Why do we consider ourselves highest form of animal?

Because we are top of the food chain

That is irrational.

With thinking like that we automatically think we are better than every living thing and we can control every living thing…Its a basic case of a having a complex of being superior…or because we have the largest brain in relation to our body size

We consider ourselves to be the highest form of animal because:

1. We have yet to meet another animal that, by our standards, is equal to or “higher” than us.
The standards by which we judge this are entirely subjective, however, and are based more on survival and selfishness than anything else.
2. Is allows us to justify our actions, towards other animals, the planet, and to each other on the short term.

This style of thinking is outmoded, we would be better served to remember that we’re just another step in evolution – one that might be a dead end, and that other species are evolving as well.

As for being at the top of the food chain, there are still things that can eat us. And scientifically, the nice at the top of the food chain is now being occupied by various viruses and bacteria.

good answer.

About the “food chain” I simply meant (as we already do unfortunately) we have the greatest ability to decimate all living things including mankind. We try to play god and some would say he is the highest form.

I think this is all relative to subject. I’d say we are if we’re talking about inherent intelligence.

Other than that, if you were to throw us into the wild right now, we’d quickly realize that we are lacking in many, many ways in comparison with the other creatures in the wild.

We praise ourselves on the world others have built around us. We mock how homo erectus struggled to make fire even though 99% percent of us wouldn’t be able to make a fire without using a lighter or some other form of technology that we only know how to use, not create. There is a huge difference between the two.

Without our inherited technology, we’re really not much.

This is not about being superior, it’s the nature of the difference of consciousness.

That they are purely guided by instincts, that doesn’t mean they don’t have personality.

We are what is called omnivore’s we can both eat meat and vegetation.

But we are not here to be superior to other life, but to guide and guard it from those who would abuse it.

But we are also living beings and require substance and space to have a healthy life.

Think about it.

Who says, we consider ourselves, the highest form of animal.

Dolphins are considered by many, to be at the top the list.
In Hinduism the cow out ranks us.

But if were referring to the ability to develop highly technical ways to discuss various things of importance and, of trivial significance, seamlessly between the members of our species, thousands of miles apart, then maybe the Jelly fish is at the top. : )

This is not quite on-topic (some of these questions are cosmic in their proportions) but I would re-suggest reading Jared Diamond’s GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL. He looks at the reasons for the different rates of technological development of the world’s various cultures. Papua, New Guinea vs. Eurasia for example.

From Wikipedia: “The prologue to the book opens with an account of Diamond’s conversation with Yali, a New Guinean politician. The conversation turned to the obvious differences in power and technology between Yali’s people and the Europeans who dominated the land for 200 years, differences that neither of them considered due to any genetic superiority of Europeans. Yali asked, using the local term “cargo” for inventions and manufactured goods, “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea; but we black people had little cargo of our own”?”

We can alter the world in ways that other animals can’t. While we’re not the only animals that can alter the environment (elephants push over trees, worms move and fertilize soil), and we need tools for almost everything, we’re not only not limited to one trick but we’re better at changing the environment than animals are.

I haven’t even gotten into the things that we haven’t seen animals do at all.

we consider ourselves the highest form of animal because we are the only animal that considers such things