this specie is around for ~ 610,000 years! & we for ~ 300,000!
how do you feel by knowing that for million of years (way more time than the Homo sapiens are here), dinosaurs were the apex creatures? will specimens of the plantae or fungi kingdom outlive us? thus evolving for more time and maybe even surpassing the threshold of what we call "intelligence"? if actually intelligence is about building stuff with concrete, create poetry and not having children!
it's observed that fungi are expressive, still, they lack a central nervous system... which i think it allows us to harvest some mushrooms to eat! after all, a mushroom is what an apple is to a tree more or less! but do you know that plants communicate with each other by ultrasonic signals? that forests are a non-stop communication?! and before you feel sad about eating them, don't forget that for the most crops; we wait them to dry (like corn or soybeans) or we pick only the fruits (which again, they probably don't mind :) but, sure, considering our unemphatic state towards a bunch forms of life, some plants are annihilated without need but the ones mentioned next are a way more delicate situation...
i know, not much explanatory but it's a fly's brain scan; the original one is here, anyway, flies are pretty capable creatures! from navigation, courtship, learning & memory... isn't it intelligent?
can you come up with any reasonable argument that justify killing animals? specially in a time where a plant based diet is cheaper, more environmentally friendly & healthier most of the times?
still not convinced?
this little bit, which flies have ~ 150,000; are capable of signaling stuff through electrical, chemical, physical impulses and also by transferring proteins... and i know, I KNOW! we have ~ 85,000,000 & that put us in another ballpark, however, as the essay goes: comparisons are odious
birds pallium brain!
what is a neo-cortex;
regarding understand?
and if the poem wasn't enough to lure you into the journey of altruism towards the entire animalia kingdom, let me try a last spell
yeah! a light sensor… sentience is the ability to react to a stimulus (like a running electrical circuit), consciousness is the ability of reasoning about it and after all these links and this post, i hope it matters what we do, specially when we know that every living thing have the urge to survive