Whether a non-human qualifies as human has been a popular theme in intellectual sf, and often results in a dramatic court case. Vercors (pseudonym of Jean Marcel Bruller) wrote You Shall Know Them (Les Animaux dénaturés) in 1952 about a discovered tribe of ape-men. The protagonist deliberately kills an infant and demands to be tried, because if they are not human he isn’t a criminal and if they are he deserves death himself. It made a sensation. When it was released in the U.S., they publicized with the best paperback cover in all history.
The situation and the logic is so powerful that in 1988 Roger McBride Allen rewrote the book almost exactly as Orphan of Creation, and claimed when I asked him that he had never heard of the original. Not improbable: the earlier book is almost forgotten now.
The Allen book is my nominee when people ask what books of sf should be made into a film. It’s a book about ideas, not spaceships, but would be stronger than a thousand space battle movies. And cost almost nothing for special effects; just some prosthetics.