>>47964640Not them, but there are likely many sapient animals in our world a Gorillas are sapient for example, but they are still treated like animals. The phrase you're looking for is sophont. In real life there are no creatures that are sophont except for humans (as far as we know), in the Pokemon setting however many Pokemon can be defined as sophont level beings. A great example of this is Team Rocket's Meowth, it has human level intelligence, the reasoning capacity of a human, the full capacity to feel the same concept of suffering and pain, it even learned how to speak perfect complex english/japanese on an equal level to humans. In real life, a creature like this Meowth would cause revolutionary legal and ethical battles, just by existing, likely being one of the first non-human life forms to be given full personhood. But that's real life, in Pokemon maybe? We don't actually know the legal laws of that world, we don't know if a Pokémon such as Meowth could choose to gain legal personhood if it so wanted to, and we never will as that's not really something Pokémon cares about or wants us to think about. Pokémon might have some levels of rights already, but again we don't know what they do or do not have. Pokémon doesn't talk about this sort of thing, and it never will.
TL;DR: Pokemon like Meowth SHOULD be given personhood on a philosophical, moral, and ethical degree, however it will never be talked about in the series as its for kids.
