Animal rights activists may want to be getting their party supplies out right about now, because a major court decision just came down firmly on the side of apes: A U.S. court has ruled that if a chimpanzee rips your face off, it gets to keep it.
What a landmark victory. This day will definitely go down in animal rights history.
For five long years, PETA has been fighting a legal battle on behalf of chimpanzees everywhere, asserting that these intelligent animals have an inalienable right to the faces they rip off of people’s heads, and now the animal rights organization has this amazing court ruling to hold up to its supporters:
“When a chimpanzee locates and harvests the face off a human being, the ensuing eyes, nose, lips, and skin is the result of the chimpanzee’s labor, and it cannot be requisitioned under any circumstances,” reads the court’s majority opinion. “These are sophisticated animals with impressive intellectual capacities, who are capable of experiencing the joy of ripping flesh from bone, and mourning when that flesh is taken away. It is the opinion of the Court that the face that is torn from a human skull like a wrapper off a lollipop is the sole property of whichsoever chimpanzee or other great ape acquires it.”
The amazing ruling continues to grant further protections to chimpanzees, saying that even if the primate pretends to give the face back to the screaming, grasping human then pulls it away at the last second in a mocking manner, it still retains complete ownership.
Wow. Whether chimpanzees wish to bury the face they ripped off a person in their own feces, eat it, or put it atop their own face as a crude mask, their right to do so is now fully recognized. And that’s something for animal rights activists everywhere to celebrate.
