And if you have a hard time thinking of a whale or a great ape as potentially worth granting the rights belonging to personhood, do this thought experiment: Aliens land in their advanced interstellar craft and some decide to stay. They have evolved elsewhere and are clearly entirely foreign biological beings. Do we…

As far as I know — though it is probably not true in certain isolated single cases — animals have never generally been granted personhood — but that is nearly always based on an argument having to do with mental faculties which this article is saying they may well possess.

Um, show me where the article says that anyone wants to make birds “people”. Learn to read or go home. (Google is your friend. Try: “personhood status” - another hint: at various times, in various places, women, children, anyone not in the upper class, and foreigners have not always had it).