grow there.

Just outside my door, the robins are being fruitful and multiplying. Remember when  there was only one egg in the nest in the rosebush out side my door? There are now four!

I also found another nest by the fence. It had three eggs in it before the one by the door had more than one. It still has three eggs in it now, but I was alarmed to find one broken egg shell on the grass a couple of days ago, not far from the nest by the fence.

Is it safe to put all your eggs in one basket or one nest? Even robins diversify. They have several clutches each year.

I  don't think all chimpanzees should be sent to a few centralized locations. Even if no one there means them any harm, one epidemic could devastate their numbers, and the real job of chimpanzee conservation is outside of Africa, in case they are destroyed in their native habitat.

I have decided to be proactive and support libertarian candidates, because they are the only ones who will fight for property rights. And the property rights of chimpanzee owners outside Africa are the only thing that stands between chimpanzees and extinction. It is not right that the US Fish & Wildlife Service is sending US taxpayer money to Jane Goodall in Africa, while eroding the rights of chimpanzee owners in the US. By their own admission, at http://www.fws.gov/endangered/what-we-do/chimpanzee.html;

"The Service has funded $9.4 million in grants for conservation efforts to protect chimpanzees, matched by an additional $11.5 million in leveraged funds. These grants have supported field projects in 19 countries and include: developing conservation policies and local leadership and improving law enforcement to ensure the long-term survival and protection of chimpanzees and gorillas."

They have taken funds earmarked for conservation in the US and sent them to Africa. There are no wild chimpanzees or gorillas in the United States. The great apes are not within the purview of their jurisdiction.  While we can argue that the original mission may or may not be constitutional, the US Fish & Wildlife Service  has gone rogue and is operating outside any rights delegated to it by the people.

If you would like to support the cause, please visit here:

https://www.gofundme.com/2d8gren8

Understanding the Denotation of Words

One of the steps in trying to have communication with another person who has a different bias is to go back to basics when we use words. By this, I mean using the words for their denotation and not their connotation.

Depending on who we are, and how we look at things, certain words can easily trigger negative or positive connotations based on our values, belief system and our personal situation. Take the word "cage". It has gotten a bad rap, so lots of people use the word "enclosure" and then everything is perfectly okay. I don't like this kind of game with words, and I think that it causes a lot of misunderstandings. A cage can be bad, if you are trying to get out, and it keeps you from things that you want. A cage can be good, if it protects you from danger: hence a diving cage, to keep divers safe from sharks. Even the whole question of who is on the inside or the outside of a cage or fence is largely determined by perspective. Do our borders keep aliens out or do they keep us in? It depends on the situation. It depends on where people want to go.

 If you are happy in your cage, then a cage is good. If you are sad, then it is bad. It's all in the mind of the beholder.

But when we start to call cages that we like "enclosures", and cages that we don't like "cages", then communicating with somebody else who has a different perspective becomes more difficult. Their values are built into the words, and they can't seem to step outside their bias.

Take the term "concentration camp".  It has a bad connotation for most of us, and rightfully so, but do you know what it really means? I'll tell you what it does not mean: "A bad place run by Nazis." Sometimes when I refer to a facility as a concentration camp, people accuse me of name-calling. But do you know what the literal meaning of a concentration camp is? It is a place where certain groups, to the exclusion of other groups, are concentrated in a given location. Usually, the groups that are singled out for being at that location are forbidden to be anyplace else.  They don't have the right to leave, and they also do not have the right to keep others out. The group affiliation in a concentration camp is usually determined by genetic criteria, ethnicity, place of origin or nationality.

