Consider what Henry Beston wrote in 1928 . . .

"We need another, wiser, and perhaps more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man and civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his limited knowledge, and sees, thereby, a feather magnified, and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves – and therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older, and more complete than ours they move finished, and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost, or never attained – living by voices we shall never hear. . .They are not property; they are not underlings! They are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time -- fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the Earth."

. . .Kind’a makes a point, don’t he? What kind of respect are _you_ showing for the splendor and travail of the earth? How far above the animals do you think _you_ are? Dominion means stewardship, brothers and sisters! Caretaker, not plunderer! Friend, not master! Hand, not fist! Light, not darkness!