Anthropoid Free [repack] May 2026

Culturally, the relief would be profound. No more conflicted feelings at the zoo, watching an orangutan smoke a cigarette thrown by a tourist and recognizing the boredom in its eyes. No more queasy sense of trespass when watching a nature documentary’s tender scene of a mother chimp grooming her daughter. No more Planet of the Apes to trouble our sleep with visions of a justly conquered future. Without anthropoids, our myths remain clean: the clever fox, the loyal dog, the noble lion—none of them stare back with our eyes. We could return to a pre-Darwinian comfort, a solipsistic Eden where we are truly, utterly alone at the top.

The essay you have just read is, therefore, nonsense. Deliberate, provocative nonsense. Because the moment you truly imagine an “anthropoid free” planet, you realize it is not a place of liberation. It is a place of loneliness. It is a museum with only one exhibit. The great apes are not a problem to be solved; they are a question to be endured. And as any honest humanist—or any honest ape—will tell you, the only interesting questions are the ones that stare back. anthropoid free

And here lies the twist. The “anthropoid free” world is not a future we can achieve by hunting or habitat destruction—though we are, tragically, working hard on that. It is a philosophical thought experiment that reveals the opposite of its intention. To wish for a world without apes is to wish for a world without self-knowledge. For what is an ape, after all? It is not a rival. It is a relative. It is the awkward uncle at the family reunion, the one who picks his nose and throws his feces, yet whose resemblance to your father is so strong it makes your heart ache. Culturally, the relief would be profound

Without the great apes, the debates that paralyze modern bioethics evaporate. No more hand-wringing over invasive medical testing on creatures who recognize themselves in mirrors. No more awkward courtroom battles over whether a bonobo named Kanzi deserves habeas corpus. No more uncomfortable Sunday school questions: “If chimpanzees have 99% of our DNA, why didn’t they build the Sistine Chapel?” The answer, in an anthropoid-free world, is simple: because they were never there. The ladder of being becomes a smooth, unbroken pole from sponge to human, with no disconcerting, hairy faces peering down from the rung just below. No more Planet of the Apes to trouble