Here are a few examples of concentration camps by this literal, denotative definition:

• internment camps for enemy aliens run by the Japanese during WWII
• internment camps for Americans of Japanese extraction run by the Americans during WWII
• camps run by the Nazis in WWII in which many Jews and other "undesirables" were exterminated
• detention centers for illegal aliens currently being opened in the United States
• chimpanzee sanctuaries in the United States and elsewhere 

The idea behind a concentration camp, and hence its use of the word "concentration", is that individuals of a certain sort, as defined in a certain way, are problematic for those in charge, so they are concentrated in certain locations, and forbidden to be elsewhere. This does not necessarily imply that the individuals so concentrated are going to be treated "inhumanely" or that they are all going to be eventually executed. Many people came home from the Japanese internment camps. Most people made it out safely from the American internment camps of WWII. Right now, many people are assuming that the children in the detention centers are being given asylum, and not that they are going to be treated badly. Many sanctuaries for chimpanzees pride themselves on the humane treatment of the individuals that they house, and they believe they are being given an asylum from bad people who formerly kept them in "cages". The sanctuaries don't use "cages". They use "enclosures". Lots of people can't see past the labels.

Besides it being unfair and unjust to single out certain groups for this treatment, there are other concerns about all concentration camps, just based on the way they concentrate certain  groups in one place. One of the dangers of singling out specific groups for different treatment is that we don't always know what happens to them after they go in behind closed doors. In WWII, red cross representatives were able to make inspections of the various concentration camps. But we know from historical accounts that the things they were allowed to see were very different from what went on day by day. Another danger is that once a certain group is concentrated in a specific place -- even if it is for their "own protection" -- the regime may change, and when somebody else comes to power they may then be treated differently.

For this reason, I don't think it is wise to concentrate all chimpanzees in one of a few locations. It does not work that way in nature, where chimpanzees live in smaller groups of warring tribes, and where the decimation of one group leaves others to survive.

Even if all the people working at the current chimpanzee sanctuaries are nice people, this says nothing about what they are going to be like in the future with changed management. So while I am not immortal and someday Bow will need other people to look after him, I must try to find people younger than myself to take my place. What I do not want to do is to entrust Bow into a concentration camp with changing management and priorities that differ from mine. People my own age or older can guarantee nothing about what will happen to Bow after my death, anymore than I can. I need to train disciples, not give Bow up to my contemporaries, however well meaning.

If I did give him up, it would be back the the breeders, where he could live among his own family of origin. But the breeders are under attack, too, and they are no younger than I am. In fact, they are more senior. I would need to see who replaces them in their own organization and what the priorities of the younger generation are, before I could trust that our goals are sufficiently similar.

Bill Lemmon who ran the Lemmon Farm from which Washoe, Nim and Lucy emerged, was always willing to welcome back the chimpanzees that had been lent out for language experiments. He has a bad reputation and is described as a very scary guy, but in my opinion the worst thing that he ever did was that when he fell upon hard times, he sold out to medical experimenters. If people had been interested in sparing Nim his worst experiences, they should have helped Lemmon with his expenses on the farm. And this is why I react so strongly to the anti-breeder bias in current literature about ape language research. Without local breeders the researchers and the sanctuaries would both be out of luck. There simply would not be any chimpanzees in the United States at all. In fact, I suspect that this is the ultimate goal of the sanctuaries, no matter how humanely they are going about pursuing it. I don't share that goal.

Bow and I spend twelve hours a day in our cages -- or our enclosures -- together, As a result, I am aware of the conditions Bow lives under. If it is too hot or too cold, I know. We eat the same foods, so I know what he is eating, and I know if it's nutritious. We go in and out of the house often, and Bow gets to decide when. This means he has control over his environment. Most importantly of all, Bow gets to decide who is allowed into his space and who is kept out.

The dogs have the whole yard to roam in, but they usually stand right next to the pen, gazing at us longingly, as if the best possible place to be would be inside with us.

Bow has a sense of ownership and control, looking over my shoulder and inspecting everything I do. And I think that each of us prefers the cage we can control to a palatial institution where we are prisoners.

The real difference between a prison and a home is not how big of an enclosure it is, or even whether you can leave it safely, but whether you can decide for yourself who gets to come in.

The Underground Railroad and Support for Chimpanzees

I had a lot of web traffic yesterday, so I suppose that it should not be surprising that I received one lone piece of hate mail. The higher the traffic, the more likely it is that there will be some unhinged person among them. It goes with the territory.

