Editing Great Ape Project (section)

==''The Great Ape Project'' (book)==
The 1994 book ''The Great Ape Project: Equality Beyond Humanity'', 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 ape]]s also display such attributes, the authors argue, they deserve the same consideration humans extend to members of their own species.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Great Ape Project: Equality Beyond Humanity |url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40260.The_Great_Ape_Project}}</ref>

The book highlights findings that support the capacity of great apes to possess rationality and self-consciousness, and the ability to be aware of themselves as distinct entities with a past and future. Documented conversations (in sign languages) with individual great apes are the basis for these findings. Other subjects addressed within the book include the division placed between humans and great apes, great apes as persons, progress in gaining rights for the severely [[intellectual disability|intellectually disabled]] (once an overlooked minority), and the situation of great apes in the world today.