Thread by @NatGeo

On #WorldElephantDay, a contentious court battle over Happy, a 50-year-old elephant at the Bronx Zoo, poses an important question: Is an animal a person or a thing? Wildlife Trade Investigative Reporter @rfobar breaks it down on.natgeo.com/2VFQBo4 🧵

In the eyes of the law, animals in the U.S. are considered ‘things,’ but earlier this year, New York’s highest court agreed to hear the case for declaring Happy a legal person. The @NonhumanRights Project wants her transferred to a sanctuary, where she'd be with other elephants.

The idea of personhood isn’t about if Happy is human—rather if she deserves legal rights. Corporations, bodies of water, animals, and even deities around the world have been recognized as persons.

Zoo officials say those who criticize Happy’s situation “know nothing of our individual animal, her personality, preferences, or tendencies.” Besides, because Happy can’t speak for herself, who’s to say what’s best for her?

Happy wouldn’t be the first animal to be legally declared a person—an Asian elephant named Kavaan was freed after spending more than 30 years at a zoo in Pakistan, and in 2016, an Argentine court determined that a chimp named Cecilia had inherent rights.

https://twitter.com/fourpawsint/status/1333427220027674630

Humans have a history of recognizing the sentience and autonomy of animals in the courts. Pigs, elephants, bulls, dogs, cows, and other animals have been tried, found guilty, and executed for murder.

In the early 1500s, a French bishop accused rats of eating the local barley crop, initiated a trial, and assigned the defendants a lawyer. And in Germany in 1559, a parson banned sparrows from the church for their “unceasing and extremely vexatious chatterings” during the sermon.

Native Americans have recognized the rights of natural resources for millennia—when people harvest something from nature, they also have a responsibility to give back, says @KelseyTLeonard. “We’ve consumed Happy as a society," she says. "But what have we given back to Happy?”

Whatever the result, the case before New York’s Court of Appeals may be Happy’s last chance for personhood. “We think our arguments are very powerful,” says @Steven_M_Wise, founder and president of the @NonhumanRights Project. “But who knows?”

Wildlife Watch is an investigative reporting project between National Geographic Society and National Geographic Partners focusing on wildlife crime and exploitation. Learn more about @insidenatgeo’s nonprofit mission at on.natgeo.com/3jRtBLc