Individual, Someone, They, Who
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If sentient animals are not someone what are they? A thing? Like a rock?
When you look at one of these sentient animals in the eye, you can see that "there's someone in there". You can see that they are sentient. They aren't cold robots or inanimate objects. They are someone. Furthermore, a big part of why systemic animal abuse continues is through objectification/denial of sentience to these individuals. By calling them 'it' instead of 'them', 'something' instead of 'someone', and 'that' instead of 'who', we implicitly contribute to that denial of sentience.
"The word someone refers a person or an individual"
Individual, n, 1(a)(2) "a particular being or thing as distinguished from a class, species, or collection: such as a single organism as distinguished from a group"
Individual, n, 2 "an indivisible entity"
Individual, adj, 2 "having marked individuality"
Individual, adj, 3 "existing as a distinct entity"
Individual, adj "existing and considered separately from the other things or people in a group"
"The word individual is all about being a single entity that cannot be divided."
"An individual is that which exists as a distinct entity."
Other, n, 2a "one that remains of two or more" Other, adj, 1a "being the one (as of two or more) remaining or not included held on with one hand and waved with the other one" Other, adj, 1b "being the one or ones distinct from that or those first mentioned or implied"
They, pronoun, 1 "those ones: those people, animals, or things" They, pronoun, 3a "used with a singular indefinite pronoun antecedent" They, pronoun, 1 "You use they to refer to a group of people, animals, or things." They, pronoun, 1 "people, animals or things that have already been mentioned or are easily identified" They, pronoun, A1 "used as the subject of a verb to refer to people, animals, or things already mentioned or, more generally, to a group of people not clearly described" They, pronoun, 1 "nominative plural of he, she, and it" (He/she can of course refer to animals.) "they is a third-person pronoun relating to a grammatical subject"
"-> used as a function word to introduce a relative clause -> used especially in reference to persons but also in reference to groups or to animals" "that refers to persons or things, [...] who chiefly to persons and sometimes to animals"