<Tr> <Th> Website </Th> <Td> www.greatapeproject.org / www.greatapeproject.de </Td> </Tr> <P> The Great Ape Project (GAP), founded in 1993, is an international organization of primatologists, anthropologists, ethicists, and others who advocate a United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Great Apes that would confer basic legal rights on non-human great apes: chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans . </P> <P> The rights suggested are the right to life, the protection of individual liberty, and the prohibition of torture . The organization also monitors individual great ape activity in the United States through a census program . Once rights are established, GAP would demand the release of great apes from captivity; currently 3,100 are held in the U.S., including 1,280 in biomedical research facilities . </P> <P> The book of the same name, edited by philosophers Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer, features contributions from thirty - four authors, including Jane Goodall and Richard Dawkins, who have submitted articles voicing their support for the project . The authors write that human beings are intelligent animals with a varied social, emotional, and cognitive life . If great apes also display such attributes, the authors argue, they deserve the same consideration humans extend to members of their own species . </P>

The great ape project argues that great apes have the right to