There are no other animals quite like them, except us. They share 99 percent of our DNA, and it shows. They scheme, plot and fight. They care for their babies, and they grieve their dead. And they love a good game of catch, emphasis on good, as I discovered.

PBS NewsHour reporter Miles O’Brien visits Chimp Haven, the 200-acre sanctuary that recently welcomed five more chimpanzees who had spent their lives in research labs.

Most of the 130 residents soon recover from their ordeal. Linda Brent, president of Chimp Haven recalls the very first arrivals:

They just poured out of their indoor enclosure out into the forest, all of them. And they ran all the way down. Several of them stopped a couple times and just did this wide-eyed wonder that they were out here and kind of free, finally free.

But some of them have a harder time. There’s a heartbreaking moment when we see Chris, who had spent so much time in small cell that she can never leave the safety of the walls as she walks around the sanctuary:

This is how she spends her time outside, alone, clinging to a 17-foot-high concrete wall, apparently traumatized.

Before any human astronauts were vaulted into space, chimpanzees went “where no man had gone before” to ensure that it was safe for humans to follow them. When HIV hit the human population, chimps were sacrificed to the cause of finding treatments – just as they were for hepatitis and polio.

Most countries have given up the use of chimpanzees. Only the U.S. and Gabon still keep them in laboratories.

At the Texas Biomedical Research Institute, the PBS cameras visit the outside cages where some of the chimpanzees live together. Staffer Sabrina Bourgeois insists that keeping these highly intelligent, social animals in cages is not cruel.

“I couldn’t work here if they were [suffering],” she protests. “I really couldn’t. I genuinely care and love these animals.”

But the cameras aren’t allowed into the buildings behind, where chimpanzees are kept in solitary confinement, routinely shot with knockout drugs (after screaming, they crash to the concrete ground), and carried away by white-coated, masked, scientists.

They do endure repeated sedations and biopsies. Medical files uncovered by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine tell some grim stories. Take Rosie, for example. At 30 years old, she has endured 15 liver biopsies, multiple blood draws, and 99 sedations, several resulting in seizures. And she is still a test subject currently at Texas Biomed.

Asked what it is that the scientists would rather we didn’t see, Dr. Robert Lanford replies:

“It’s not that we’re trying to hide something. It’s that we have a mission here that is to prove – improve human health care. And we believe that when people see that picture, they can’t listen to the mission anymore.”

He’s right – the more we see, the more we know that our closest living relatives cannot go on being treated this way.

That’s why the federal government’s Institute of Medicine has advised the National Institutes of Health that the use of chimpanzees in government-funded medical research should be reserved only for studies where no suitable alternative is available or where testing on humans would be unethical, and only for life-threatening or debilitating conditions. It’s not a ban, but the NIH has suspended all new grants for biomedical and behavioral research on chimpanzees.

Meanwhile, around a thousand chimpanzees still languish in laboratories, and that’s exactly how Dr. John VandeBerg, director of the research center, wants it to stay. In an NBC report, three months ago, VandeBerg said he wants to keep the animals locked up permanently – just in case:

“I think of the chimpanzees in the same way that I think of a library. There are many books in the library that will never be used this year or next year. … But we don’t know which ones will be needed tomorrow, next year or the year after.”

Regardless, Linda Brent of Chimp Haven is gearing up for what she hopes and believes will be their eventual retirement.

“We’re really excited about it. I think, in the very near future, we will be able to probably say that we have taken care of the chimpanzees that have served in medical research by giving them a fitting retirement.”

Here’s the full segment from the PBS NewsHour:

The Texas Biomedical Institute trotted out the usual suspects in an attempt to whitewash its ugliness. There was the solemn, oh-so-concerned, and highly competent scientist, Dr. Robert E. Lanford, who has apparently made a good living torturing chimpanzees for almost 30 years. Along the way he learned to bat puppy eyes at the camera and say, “I do appreciate the sentiment that goes with chimpanzees. I feel it. I go home and say: Are we still on the right track? Are we still doing the right research? Is it absolutely necessary? And I say yes!” While we must appreciate how difficult it must be for Dr. Lanford to repress such sentiment for ten thousand straight days, he has not reached the rhetorical depths of his boss, primate research center commandant, John VandeBerg, who told “Rock Center With Brian Williams” a few weeks earlier, that the chimpanzees imprisoned at the Texas Biomedical Institute are “treated with the utmost of reverence.’”

