Are killer whales persons?

# Instant group work, two monkeys having to analyse a situation to pull ropes (all rigged by researchers of course) with the right choreography to free some food. One came, saw that pulling either end alone wouldn't cut it, call his buddy, they look at each other and the rig for a second, then split each to its own end, synchronize then pull, profit. The 'no brainer' attiude killed me.

# Crows 'reverse engineering' and social hacking: https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=ted+talk+crows

# Pity bargaining, a puppy lab trying to guilt trip us into letting her go outside after being reprimanded

# An octopuss mother heating its eggs until near death, saving her last forces to swim as far away as possible so her dead body wouldn't attract predators. The sacrifice got me emotional.

# The 'lion hugging its savior' video on youtube. That lion looked overwhelmed... More human than a Disney antropomorphic lion character. Just thinking about it warms my heart.

None of this is abstract enough for us to stop thinking we're not above. I'll agree that I've never seen an animal contemplating the world the way humans do. But maybe there's no point in doing it and we're just full of ourselves :)

Of course if we redefine the word "person" to mean something else, orcas can be considered "persons". We can even redefine it in such a way that a chair will be considered a "person" - but should we?

And if, as it currently stands, we have many different definitions, and are not even sure what the word means - of course we will not be sure whether orca is or is not it.

It's the same as with the debate of whether computers can be "conscious". A word is just a label, if nobody clearly understands what it means - conversation about whether or not something can be described by it is pointless.

Having said that, aside from the clickbaity title, article is pretty cool and interesting.

Edit:

Haha, I can't help but imagine that in 30 years human ethics will take another leap, orcas will be deemed sentient, and I will be denied some high status job for such an ignorant and speciest comment. And I'll have to give some apologetic speech "I deeply regret that I held such unenlightened beliefs, I profoundly apologize to the orca rights community, but I'd like to state for the record that I had a horrible day, and did not mean at all to offend the feelings of this oppressed minority by comparing them to furniture." And then the orca judge will sentence me to 10 years of eating algae of shame or something(a proper punishment as their sophisticated culture requires).