Are We More Intelligent Than Animals?

Are we more intelligent than animals, and if so, does that give us the right to eat them?

I don’t know how many times I hear the argument that humans are at the top of the food chain because we are the most intelligent, but it holds no weight at all as far as I’m concerned.

As Einstein once said

“If you judge a fish on their ability to climb a tree, they will spend their whole life believing that they are stupid.”

Granted, we have achieved some fantastic things that set us apart from other species. The biggest ones, I believe, are complex language and our grasp of conceptual thought — although both can apply to a lesser degree in the animal kingdom.

So why is it we think we can eat animals of lesser intelligence? And what is ‘lesser intelligence’, and how far down the animal chain do you go? To insects?

And on that basis, we’d be eating dogs before we ate pigs because pigs show a much higher intelligence than dogs and, indeed, even a three-year-old human.

Sadly intelligence seems to define which life is worthy of living and which isn’t — and yet, if we can use this reasoning to justify killing pigs, then it should apply to all animals across the spectrum as we very…