Explaining they knew that one chimpanzee, Rosie, had undergone 15 liver biopsies and 99 sedations, including several that sent her into seizure, “NewsHour” asked to film this reverential treatment. Lanford refused, because the Texas Biomedical Research Institute has “a mission to improve human health care and we believe that when people see that picture they can’t hear our mission anymore.” Observation of torture does indeed deafen normal humans in just that way.

The Texas Biomedical Research Institute brought forth Sabrina Bourgeois, who identifies herself as a “Senior Research Assistant/Animal Trainer” on Linked-In. Her “Karen Pryor Academy for Animal Training and Behavior” biography states, “Sabrina Bourgeois has spent more than 15 years training domestic and exotic animals for ranches, farms, zoos, sanctuaries, and research facilities. Now, you and your dogs can benefit from the same training techniques she has used with apes, dolphins, bears, and other exotic species!”

Bourgeois would never work at the Texas Biomedical Institute if anything was amiss. “Some of my best friends are chimpanzees,” she says. “On a bad day I absolutely come and seek out my friends.” I recalled the Member of Parliament from the slave port of Liverpool who, during the great abolition debates in the House of Commons, rhapsodized the Caribbean plantation slaves were so happy he wished he could be one.

Chimpanzee experimentation is gasping for breath worldwide. Only the United States and Gabon tolerate it and the US federal government will not be funding it much longer. So the end of American chimpanzee vivisection has come to this: a rearguard of moral illiterates telling transparent lies, lacking even the flicker of integrity slaveowner Patrick Henry demonstrated when he replied to anti-slavery planter, Robert Pleasants’ 1773 criticisms of human slavery: “I am drawn by the general inconvenience of living without them, I will not; I cannot justify it; however culpable my conduct.”

When American chimpanzee vivisection whimpers out – and it will, soon – this will not be the end, but the beginning, of the work of the Nonhuman Rights Project. Chimpanzees must be recognized for the legal persons they are, holders of the fundamental legal rights to bodily integrity and bodily liberty. Never again.

Every American state has a statute that makes it a crime to be cruel to nonhuman animals; don’t these statutes give animals legal rights?

Anti-cruelty statutes do not give nonhuman animals legal rights, though the occasional judge and enthusiastic lawyer may so declare. Here’s why. A criminal statute designates an act as a wrong against the state. If the state concludes I committed a crime, it will prosecute me.

There are many crimes. It is a crime for me to smash the windshield of your car with my baseball bat. But that does not give the windshield any legal rights. It’s a crime for me to yank flowers from a cemetery. But the flowers I yank are rightless. I’m not allowed to burn my next-door neighbor’s house to the ground. But his house has no legal rights. In every situation in which I am charged, the name of the case will be State v. Me, and not Windshield, Flowers, or House v. Me.

By “rights,” we mean civil rights. But nonhuman animals are invisible to civil judges, who give rights only to those they believe have the capacity to possess them.

Let’s pretend we’re judges deciding whether an entity, you or a chimpanzee, has a legal right. We can begin by filling an imaginary “rights pitcher” with all the rights we can imagine one might have. Then we can start to drip them out.

As we tip our rights pitcher we will immediately detect a problem. There’s nothing to pour any rights into. We need a container, too. In legal language, you or a chimpanzee must have the “legal capacity” to possess a legal right at all. Unless you do, you will remain invisible to civil law. Centuries ago, if you were young or black or female, civil judges might never have seen you. But, in the 21st century, all humans automatically possess this legal capacity once they are born.

Today’s judges must be persuaded that a chimpanzee also has the capacity to possess a legal right. This is the primary work of the Nonhuman Rights Project. Whether a statute also makes it a crime to be cruel is irrelevant.

Allegations against the circus included that elephant handlers had repeatedly struck an elephant with an ankus — a hook or goad used in elephant training — during performances, according to a USDA report.

Renee Story, vice president of administration for the circus, said: “The Cole Brothers Circus has always put human welfare first and animal welfare second; we provide the best veterinary and … excellent care for the animals.”

This video was taken in May 2011 as children were getting an elephant ride outside the circus tent:

From the person who took the video:

Elephant trainer John Walker III hooks Viola the elephant inside the ear and drags her around the ring as she trumpets in pain. You can see at one point he tugs the hook downwards and she leans down too. I have witnessed Walker constantly yelling at the elephants.

When I met him the first day of my undercover work I asked what the large elephant’s name was. He told me “I have many names for her but her name is Viola. It’s one of those days.” Viola seems to take the brunt of a lot of his anger and abuse.

Last year Viola escaped the circus and fell down an embankment. After 30 minutes they were able to recapture her. She is at her breaking point.

