Our ambassador from the Congo wilderness forest-people we call "the chimps", has held her last transpecies conference. Washoe the Chimp passed on in her sleep in her home last Wednesday

"Washoe was an emissary, bringing us a message of respect for nature," Dr. Mary Lee Jensvold, assistant director of the nonprofit institute, said Wednesday...
"The entire CWU community and the Ellensburg community are feeling the loss of our friend, Washoe, one of our daughters," said CWU President Jerilyn S. McIntyre.
[ Wired News ]

Way back in the 1960's, upon hearing of Dr. Jane's observation on termite-fishing, Louis Leakey remarked, "Either we must re-define 'man', re-define 'tool', or accept the Chimpanzees as human." -- Since that time we've seen Washoe teaching her understudies to sign, chimps playing PacMan (and asking for a replay when they know they could do better), we've even seen local regional tool-use habits handed down the generations as a cultural inheritance ... so where do we move the line?

Never hurts to ask the experts, and sure enough, bounding back from the topics of logging roads in Ecuador, cultural decimation of the Pygmy, from deforestation for oil, lumber and the bush-meat trade to the tale of the last tree standing on Easter Island and a chime bell from the Killing Fields, Dr. Jane has some excellent notions where our human-ness may be, and what we could be doing with it...