Over the past few years, there have been a number of cases where people have advocated giving animals human rights (see post 1, post 2, post 3). Heck, even a river was given some rights (see post).
A recent New York court found that an elephant was not a human being and therefore not entitled to human rights (see link). If the goal is to treat highly intelligent creatures differently, then perhaps the law should be changed to recognize that sentient creatures have rights -- instead of trying to force a square into a round hole.
Image from Wix.com.