This week, as the circus arrived in Fredericksburg, Maryland, animal protection groups gathered at the entrance of the fairgrounds to protest the abuse of the animals.

Last year, he donated $380,000 for a new habitat at Chimp Haven. And last week, the irrepressible Bob Barker flew down to the sanctuary in Louisiana to cut the ribbon — or rather to pick up the microphone and call out to five newly arrived chimpanzees: “Come on down!”

And that’s exactly what they did.

“They came down the hill through the timber, some of them running on their hind legs. Just running,” Barker said after the ceremony. “They were so happy. One climbed a tree clear to the top. They played with balls and they ate bananas. I had a lump in my throat. I almost burst into tears, I was so happy when I saw it.”

“They came down the hill through the timber, some of them running on their hind legs. Just running.”

JoJo, Flick, and Pierre, who are 36 years old, Murphy, who is 42, and Doc, 38, will live the rest of their lives in the Bob Barker Chimpanzee Habitat. They all spent their earlier lives at research laboratories where they were infected with HIV. When they were retired, they went to a sanctuary in Texas, where they had a small room and outdoor area. The sanctuary then ran into money and overcrowding problems. At Chimp Haven they’ll have more than two acres.

Despite their age and treatment, the chimps are all in good shape. “Because of their age, they are considered geriatric males,” Chimp Haven veterinarian Raven Jackson said. “But they are a very, very healthy, robust group.”

In the few days before the opening ceremony, the new arrivals had a chance to get acquainted with their new digs. Doc built a nest in a tree, which suggests that he was probably caught in the wild as a youngster since chimpanzees learn to build nests from their older families.

About 50 of the other 129 animals at Chimp Haven also have HIV. They don’t develop AIDS, but they can transmit the virus to humans, so staff wear gloves and face shields when in contact with them.

During the ceremony, Barker pulled a check for $120,000 out of his pocket and handed to Chimp Haven director Dr. Linda Brent. “I thought $380,000 was such an odd number,” he joked. His donation has not only made this extension possible, but will also provide for the chimps for their first two years there.

Dan is a member of the legal working group and is conducting research on the English common law writs of habeas corpus and de homine replegiando, which are two causes of action the Nonhuman Rights Project is exploring as possible causes of action upon which we will file the first set of lawsuits for nonhuman animals. Specifically, he is exploring the practical significance, if any, of their classification as either a “prerogative” writ vs. a “writ of right.” “Writs of right” are writs that are issued as a matter of right or entitlement. They are issued at common law to allow the rightful owner of property to assert his rights over property and re-occupy the property that was wrongfully occupied by another. The writ of habeas corpus is such a writ. A “prerogative writ,” on the other hand, is a writ that is issued as a matter of discretion.

Dan is a second year law student at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City. While in law school, he was awarded a Dean’s Merit Scholarship. He is the President of his law school’s Student Animal Legal Defense Fund chapter, and is active with other student groups including the Public Interest Law Student Association, National Lawyers Guild, and Cardozo Dispute Resolution Society. Dan received a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Virginia in 2005.

Little Mama, however, is in a class of her own. She’s believed to be 74 years old.

Little Mama lives at the Lion Country Safari park near West Palm Beach in Florida. Nobody knows her complete history, but it seems she was born in Africa, captured at an early age, and brought to the United States.

People who remember her from that time say she was part of an Ice Capades variety show that traveled around the country in the 1940s, and that she was then sold to an exotic pets dealer. We do know for sure that in 1967 she was bought from a pet dealer by Lion Country Safari, which was just opening.

Terry Wolf has been with the park from the start, and is now the Wildlife Director. Last week, he told CNN: “It was a whole different world then. Chimps in pet shops that were babies at that time could go for 10 grand. … She was very sweet, very good with people. Obviously somebody treated her nicely.”

Five years later, in 1972, Jane Goodall visited the park, and estimated Little Mama’s age at about 32. At 74 today, then, that makes her the oldest chimpanzee in captivity. But the only physical indication of her age are the gray hairs on her chin. Jane Goodall still visits her regularly.

Lion Country Safari was founded in 1967 by a group of South African and British entrepreneurs as a kind of drive-through safari experience. The park originally exhibited only lions. Today, it’s considered a generally better experience than the average zoo for the nonhuman residents – more of a sanctuary. The chimpanzees live on an island system where they move to a different island every day, which is similar to their natural nomadic lifestyle, and they maintain complex social groups, as they would in the wild.

The park also serves as a retirement facility for chimpanzees who were once used in research laboratories and entertainment.

