Great_Ape_research_ban
Countries banning non-human ape experimentation
List of countries banning non-human ape experimentation
This is a list of countries banning non-human ape experimentation. The term non-human ape here refers to all members of the superfamily Hominoidea, excluding Homo sapiens. Banning in this case refers to the enactment of formal decrees prohibiting experimentation on non-human apes, though often with exceptions for extreme scenarios.[lower-alpha 1]
Experimentation on great apes—a smaller family within the ape superfamily—is currently banned in the European Union, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand (29 countries total).[1] These countries have ruled that chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans are so cognitively similar to humans that using them as test subjects is unethical.[2][3] Austria is the only country in the world to have completely banned experiments on all apes, including both the great apes and the lesser apes, commonly known as gibbons.[4]