“Humans are fitter animals.”

Animal (The New Oxford Dictionary definition): A living (meaning breathing ≈ animated) organism which feeds on organic matter, typically having specialised sense (meaning navigation, my insert) organs and a nervous system and so on (and capable of reproduction, my insert). The NOD qualifies the above with the pre 20^th century naïve and highly misleading opinion: any such living organism other than a human being (as though the human did not predate organic matter, my insert).

Humans are born as animals, breathe, eat (i.e. predate animals and other living systems), shit and reproduce as animals, die as animals.

Because the survival means peculiar to humans, and which define the human mask or persona, such as the increased capacities for problem solving and awareness, not only differentiate them from other animals with very different masks (i.e. survival characteristics) but also provides them with decisive survival advantage (i.e. as fitter predators), humans arbitrarily classify themselves as a species wholly different from and superior to animals. That is serious but useful deception, indeed, hubris.

Animals of all species, including those with a human mask, i.e. persons, disintegrate at death. In short, as the poet says, “Death closes all.” No evidence for survival (of the person) after death happening upon cessation of animation ≈ breathing, for instance, the Christian utopia, has yet been established. Claims by religious fantasists that the upgraded survival means peculiar to the human animal indicate a transcendent capability, like a soul (derived from the ill-defined Greek fantasy word psyche deliberately mistranslated into the Greek version of the Bible, the Septuagint, in place of the Hebrew nephesh, meaning a living (i.e. breathing) being) likewise remain unproven.

To animals with a human traits mask, self-referenced as persons, natural animal rights should be accorded. Which means that animals with a human mask should have the right to (choose to) be terminated naturally or by artificial means if and when no longer viable as animals.