"The committee would bind Spain to the principles of the Great Ape Project, which points to apes' human qualities, including the ability to feel fear and happiness, create tools, use languages, remember the past and plan the future. The project's directors, Peter Singer, the Princeton ethicist, and Paola Cavalieri, an Italian philosopher, regard apes as part of a 'community of equals' with humans.

"If the bill passes -- the news agency Reuters predicts it will -- it would become illegal in Spain to kill apes except in self-defense. Torture, including in medical experiments, and arbitrary imprisonment, including for circuses or films, would be forbidden.