 Finally, beyond its contribution to the ancient debate over personal identity, animalism raises practical questions of great contemporary significance. For example, animalists are committed to claiming that each of us was once or might someday become a non-person (e.g., a fetus in a mother’s womb, a hospital patient in a persistent vegetative state). How are we to reconcile these implications of a metaphysical view with our ethical commitments regarding abortion and euthanasia? More generally, if animalism is correct, then our fundamental nature is indistinguishable from that of blue whales, myna birds, bonobo chimpanzees, and ring-tailed lemurs. How, in the light of this metaphysical view, are the ethical, legal, and policy debates that assume a sharp human/animal (us/them) contrast to be recalibrated? Such questions are only beginning to be explored (see, e.g., Johansson 2016; Sauchelli forthcoming, 2017a: ch. 5; D. Shoemaker 2009, 2013, 2016).