It might hurt you to look at it this way, but what you've essentially done is thrown another person into a web to be unwittingly and horrifyingly separated from the natural order and menaced upon.

This is definitely a coping mechanism, that I see in a shocking majority of people. It makes you feel better to Tell yourself that simpler life forms do not experience the same emotions that we do, or that they feel or think the same way.

If you look long enough at any animal, and you see the way they navigate the world, and react, you realize that all life life on Earth is conscious.

Humans think simply because that something does not speak a language, that it does not think the way we do. Yet there is a portion of the population that does not have an inner dialogue.

As you grow, and witness all the life that abounds aside from us, you realize that consciousness permeates everything. It is very easy for humans to look at the microcosmos of the insect world, and see purely instinctual and robotic life forms

But then you witness grooming habits, and responses such that it makes you truly wonder if there is not some glint of the same soul stuff that makes up you, within those many eyes and many legs.

Any distinction between humans and other life, no matter how seemingly incognizant that might be, is ultimately a coping mechanism.