In 2020 Colombia’s Constitutional Court handed down a decision disallowing a writ of habeas corpus originally brought by a law professor to protect the individual freedom from captivity of a spectacled bear named Chucho. This paper explores the background to the case and the legal opinions expressed by members of the Constitutional Court regarding the possibility of assigning the status of ‘subject of rights’ to a non-human animal. It discusses a recent attempt to theorise non-human legal personhood and makes the invitation for a shift of emphasis: away from the ‘subject of rights’ and toward a jurisprudence that pays attention to the ways in which species of animal such as bears feature as active participants in legal thought.