Animals already can be considered to have certain rights. The interesting question is whether a truly sentient animal could be considered a person - then they would have ALL the rights humans have.
No, an abstract entity such as a company is already given the status of a person, but it doesn’t mean it has the same extent of rights a human being is given in the same jurisdiction.
Thank you for giving me some friendly response. :)
I understand the feeling here, definitely wales and corporations are not of the same ontological class.
What I was trying to point out however, was that just because a jurisdiction give an entity the status of person, it doesn't mean it give to it the same extend of rights.
They probably mean sapient. We consider most animals sentient but only humans sapient.
That said, rights don't happen through scientific discovery but through reform or revolution. There are strong economic incentives to keep animal rights minimal and there is only very weak political will to change that. It also doesn't help that in the US there are strong religious doctrines that oppose the notion of animals deserving rights at all.
It's worth mentioning that there are indeed jurisdictions (not sure about the US) where animal cruelty laws are actually framed as animal rights (usually with some limitations, e.g. only considering vertebrates) rather than as protection of private property but even they usually don't include a right to life or bodily integrity and are flexible about what constitutes cruelty and what can be done to reduce it.
