Lab Chimps Laugh And Hug At Taste Of Freedom (link inc video)

http://news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/16064687

The emotional moment a group of chimpanzees saw daylight for the first time after being kept in a laboratory for their whole lives has been caught on film.

The video shows the animals edging out of the door hesitantly at first and looking curiously up at the sky.

But they then appear to celebrate their new found freedom by hugging each other and laughing.

The 38 chimps were taken from their mothers shortly after they were born and kept in a research facility in Austria.

They were used for tests based on diseases such as HIV and hepatitis and kept in isolation.

They were rescued in 1997 after the pharmaceutical company behind the research was sold and taken to a farm where keepers have since tried to reintroduce them to the outside world

It is only now that experts felt the time was right and the chimps were ready to experience fresh air.

Very moving. To see these poor chimpanzees discovering the open air and the sun, it is warm in the heart and at the same time it is poignant.

Thanks Gaz

Echoed what Luthien said.

Lovely but are we right to personify them?

What do you mean personify them?

I guess that technically I mean anthropomorphise ... I know almost nothing about chimpanzees - are these really behaviours that we share or are we projecting?

It is believed these are shared feelings with any speices that has a social setting. An example recently concluded rats also display 'human behaviours'. which I feel should be more defined as social pack animal displays.

The observation of the rats, showed they will go to aid another rat if it is trapped. Share food and resources etc.

Wolves also do this and so do many other social pack animals including humans.

Then it is indeed a lovely story; Even if, once again, it's the contrast with human barbarism that makes it so.

My old pops used to say, only thing that differs us from them animals is way we loo. Rest of what is us bar the looks is in them animals too.