{"id":762462,"date":"2020-12-18T09:09:35","date_gmt":"2020-12-18T14:09:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=762462"},"modified":"2020-12-18T09:21:03","modified_gmt":"2020-12-18T14:21:03","slug":"notproperty-happy-the-elephant-to-stay-at-bronx-zoo-appellate-judges-uphold-lower-court-ruling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=762462","title":{"rendered":"#NotProperty: Happy the elephant to stay at Bronx Zoo; appellate judges uphold lower court ruling"},"content":{"rendered":"\t<blockquote  class=\"bs-quote bs-quote-1 bsq-t1 bsq-s1 bsq-left\">\n\t\t<div class=\"quote-content\">\n\t\t\t<p>Elephants are among the most intelligent and empathetic creatures, scientific research shows. They feel joy, embarrassment, and even grieve when a relative dies.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/blockquote>\n\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>MOLLY CRANE-NEWMAN:<\/strong> Happy the Elephant can\u2019t be sprung from the Bronx Zoo like a captive prisoner appellate judges agreed Thursday&#8230; Since filing a lawsuit in 2018, activists \u2014 including world-renowned primatologist Jane Goodall \u2014 have fought to free Happy from her one-acre exhibit at Bronx Zoo to a 2,300-acre elephant sanctuary&#8230; But a panel of five appeals court judges upheld a lower court February ruling that the 49-year-old elephant cannot be regarded in the law\u2019s eyes as an unlawfully imprisoned human being&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Designating anything other than humans as \u201cpersons &#8230; would lead to a labyrinth of questions that common-law processes are ill-equipped to answer,\u201d the panel wrote&#8230; The judges said the decision \u201cof whether and how to integrate other species into legal constructs designed for humans is a matter better suited to the legislative process'&#8221;&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">A spokesperson for The Nonhuman Rights Project [NhRP], the group that brought the 2018 lawsuit, lamented Thursday\u2019s ruling as wrong and unjust \u2014 but said they\u2019ll keep fighting. \u201cWe\u2019ll now ask New York\u2019s highest court, the Court of Appeals, to hear our arguments,\u201d spokeswoman Stacey Doss said in a statement&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Happy the Elephant was captured in Thailand in the 1970s and brought to the United States where she\u2019s lived in the Bronx for more than 43 years&#8230; Happy was the first elephant in recorded history to demonstrate sophisticated self-awareness by passing a mirror self-recognition test in 2005&#8230; Elephants are among the animal kingdom\u2019s most empathetic creatures, scientific research shows. They feel joy, embarrassment, and even grieve when a relative dies. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/new-york\/bronx\/ny-happy-elephant-bronx-zoo-20201217-rkehzxymznfkringxjm4txgyii-story.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>SOURCE&#8230;<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>RELATED VIDEO:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/C_ICw9DZlIw\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MOLLY CRANE-NEWMAN: Happy the Elephant can\u2019t be sprung from the Bronx Zoo like a captive prisoner appellate judges agreed Thursday&#8230; Since filing a lawsuit in 2018, activists \u2014 including world-renowned primatologist Jane Goodall \u2014 have fought to free Happy from her one-acre exhibit at Bronx Zoo to a 2,300-acre elephant sanctuary&#8230; But a panel of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":762463,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[16,18,20,23,25],"tags":[27,28,30,34,35,37],"class_list":["post-762462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-ethics","category-justice","category-rights","category-welfare","tag-cruelty","tag-entertainment","tag-exploitation","tag-personhood","tag-protection","tag-speciesism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=762462"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":762471,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762462\/revisions\/762471"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/762463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=762462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=762462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=762462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}