> Gorillas are much better behaved than primates in general so I wouldn't be insulted if somebody called me a gorilla.

Then again, you likely don't belong to a race that was subjugated for centuries by people comparing them to monkeys or gorillas to intentionally dehumanize them.. Black athletes in foreign countries still get bananas thrown at them on the field. I can assure you, this isn't meant as a compliment.

    Eberhardt described an experiment based on the
    Rodney King case. Participants viewed a video of
    police officers beating a Black suspect. Participants
    who saw words associated with apes before
    watching the video believed the officers’ actions 
    were more justified, compared to participants who 
    did not see the animal imagery. In a separate study, 
    Eberhardt found that people are more likely to 
    consider animal language (such as “barbaric,” 
    “animalistic,” etc.) appropriate and necessary in
    court cases of Black defendants compared to White 
    defendants. News articles describing Black 
    defendants are more likely to use animal language 
    than articles about White defendants.

    In addition, news articles of Blacks who received a 
    death sentence contain more animal language than 
    the articles of those with life sentences. “So not only 
    are Blacks associated with apes, but this 
    association is linked to justifications of violence and 
    death,” Eberhardt concluded. “It’s almost as though 
    the rules for what moral treatment is get shifted for 
    Black suspects and defendants.”

http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/continued-dehumanizatio...

I'd say say that homo sap is on the list of worse behaved apes than Gorillas. Chimpanzees and Gibbons will tear off your face, but it is a big mistake to suppose animals are in a lower ethical state than humans, as animals don't

* have 20 cops beat up one suspect * deal crack * attack people with assault rifles out of hate * invent poison gas * find demeaning labels for one another, etc.

Look at animal behavior and it seems that animals are basically rational in that they do things in the social space that raise their utility function. This is not so clear in the case of humans (an herbivore will always express satisfaction if you feed it, a human might not.)

I think you may be missing the point here.