Human rights for other animals?

Science first or fun first?

Fun.

Human rights for animals already exist. If you ride commuter trains and overhear conversations between fellow passengers you knew that.

You do not need to wear a gorilla suit for Halloween to realize humans are animals.

Pet animals get better food in some societies than many humans, better medical care, better funerals.

Dogs have the power to make their human "owners" pay taxes for the canines. This is even more remarkable if you consider that whole governments repeatedly fail to make their human citizens pay income tax, capital gains tax, and others.  Dogs, cats, and other animals can and do inherit their "owner's" estate in some countries.

In some jurisdictions, police dogs are officers, making the common tabloid newspaper headline "Man bites dog" a supremely serious criminal offense if the dog is a police dog.
And nothing more than a worn out joke if the canine is any odd pooch.

Some religions accept that dogs can go to heaven, or paradise. Whether or not they get into paradise, humans eat a lot of other animals, including the beloved dogs or chimps. They, on the other hand, rarely do this to humans. Which must mean they are more peaceful and civilized, I guess. Eating fellow humans is rare but happens, and then there is the Freudian transfer.

Now, DNA analysis has opened a whole new can of c. elegans. If our DNA is different by some 2% from the of DNA of chimps, and some of h. sapiens (us) have 3% Nethanderthal DNA, what does that mean?

If 3% sapiens Nethanderthals would be given human rights, the 2% different chimps should get them too. If the coat of hair bothers you, I can introduce you to a hirsute human neighbor....

Where shall it end, you ask?

The bacteria in your gut are an essential part of you. Do they have human rights, are they merely secondary beneficiaries of your human rights?

Shouldn't we first make sure that all humans get their human rights? After all, only last week Amnesty International reported that there is torture in 141 countries. Even in countries where electrical power is expensive.

At the end of the day, humans will probably find a very human way of dealing with it. The humans visciously slandered by others as "the closed living relative of bacteria next to civil servants" will find an elegant solution. If you can write your demand for human rights onto a placard of cardboard or recycled plastic and march around town with them while evading arrest, your human rights will be considered.

So, who's going to train their pet chimp to do just that?