Consider for a moment that every species with a brain, and especially those with a layered brain, have a range of intelligence. If the human species has Einsteins and Hawkings, can we dismiss that other species do not also? We do that, dismiss them as merely animals, because we are the weaker species in love, high in intellect but very lacking in empathetic love.
I live on a farm. One year a cow gave birth to what I can only describe as a very smart calf. I named him Einstein. The farm was no longer being run by my family, so the fate of the animals was not in my hands. I could go on and on about the things Einstein did that made him so different from the other cattle, but in the end, sadly, the people running the farm wanted females, to bear young ones for profits. Einstein was sent to the scrotum snippers and later to auction.
I sometimes imagine that Einstein gave whomever acquired him a little bit of hell. He could master locks and chains and fence gates. He had a refined sense of smell, so that medicines delivered in 'watering troughs' he would not touch. And he appeared to understand some human words, as he proved the day they came to try and coax him into the cattle trailer for transport to the vet for inoculations and snipping.
My old heart aches for the animals we take so crassly for granted. The cattle show they know they're about to be slaughtered when they tremble at the meat processing ramp.
What the hell was God thinking when he made us so damned cold in our hearts? ... Or is it we who have chilled the warm hearts of the children? ever seen the training videos of Palestinian training their littlest children to hate and slaughter, so they can oppose 'the Jews'? Yet we question where God commanded Saul to take no booty, no living thing from certain of the Israelite's enemies.