What made it hate mail, rather than a legitimate inquiry, was that it was full of character assassination, and it asked questions only in terms similar to the old lawyer's trick: "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" To which there could not possibly be an answer that did not damn the witness.

But I'm happy to share with you the gist of the complaint, because it is probably something that concerns many readers who might want to know. Isn't it wrong that Bow is isolated from other chimpanzees? And to the extent that this is not my personal choice, but results from lack of cooperation by other primatologists, does not this show that Project Bow is illegitimate? And to allow some voice to the lone hater, I will add: doesn't this show definitively that I am not a "real" primatologist and that my research is "bogus"?

Okay, so first of all, let's separate the issues. One is about whether Bow is receiving humane treatment. The other is whether I am doing real science. These are very different questions. It is entirely possible that I am being a good mother to Bow, but a bad scientist. It is equally possible that I am a good scientist, but a bad mother. Or I could be bad at both.

Even so, there is another hidden assumption in the inquiry. The ultimate proof that everything I am doing is bad, from the email's perspective, was that I had no legitimation from other primatologists. I'm not part of the "scientific community." That I'm not a "real" primatologist.

What does that mean? It means I don't have a job, a salary and a title. I do have a Ph.D. in linguistics. And I am working with a chimpanzee and publishing my findings. There's many a "legitimate" primatologist that has that job, and that title, and that salary, but the one thing they don't have is any primates to work with. See my piece on what happened to Sally Boysen and to the chimpanzees she used to work with.

Over the years I've been accused of not being "real" on many levels. When I practiced law, I heard people referring to me as "not a real lawyer". I had gone to Baylor Law School and passed the bar in Texas (with a high score and on the first try), and I was practicing law in the courts, and I had clients who were happy with my services. But I didn't have a job. My office was in my home. I charged low fees, and my income was below minimum wage.

I am a writer, but I've never been published by the regular press or by a mainstream publisher, so for many, I am not a "real" writer.

Some people have said every real woman wants a man to commit to her, so when I express my very different views on this topic, I have been accused of not being a "real" woman. Some people have even told me that because I don't have the same feelings they do about any number of issues, I am not "really" human.

What all of these views have in common is that the only reality is "social reality". Everything else is unreal. I disagree. And I have a mission in life to change the prevailing view of what is legitimate.

I have always wanted both Bow and me to have other companions. I had every expectation that he and Sword and I might move into a community where we would have other chimp or bonobo friends and other human or primatologist friends. I recognize Bow's social needs, as well as my own. What's more, some primatologists feel the same way and would have been happy to welcome me and Bow into their domain. But these people are not independent. They are institutional employees, and they do not call the shots.

There is a schism among primatologists. In fact, there is more than one schism. There are the ethologists, who believe chimpanzees and orangutans and bonobos and gorillas should only be studied in the wild, and they should be uncontaminated by our culture. There are the zoo people, who like to display primates, but who are afraid to go in with them, because of the danger involved. There are among the primatologists those who know just how smart the other great apes are, but who seek to hide this from the general public, because of ideological reasons. And there are those who simply believe in apartheid. Separate but equal is their motto, but we know what that motto really means.

Chimpanzees in the United States are regularly shipped off to "sanctuaries" where they are expected to live out their remaining lives in cages, not reproducing. Not having families. Simply dying out. The sanctuaries openly speak of the "excess" or "surplus" chimpanzee population in this country. Chimpanzees are an endangered species, but these humanists and animal rights activists want them to quietly die out. Have you ever asked yourself why? Read the account of what happened to Sally Boysen's chimps when they were shipped off to one sanctuary after another. How many died en route? How many died on arrival? How many males are left? Do you think I want that to happen to Bow?

Please understand. There are good primatologists working within the system to change this. Just as it would have been wrong to suppose that every person in Nazi Germany was a Nazi, so it would be wrong to assume that every institutional primatologist is supportive of these measures. Some primatologists are friends of Project Bow. But they cannot speak up, or they will lose their jobs.

This is the social reality!