"He has a real personality. It strikes you immediately: This is an individual. You just have to look him in the eye to see that."
The same is true of any animal. My pet rats have all got very individual and distinct personalities, and when playing with them you can sometimes think you're playing with a friend who just can't speak.
This reminds me of a story I read in Wizard magazine a couple of years ago. The headline said something about
'Mutant's rights being contested in court' and the article started out by saying that the story line from the
Xmen comics had finally bled over into the real world; there was a court in China who was deciding whether the characters from the XMen comics were Animanls or People.
As here, the point behind it all was cash; the import/export taxes are different on teddy bears from figurines. Because the Xmen are figures of people, they have to pay a higher rate of tax, so they were trying to argue that becasue the figures were of mutant superheroes they weren't people per se, and should really wualify for the lesser rate of tax reserved for toy versions of animals.
I think in the end they got the lower rate of tax.