The reality of owning a pet chimp

The image below is hard to read, but so incredibly spot-on, so check out the original here, thanks to the comic strip Ape Not Monkey by Jeffrey Weston.

Oh, and don't get a pet chimp!

The paperback is available!

Monkey Business: A History of Nonhuman Primate Rights is now available for purchase on Amazon.com and other book retailers!

Click here to purchase the paperback.

Signed copies are also available for no extra charge. Please email me at authorerikafleury@gmail.com for more information.

Happy reading!

Read a free sample of Monkey Business!

You may not have noticed, but I just added a spot on the right-hand side of this page that gives you a chance to read a chapter of Monkey Business: A History of Nonhuman Primate Rights for free!

You can also access this free sample by clicking here.

Click to read, and share your thoughts and questions with me anytime!

Should chimpanzees have legal rights?

Recently, the Boston Globe published a story about an upcoming trial led by animal rights lawyer Steven Wise,, that will attempt to grant legal personhood for a captive chimpanzee.

I discuss Mr. Wise's work in Monkey Business and also examine this concept of a chimpanzee's proposed "personhood", explaining 

Personhood need not be synonymous with humanness. Granting the personhood of animals does not require admittance that they are human, as, of course, by definition they're not. As Gary Francione puts it, "To say that a being is a person is merely to say that the being has morally significant interests, that the principle of equal consideration applies to that being, that the being is not a thing."[i] The benefits that accompany personhood, such as the right to liberty and the ability to perform natural behaviors, would be granted to nonhuman primates under this rights theory, but without personhood, future legal decisions must remain relegated to what Francione refers to as "micro-ethical issues."[ii] Concerns such as cage size, enrichment requirements, and nutritional regulations only distract from the larger issue of granting inherent rights to nonhuman primates. In Francione's words, "Is our exploitation of nonhumans justified in the first place?"[iii] Or have humans just grown ever more adept at crafting laws that make our exploitive treatment of nonhuman primates seem necessary and unavoidable?

[i] Francione, Animals as Persons, 61.

[ii] Francione, Animals, Property, 25.

[iii] Ibid., 25.

You can read the Boston Globe's article here. 

What are your thoughts? The personhood of nonhumans is a completely foreign idea to some people, but when you really think about it, you may come to some startling conclusions.

Want to read more about the personhood of nonhuman primates? Want to learn more about the fascinating insights of people like Steven Wise, Gary Francione, and Peter Singer? 

Buy the book!

Add another ebook site to the list...

Have you ever heard of Kobo? Me neither...until recently.

Kobo is a retailer of ebooks, and guess who is now on their site? 

My book can be seen here.

In about  one week, Monkey Business should also be available in the iBooks store, Barnes & Noble, and academic catalogs like Baker & Taylor and Library Direct from Smashwords, in addition to the paperback copy on Amazon!

Monkey Business for iBooks!

Good news - after some fussing and much learning, I have managed to get a perfect copy of Monkey Business: A History of Nonhuman Primate Rights available for sale for iBooks. I worked with a website called Smashwords, which also distributes my title in other formats for Palm and Sony devices and HTML for online reading.

For all you iBook fans (I am one myself), you can purchase Monkey Business or view a sample by clicking here. You'll see you will need to specify which format you want, but it is very simple to purchase the book.

More good news - a few days ago the book was in the top five Kindle downloads in the category of Apes & Monkeys. This makes me very, very happy.

And because many people are asking me...the paperback will be available soon. As soon as I can humanly make it available, in all honesty. I will shout it from the mountaintops as soon as this occurs.

In the meantime, thank you for stopping by, and I hope to see you again soon.

Rankings, and the paperback's coming!

Hello everyone. I've been really touched by the messages of support and encouragement as people have heard about Monkey Business being available as a Kindle download. Thank you all!

Just wanted to share a few exciting tidbits:

First of all - I've received the paperback proof of my book, and it needed a few tweaks. I'm revising some spacing issues, and should be done in a few days. I would love nothing more than to sit down and bang this out in a day, but I'm working around my part-time day job and my one-year-old toddler's nap times. Take what you can get, I suppose! I'll order another proof to make sure the book is perfect, and then I will quickly alert the world that Monkey Business is ready for purchase as a paperback.

In the meantime, Monkey Business is currently ranked #7 for Amazon Kindle downloads in the "Apes & Monkeys" category. We're right behind the esteemed Jane Goodall, and beating out well known books like Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human and another by famous primatologist Duane Rumbaugh! 

If anyone would care to write an objective review, it would be much appreciated...

Happy reading!