That a human life is intrinsically worth more than the life of an animal

Pro has taken a pretty novel approach here, for which I have to give him credit. If I understand it correctly, it's because humans have done such a wonderfully thorough job of screwing up the world that they are so valuable - because only they have the power to fix it? But very few seem to actually believe this line. Look at all of the futuristic novels, movies and TV series. What sort of future do Mad Max (The Road Warrior), The Living Dead, The Dark Hour, On the Beach, Damnation Alley, The Road and The Dark Hour represent? It's not one of butterflies and rainbows where humankind have solved the problems of the world and created a glorious utopia. How many authors/screenwriters can Pro think of that have proposed such a future? The destruction and mayhem that humans have already caused is not an argument for their continued existence; if anything it points to how much better off the planet would be if we all just disappeared while there is still a chance for it to heal itself. Pro raises the question "can killing the child benefit the worms, horses, giraffes, etc.?". Well, not directly, although the nitrogen and other trace elements in his body could benefit the soil, resulting in increased vegetation, which would benefit them indirectly. Obviously killing Harambe didn't benefit any other animals either. The point is, from the time that the child climbed/fell into the gorilla enclosure, there was only one possible way in which the situation could have ended without a tragic and needless loss of life, that is if the humans who were screaming at the top of their lungs had shut up, and the zoo officials had let the situation play out. Jane Goodall, who knows a thing or two about primates, suggested she thought Harambe was acting protectively towards the child, and a number of experts agreed with her. Instead, because of the stupidity of a great number of human beings, an innocent gorilla lost its life. Pro has not demonstrated to this point why that life is any less worth preserving than a human life. Finally, I wish to address Pro's next to last paragraph, in which he suggests a number of things: "We have more emotions" For a long time, scientists assumed animals lacked emotions. There is less and less belief in this as our knowledge grows. Almost no one now doubts that all the higher mammals experience the full range of emotions that we humans do -including fear, sorrow, anger, despair, joy, love and hate. What I find puzzling in the extreme is how anyone who has ever had anything to do with any form of higher mammal could ever have doubted this. "speaking languages, understanding each other" It's the ultimate in human arrogance that because we cannot understand their languages, we assume other animals don't have them, and can't understand each other. Have you ever seen a flock of hundreds of birds in flight simultaneously change direction? Try getting a mob of hundreds of humans to do that. Dolphins and whales have been shown to employ complex strategies, involving high levels of cooperation, in order to trap and catch prey. Lions and tigers on the hunt work in perfect unison as a group, without making a sound. The fact that they communicate in ways we can't even properly understand doesn't make them inferior to us. Dolphins have been reported to have learned a vocabulary of up to fifty human words. How many words of dolphin does the world's greatest marine biologist understand? "as well as create civilizations" A great many animals create civilizations, including some we think of a quite lowly. Bees, ants and termites have quite complex civilizations. The thing that distinguishes most animal civilizations from human civilizations is that, whereas they might sometimes have tribal "wars" in a similar manner to humans, in most cases their civilizations seem to be internally harmonious, and work together for the common good - which is most *unlike* human civilization. And finally, "Humans can define for themselves what is "good" and what is "bad"." Yes we do. And invariably, what is "good" is anything that promotes our own happiness, comfort and safety at the expense of the fellow inhabitants of the planet. As a species, we think nothing of using their flesh for food, their skins for clothing, furniture and vanity items, and we put them through appalling suffering for our own "entertainment". And this is what makes us "superior"? The chief mistake we make as humans, and the trap into which Pro has fallen, is that we define important characteristics according to what benefits us. We think we are great because we can build skyscrapers and rockets (and atomic bombs), because we can perform differential calculus and create symphonies. But our fellow inhabitants of the planet have evolved with no need for any of these things. How many lions, giraffes or bison commit suicide each year because they can't cope with the demands of their modern societies? How many are suffering stress and anguish because they are working 60 hours per week and still can't pay their bills? We say we are so superior that we are far more worthy to live than any of them, and yet the facts demonstrate otherwise.