In 2013, India’s government passed legislation banning dolphinariums and defining dolphins as nonhuman persons entitled to rights. The government cited dolphins’ “unusually high intelligence” and declared it “morally unacceptable to keep them captive for entertainment purpose.”

Countries like New Zealand and Romania have moved to protect the rights of certain animals, including great apes, chimpanzees, whales, dolphins and elephants. A growing body of scientific evidence demonstrates the emotional and intellectual complexity of these animals. They have complicated family structures, long memories and strong social bonds, and studies suggest that they develop language and even culture. Granting personhood to cognitively advanced animals is a fundamental step toward greater empathy for other species.

This is not as radical as it sounds. No one thinks that dolphins or elephants or great apes are humans, but the wealth of scientific evidence seems to be staring us in the face — their intelligence and emotional complexity renders them sensitive to pain, both physical and psychological. Charles Siebert, acclaimed author and NYU Abu Dhabi Literature and Creative Writing professor, explained that personhood doesn’t really define something as a person, but rather as “an entity under the law, an entity that is entitled to a right — at least one right.”

So, what exactly are the legal parameters? President of the Nonhuman Rights Project Inc. Steven M. Wise filed for a New York court to grant a writ of habeas corpus to a chimpanzee imprisoned on a farm in the Adirondack Mountains in New York. Effectively, Tommy, the captive chimp, became the first animal in the U.S. to sue its owner. Wise lost the case, but it set a precedent for cognitively advanced animals like chimpanzees to have their complaints considered in a court of law.

When we deem dolphins or other animals as nonhuman persons with rights, we don’t grant them citizenship. We don’t promise them healthcare, education, social security or other social benefits. These rights simply protect animals from slaughter, cruelty and pain. Siebert said that the most vital animal right is “the right to bodily liberty, meaning that [an animal] can't be owned or parried about for human entertainment.” He admitted that codifying that right “would have enormous repercussions, that would essentially say that none of these creatures can be in zoos anymore.”

The topic of zoos is a controversial one. In 2013, the CNN documentary Blackfish garnered enormous attention for its portrayal of captive orca whales at SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida. The orcas were trained to give performances to SeaWorld customers and spent the rest of their lives in small tanks, which were the size of bathtubs compared to their natural habitats of vast ocean expanses. The public outrage caused by Blackfish prompted SeaWorld to end its practices of capturing orcas in the wild and breeding them in captivity. Perhaps due to the absence of popular documentaries about captive land animals, the criticism did not extend to the thousands of zoos across the world that imprison animals for display and profit.

According to Siebert, “a lot of zoos [in the U.S] have given up their elephants because they know it's unconscionable. There's no happy face that you can put on captivity for an elephant. These are creatures that wander over vast distances, that are psychologically and emotionally so advanced and empathetic and caring ... Elephant mothers have been known to kill the babies that they give birth to in zoos. And they would never do that in the wild.”

Some argue that we already face a pandemic of dehumanization. Countless historical episodes of discrimination, ethnic cleansing and genocide demonstrate the existing problem of humans classifying other humans as less worthy in order to justify violence. In that case, what's the use of extending empathy to animals?

The fact is that recognizing the humanity in each other goes hand in hand with recognizing the personhood, the sensitivity and intelligence of other creatures. This is part of a larger movement toward compassion. For many, affirming the idea that an animal is an individual capable of suffering is not so much of an ideological leap.

“To accord consciousness and thoughts to other creatures ... This was an area we couldn't even go to for centuries, because it was considered anthropomorphism," said Siebert. “But now, the science is freeing us up to make some pretty solid conjectures about what level of complexity [certain animals possess] that we've long intuited was there, but now we can look at their brains and [say], Oh yeah, it's there. It's there, and how do you feel about it? How do you feel about eating meat? It's tough.”

Legislators and litigators are now faced with the question of how human society should govern the treatment of animals, and how we should legally regard them. The times, however, do not allow for endless deliberation.

"We're on the cusp of making the decision to accord animals bodily liberty and maybe personhood,” said Siebert. “We're getting very close to that, [and] at the same time we're getting close to seeing the end of these creatures in the wild.”