Without the great apes, the debates that paralyze modern bioethics evaporate. No more hand-wringing over invasive medical testing on creatures who recognize themselves in mirrors. No more awkward courtroom battles over whether a bonobo named Kanzi deserves habeas corpus. No more uncomfortable Sunday school questions: “If chimpanzees have 99% of our DNA, why didn’t they build the Sistine Chapel?” The answer, in an anthropoid-free world, is simple: because they were never there. The ladder of being becomes a smooth, unbroken pole from sponge to human, with no disconcerting, hairy faces peering down from the rung just below.
The problem with anthropoids is not that they exist, but that they mirror . A chimpanzee using a twig to fish for termites is not merely a clever animal; it is a crack in the philosophical fortress of human exceptionalism. A gorilla signing “I am sad” in American Sign Language is not a parlor trick; it is a lawsuit against the very concept of the soul as a human monopoly. The anthropoid is a living, breathing, knuckle-walking refutation of our most cherished fictions: that tool use, language, self-awareness, culture, and grief are ours alone. To be “anthropoid free” would be to scrub the looking glass clean. anthropoid free
The economic benefits, too, would be staggering. Vast tracts of Central African and Southeast Asian rainforest, currently patrolled by underfunded and outgunned park rangers protecting apes from poachers, could be reclassified. Timber, palm oil, and coltan mining—the minerals in your smartphone—could proceed without the awkward obstacle of an endangered species’ habitat. The billions spent on sanctuaries, anti-poaching drones, and ecotourism logistics could be redirected into, say, colonizing Mars. After all, you can’t trip over a mountain gorilla on the dusty plains of Ares Vallis. Without the great apes, the debates that paralyze