Biopsychologist says animals should legally be recognized as persons

[VV note: If corporations can be people, why not animals?]

Lori Marino: Leader of a Revolution in How We Perceive Animals

Text by Virginia Morell
National Geographic Society
THE INNOVATORS PROJECT

Lori Marino doesn't hide how she feels about animals.

Yes, she's a biopsychologist who's spent the past 18 years at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, delving into the behavior of captive dolphins and measuring the brain size of dead cetaceans. Yes, to become a scientist, she has euthanized lab rats and studied their neural anatomy. And yes, Marino knows that due in part to medical research on animals, she overcame a life-threatening illness (which she chooses not to reveal) and is alive today.

Still, Marino's experiences haven't given her that cool, objective gaze that people sometimes adopt when looking at other creatures.

Instead she's used her scientific objectivity to become one of the foremost advocates of animal personhood, and at a time when a tectonic shift is changing how we regard and think about nonhuman species.

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