By focusing on lawsuits in which the long-established categorization of animals as things is at stake, this paper aims to attain a better understanding of the legal fabrication of persons and things, and the role that science lately plays in this context. The first case is an application for habeas corpus on behalf of two female chimpanzees. The scope of the second one is the acknowledgement of a male chimpanzee as a (human) person. It is argued that one corollary of the legal opposition person/thing is the homogenization of difference. Therefore, the problem involved in the recognition of animals as subjects of rights seems to be how to conceptually fabricate - and thereby bring into existence - another difference, i.e., a difference that does not fit in the traditional modes of legal differentiation
animals; law; persons; things