I don't understand the moral comparison that I keep seeing between humans and other animals. Every single animal that we know about on this planet at this time lacks the upper congnitive traits of humans. They do not face moral dilema of guilt, moral right and wrong, or past/future events with regards to moral stability; they just lack that structure of the brain, or a similar type of structure*. Animals do have emotions, but to the best of our knowledge, these emotions are neither complex nor involve moral cognition. They feel pain when they're hurt, they're sad when a family member die, they're happy when getting pet, etc... They do not, however, contemplate the origin of the Universe, feel guilt for eating their prey, or take comfort in the hopes of future events. Therefore, it wouldn't make much sense to compare a human to another animal when it comes to complex thought processes such as right and wrong, good and bad, etc..., as the animals lack the ability to make such a choice.


*Dolphins and a few primates may [i]possibly[i] be an exception, though no structure of their brain has been found that gives them the emotional complexity of humans.


That aside, I'd much rather a deer that lived in nature it's whole life and was very quickly killed by a hunter than a cow that lived in a confined area its entire life and was taken to mass slaughter.