Two Dalhousie University professors are among several who have joined a legal fight to have two privately-owned chimpanzees declared persons and transferred to a sanctuary.

One of the male chimpanzees, named Kiko, was originally owned by an exotic animal collector and trainer and was featured in film before it was put up for sale. Kiko ended up at a primate sanctuary in a Niagara Falls, N.Y. where the animal rights group says the chimpanzee is held in solitary captivity in a cage.

Tommy, the other male chimp featured in the claim, also appeared in films before it was passed on to a family in Gloversville, N.Y. Nonhuman Rights Project alleges that Tommy has been living alone in a cage in a shed on a used trailer lot there.

According to Nonhuman Rights Project, the animal rights group leading the court challenge to release the primates, the chimps are believed to be in the possession of private owners in New York State.

Since 2013, the animal rights group has been trying to have the primates released to an outdoor sanctuary in Florida that houses other chimpanzees. After losing multiple lawsuits and subsequent appeals, the Nonhuman Rights Project’s legal team has taken their case to New York’s Court of Appeals.

They have asked the court to grant the primates habeas corpus relief. The writ of habeas corpus, when applied to humans, is used to examine whether someone is being unlawfully detained or imprisoned. Under current U.S. law, only persons are allowed to be considered for habeas corpus relief.

Along with a group of other prominent professors from across Canada and the U.S., Dalhousie University philosophy professors Letitia Meynell and Andrew Fenton have lent their support to the animal rights group because, they say, morally, the animals have rights. The pair helped write an Amicus brief that was submitted to the court in support of the Nonhuman Rights Project’s efforts to recognize the chimpanzees as persons.

“This is just wrong,” Meynell told CTV Atlantic on Wednesday. “It’s an injustice and the Nonhuman Rights Project is right in trying to get habeas corpus relief to get these chimpanzees released to sanctuary.”

“These are our closest relatives and we are theirs,” Fenton added. “Given how complex they are, cognitively and socially.”

Robert Bethune, a retired molecular diagnostician, said he admires the Nonhuman Rights Project’s intentions, but thinks they may be going about their legal efforts in the wrong way.

“I think it’s an honourable thing so that we treat animals better, but I think the argument is a little bit flawed,” he said.

Bethune said chimpanzees and humans may have approximately 95 to 98 per cent identical DNA, but those percentages can be misleading.

“What it really means is 150 million base pairs of our DNA are totally different from chimpanzees,” he explained.

The Nonhuman Rights Project has lost some of the lawsuits they have already filed on the case, but they’re appealing one of them and launching another one soon.

With a report from CTV Atlantic’s Ron Shaw