After watching, what else can one reasonably conclude, except that chimpanzees are, in important ways, remarkably complex beings who are remarkably like us? We care what happens to Oscar and his adoptive alpha male father (is there another way to describe Freddie?), and the other chimpanzees of Ivory Coast’s T’ai Forest, because of who they really, truly, actually are, not because they have been Disney-anthropomorphized into humans who merely look like chimpanzees. Freddie takes time from his political affairs to crack panda nuts for Oscar, share food, transport the boy on his back, and cradle him in his arms at night, even if the community as a whole might occasionally suffer for his distraction.

So many tools are used, it is astounding to recall that just fifty years ago, before Jane Goodall ventured into Gombe Stream, it was accepted that only humans used them. We see chimpanzees wielding stone hammers, weighing up to ten pounds, to crack hard panda nuts against tree root anvils, a task requiring such dexterity that youngsters take seven years to learn. Because these nuts grow in groves, chimpanzees may carry these heavy, sometimes deeply-worn, stone hammers with them on their searches.

Their colobus monkey hunts are extraordinary in organization and killing efficiency. In 2001, I had the opportunity to observe chimpanzees hunting black and white colobus monkeys in Uganda’s Kibale Mountains, or I saw what I could, for the apes moved so quickly through the dense forests, on the ground and in the air, they were impossible to follow. The movie reveals a division of labor I could not see: “blockers” obviously cutting off escape routes, “drivers” chasing the monkeys into the arms of “ambushers,” and the successful hunters triumphantly sharing the meat amongst themselves and with females.

Important stuff to watch and learn from, if not always to listen to. It prods us at the Nonhuman Rights Project to redouble our efforts to gain our remarkable cousins fundamental legal rights.

The film tells the story of Oscar, an impossibly cute infant who loses his family and is “adopted” by an unrelated alpha male. The adoptive father feeds Oscar, travels with him through the forest, plays with him, sleeps with him – nurtures Oscar like a real parent would.

Oscar sharing a snack with his adoptive father

This is not the first time that the phenomenon of chimpanzee adoption has been documented in the wild. There’s some fascinating research on the subject. One study documented 18 cases of chimpanzee adoption, half by males (only one of whom was the real father). Some adoptions lasted for years, implying an extensive level of care. It’s often difficult to reach firm conclusions, but these studies suggest the existence of altruism among chimpanzees and the capacity for deep empathy.

Chimpanzee adoption has also been observed in captivity

Chimpanzees lead lives rich with friendships, play, cooperation, and concern for their fellow chimpanzees. But what does it mean? It means that chimpanzees, and other Great Apes, are wonderfully complex beings who deserve to have their fundamental rights to life and liberty recognized by the law. That’s exactly what the Nonhuman Rights Project is busy working on.

How many four-letter words do you know? Dan has figured out 308.

Dan is a baboon who lives at the Cognitive Research Laboratory in France. He and five other baboons have had access to a computer that stores 500 real four-letter words and nearly 8,000 non-words (like XFOP or TYWQ).

During the course of the six-week study, Dan and his pals were free to use the computer whenever they liked, and they got a treat whenever they identified a real word on the screen. Some of the baboons worked the computer up to 3,000 times a day – even in the middle of the night – and eventually they were scoring hits about 75 percent of the time.

“This … is a remarkable result, given the level of orthographic similarity between the word and non-word,” said Jonathan Grainger, who led the study. “More detailed analysis revealed that baboons were not simply memorizing the word … but had learned to discriminate words from non-words on the basis of differences in the frequency of letter combinations.”

What does it all mean?

It’s not that the baboons have human-like language skills or had really learned to spell. But the study showed that they have an innate sense of pattern recognition – and quite an advanced one. For example, they soon realized that certain letters tend to go together to form real words. So even when new words were sprung on them, they would guess that a word with TH in it was more likely to be a real word than one with, say BQ.

The scientists believe that this is giving us some real insight into how we humans started (and still start) learning to read. Their abilities suggest that the ability to read words is just a more advanced version of the pattern-recognition skill that lets us identify letters. And if baboons can do it so easily, that tells us that it’s a skill that was there long before the first human had ever written down a letter.

“They don’t have language and there’s no association with reading at all,” Grainger said. He explained that when we read, “we are basically mimicking what we are doing when we recognize everyday objects, something the baboons do just as well as us.”

He said that since other primates are also able to identify objects this way, they would probably be able to master the difference between words and non-words, too. Indeed, any animal who identifies objects in a similar way we humans do would probably be able to tell words from non-words, like the baboons.

The study is reported in Science magazine, and is described in this video by Jonathan Grainger: