By a vote of 5 to 2, the Court of Appeals rejected an animal rights group’s argument that Happy was being held illegally at the zoo and that he should be transferred to a more natural environment. The controversy depended on whether the legal principle of the habeas corpus – which people advocate for the protection of their physical liberty and for challenging unlawful restraint – should be extended to autonomous, cognitively complex animals such as elephants. No, the court said. “While no one disputes the elephants’ impressive potential, we reject the petitioner’s argument that he is entitled to seek treatment for habeas corpus on Happy’s behalf,” wrote Janet DiFiore, the chief justice. “The Habeas corpus is a procedural vehicle intended to ensure the freedom of human beings that are illegally restricted and not of non-human animals.” But in a dissenting opinion, Judge Rowan D. Wilson said the court had a duty “to recognize Happy’s right to seek her release not only because it is a wild animal not intended to be caged and exposed, but because the rights we communicate with others they define who we are as a society “. The case seemed to be the first to examine whether an animal is worthy of the so-called personality to reach so high in a court in the English-speaking world. And while the outcome keeps her happy where she is, the split decision was unlikely to stifle debate over whether highly intelligent animals should be considered anything other than things or property. The case was launched as part of a campaign by the Non-Human Rights Group, an animal rights group involved in a long-running legal push for the release of captive animals. Last month, even as Happy’s fate hung in the balance, the group backed a habeas claim seeking to remove three elephants from a Fresno Zoo in California. In New York, the band sought to relocate Happy from the Bronx Zoo, which she said was a prison for her, to one of two huge elephant sanctuaries, which she described as more natural environments that would make Happy’s life happier. “He is a depressed elephant,” the group’s founder, Steven Wise, said in an interview before the decision was announced. At the other end of the spectrum was the Wildlife Conservation Society, which manages the zoo and categorically denied the group’s claims of Happy Bronx. “She is well cared for by professionals with decades of experience and with whom she is closely connected,” the society said in a statement, adding that the case was tantamount to “blatant exploitation”. The theme of the argument was visible on a cool, clear May day from a one-way trolley running in the Wild Asia section of the zoo. She and another Asian elephant, Patty, moved slowly, separated by a fence of about two acres, a tree-lined enclosure, with trunks scattered around and a pool nearby. “Both of our elephants look great,” said one tour guide, offering an estimate that might be difficult for the average person to refute. Happy wandered in her grassy part in the direction of Patty, with ears, torso and tail waving in the morning sun. “They get a lot of attention.” Elephants are extremely sociable by nature, roaming in herds and communicating with each other in everything from low-frequency humming to slight corners of their bodies. They have been observed in various mourning behaviors when one of the many dies. Happy did not experience much of this physical life. Born in the early 1970s, most likely in Thailand, she was arrested at a young age and flown to the United States, where she ended up at a Florida zoo with six other elephants, each named after the characters “Snow White and the Seven.” dwarfs “. . The Bronx Zoo acquired her and another of the seven, Grumpy, also a woman, in 1977. The two originally lived with a larger female elephant, Tus, at the Elephant House (not in the Wild Asia section where the Happy). Tus, Happy and Grumpy were trained to do tricks, take children for walks and appear in “Elephant Weekends”, wearing costumes by a nervous artist in the city center and “playing” a tug-of-war with firefighters and college football players. (Elephants usually won.) Eventually, they relocated to Wild Asia as zoos across the country stocked up or abandoned their elephant exhibits, in part in response to a growing animal rights movement. Tus died in 2002. A few months later, Patty and a second elephant, Maxine, attacked Grumpy, injuring her fatally. Happiness could no longer be kept with them. In 2006, a young female elephant, Sammy, was introduced to become Happy’s new companion, but died shortly after her arrival. The zoo decided not to add other elephants, focusing instead on helping endangered members of the species in nature. That left Happy alone on one side of a fence, with Patty – and, until she died several years ago, Maxine – on the other. Despite the obstacle, the zoo officials say that Happy is not isolated and that she and Patty touch the trunks, smell each other and communicate. This did not stop Happy from becoming a prominent cause for animal rights. Her trip to the New York courts began in 2018, after the Court of Appeals rejected a habeas appeal by Mr. Wise’s team on behalf of two chimpanzees. Eugene M. Fahey, a judge at the court at the time, joined his colleagues in rejecting the chimpanzee case. But in a consensus, he said the issue presented “a deep ethical and political dilemma that requires our attention.” “The question of whether a non-human animal has a fundamental right to liberty protected by the habeas corpus form is deep and far-reaching,” he wrote. “It talks about our relationship with all the life around us. “Eventually, we will not be able to ignore it.” To Mr Wise, Judge Fahey’s opinion offered a glimmer of hope. With appeals in the chimpanzee case exhausted, he turned to Happy, who had been distinguished as highly cognitive even for a species known for intelligence. In 2005, she underwent a mirror self-identification test, touching an X marked on her head with her torso while looking in a mirror – the first elephant to show such self-awareness (only humans, monkeys and dolphins had done it before). ). The Nonhuman Rights Project filed a habeas application on behalf of Happy and in February 2020, a first instance court judge rejected it. The judge, Judge Alison Tuitt of the Bronx State Supreme Court, said she was bound by a legal precedent and had come to her conclusion “unfortunately”. “This court agrees that Happy is more than a legal thing or property,” he wrote. “He is an intelligent, autonomous being who must be treated with respect and dignity and who can have a right to freedom.” An appellate court upheld the lower court’s ruling, setting the conditions for a hearing last month before the seven-judge Court of Appeal. The judges asked the lawyers of both sides about how autonomy is defined for the members of the animal kingdom. the notion of physical freedom in this case; and the potentially greater consequences of a decision that would move Happy from her current home. Judge Jenny Rivera asked Monica Miller, the lawyer representing the Inhuman Rights Program, what the consequences were for pet owners. “Does that mean I could not keep a dog?” asked. “I mean, dogs can memorize words.” No, Ms Miller replied, the group’s arguments did not apply to dogs: “We do not have the data for dogs we have for elephants at the moment.” Asked if the team was looking for a decision that only applies to Happy, Ms Miller said: “It would be dishonest not to think this would be a precedent for another elephant.” The conservation company’s main argument was that Happy was not being held illegally, but its lawyer, Kenneth Manning, also raised the ghost of people losing control of animals of any kind if the court ruled in favor of Mr Wise’s team. “I would not call it a ripple, Your Excellency,” he told Judge Rivera. Judge Fahey withdrew from the court last year and did not attend the hearings. However, he voted in favor of the court taking the case before resigning, and in an interview before announcing the ruling, he said it was an important step regardless of the outcome. “The real question is whether they are beings with a complex sense of self,” he said of elephants and other highly intelligent animals such as chimpanzees. There was, he said, “a huge amount of evidence” to support this argument and “not a single spark of proof” to refute it. He noted that while a dictionary can define “person” in one way, the meaning of the word according to the law has changed over time. He noted that companies are now treated as people in certain situations. Judge Fahey, who declined to be interviewed how he would vote in the Happy case, also said that advances in technology – such as artificial intelligence, for example – make personality questions even more critical. “The nature of humanity and the nature of intelligence are going to change as science changes,” he said. “And if we do not deal with the way we define these things now, we will have nothing to rely on when these changes come.”
