The difference between human animals and non-human animals is our belief of superiority and our ability to control animals and implement that belief. Human animals believe in their superiority. We keep non-human animals as pets, we use them to test our shampoos, we keep them in boxes so later we can eat them. I would not be surprised if other animals believed in their superiortiy; apes laughing out as while we coo at them at the zoo, cats loving us on their own terms, mosquitos ruthlessly attacking our exposed flesh. The difference, though, is that we has humans have something that the animals don't. We have the ability to implement and carry out our own superiority. We are bigger, have guns, chemical labs. We have the means to make animals lesser through technology. Non-human animals, while I would not call them "savages" and disclude human animals from the category, they are not as technologically advanced as we are, though intelligent they may be. Their intelligence is mainly instinctual, where human animals have harnassed intelligence to use in means other then survival.
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As this post acknowledges the fact that humans think they are better than non-human animals, the fact that this posting goes into the possibility that animals laugh at humans and think that they themselves are better is a far fetched idea. I believe that an animal can acknowledge the difference between themselves and other species, I do not believe that animals can have beliefs that make one superior to another. Moreover, they would want to have these sort of beliefs. R.G. Frey states in his argument that “wants” and “desires” of animals is impossible. He argues that dogs do not have a “….sense of want on which having interests will depend, since it does not exclude things from the class of want holders.” (56) Animals cannot have this sort of belief because it is way to complicated of a belief. They would have to be able to determine who they are, what their capabilities are, what ours are as well as those of every other living being around them and finally take this information and determine what makes them “better”. R.G. Frey looks at this sort of statement as he says: “I do not see how a creature could have a concept of belief without being able to distinguish between true and false beliefs” (57) Frey explains this by stating that animals do not understand the concept of what is actually occurring and what is not. In his example which discusses cats and their ability to determine whether or not a door is locked, he determines that this sort of understanding is impossible because it implies that cats would know what a locked door is, and a real understanding of what this sort of thing entails. I believe that although it is interesting to think that animals would have responses to the perceptions people have of them, the fact is, it is highly unlikely they do, and thus I must counter this argument and deny its validity.
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