Chimps are not people ​after all, ​a Manhattan judge has decided.

Thursday’s decision means that a pair of 8-year-old chimpanzees living in a​ research lab at Stony Brook University are not being unlawfully detained, as argued by the Nonhuman Rights Project, the now-losing side of the bizarre case.

The Nonhuman Rights Project’s leader, Steven Wise, had argued that denying Hercules and Leon basic legal rights was to deploy the same prejudices that categorized slaves and Native Americans classified as less than human.

The chimps may be suffering a fate “even worse than imprisoning human beings” because they are autonomous and self-conscious, but “don’t even know why they’re there” in cages, Wise argued in May.

In her decision, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Barbara Jaffee noted that Wise had raised “important questions.”

But at least legally, chimps are “things,” she wrote. And by law, “Persons have rights, duties, and obligations; things do not.”

“Animals, including chimpanzees and other highly intelligent mammals, are considered as property under the law. They are accorded no legal rights beyond being guaranteed the right to be free from physical abuse and other mistreatment,” Jaffee wrote.

The chimp-rights activists had argued that other non-human entities, namely corporations and partnerships, have previously been deemed “persons” for certain legal purposes, but “those entities are composed of humans, hence the legal fiction of personhood accorded them,” Jaffee wrote.

The judge acknowledged that the concept of legal personhood has evolved over the years.

“Not very long ago, only caucasian male, property-owning citizens were entitled to the full panoply of legal rights under the United States Constitution,” she wrote.

“Tragically, until passage of the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution, African American slaves were bought, sold, and otherwise treated as property, with few, if any, rights,” she wrote.

“Married women were once considered the property of their husbands, and before marriage were often considered family property, denied the full array of rights accorded to their fathers, brothers, uncles, and male cousins,” she wrote.

But those past mistreatments of humans are not analogous to the circumstances of chimps, she wrote. However similar to humans, chimps still “are incapable of bearing any legal responsibilities and social duties,” she explained, citing binding 2014 case law from the Appellate Division in Albany.

“The similarities between chimpanzees and humans inspire the empathy felt for a beloved pet,” Jaffee conceded.

“Efforts to extend legal rights to chimpanzees are thus understandable; some day they may even succeed,” she concluded, leaving a faint light at the end of the tunnel for future efforts.

Wise had sought to have the two chimps, who have been used as research subjects at Stony Brook University since 2010, released to a chimp sanctuary in Florida. His group has filed similar cases in Fulton and Niagara counties; the Suffolk case was summarily dismissed.

The state Attorney General’s Office, which won the case, and the Nonhuman Rights Project did not immediately comment on the decision.