Cameron M. Smith - Anthropology For Dummies

FIGURE 4-6:Global distribution of primates today.

In 1996, the World Conservation Union reported on the many threats to primate species, and in 2003 they revealed that about half of the more than 200 primate species were under severe threat. The situation hasn’t gotten any better since that report. In October 2007, the International Primatological Society and Conservation International copublished a list of the 25 most threatened and endangered primate species. Astonishingly, these groups include chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and some kinds of gibbons; essentially, aside from humans, all the great apes are facing extinction . Maybe we should be more ashamed than astonished, though; conservationists have been telling us for 30 years that these and other species were in trouble. But even pointing out that we share at least 95 percent of our DNA with most of these species hasn’t reduced the threats to our closest living relatives. These threats include

Habitat destruction from logging, particularly in Southeast Asia and Borneo, home of the orangutan

Habitat destruction from agriculture, particularly in the African Congo, where farms are encroaching on gorilla habitat

Poaching, much of it for meat, some of which sells for spectacular prices on the African “bush meat” market

Any conscientious anthropologist today will tell you that for the threatened and endangered species, right now research priorities must include conservation effort. If the species aren’t preserved, how can you find out about our species from them? And if humans let our closest living relatives go extinct without a real fight, what does that say about us?

One reason people may feel ambivalent about the fate of chimpanzees — and, by extension, other endangered primates — is that for a long time Western civilization has looked on the chimpanzee with suspicion, hatred, fear, and disgust. Medieval sculptures depict chimpanzees as gargoyle-like winged devils; in the Victorian era, captive chimpanzees disgusted many Londoners, who believed that the chimpanzee was a species locked in time, a throwback to a disgusting, primordial past. Of course, the Victorians were wrong: Chimpanzees are here in the present and have evolved for as long as we have. That they didn’t evolve the kinds of language and culture of modern humans is neither here nor there; each species adapts in its own way, and cross-species comparisons of this kind are pointless. Today, despite knowing that most of our DNA is identical to that of the chimpanzee, chimps are still dressed up for commercials and movies and essentially looked on as comical quasi-humans. But some scientists feel that, due to chimpanzees’ genetic and anatomical similarities to humanity, the chimpanzee genus — Pan — should be dissolved, and chimpanzees brought into our genus, Homo.

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