Expanded thinking and a combination of academic and spiritual insight sounds pretty good.

1. humans can subordinate their appetites to reason, to rise above the animal nature and survival instinct.
2. human beings can use reason and contemplate truth.
3. to the extent that humans ignore these differences, they are no better than animals.

When animals act in a certain way that we might consider savage (hunting and killing a weaker fellow animal), it’s understandable to us humans that such things are a natural part of their nature – hunt or starve. I highly doubt there’s a conscious choice there from the animal’s perspective, but rather instinct and acting on impulse as natural as breathing is to humans.

But when humans engage in savagery on an individual (rape, murder, etc.) or collective scale (mass persecution, genocide, etc.), is this a natural part of our nature? Regardless of how often such things occur, these actions stand in stark contrast to the noble and altrusitic nature of humanity that is seen in the determinedly kind, compassionate lives of individuals and communities – not to mention what collective humanity views as reprehensible conduct. What explains this contrast?

It seems to imply a fundamental choice in our development as human beings, contrasted with that of animals, that allows us to aspire to greater heights or lower depths than what we conceive of as the inherent nobility of animals. We have a lifetime of millions of choices that determine how our nature will be reflected in action both as individuals and as part of a collective humanity, which in turn of course affects how we treat animals. But this sure sounds like a lot of responsibility being human…Life as a koala doesn’t sound so bad after all.

@Ryan, coming back to your post I see that you were discussing the functions other animals play as a way of examining the function we play.

Maybe part of our function in an “infinitely complex system” is to be the understanders, the sense-makers, the insight-havers. I think part of knowing and loving God is recognizing that our capacity to understand Reality will always be less than the infinite complexity of that reality. So all we can ever do is try to make sense of the world, and try to make a little more sense of it every time we engage with it.

@allison Hi! Welcome to the blog, friend. It makes me happy that you’re here.

The following two books (available in most libraries) address questions of wilderness and land management. The possibility that what we now think of as unspoiled wilderness was actually tended and shaped by First Nations peoples. Both are on my ‘to read’ list:
Tending the Wild by M. Kat Anderson
Changes in the Land by William Cronon

Just to clarify for future readers – there is no question that biologically speaking, human beings belong to the animal kingdom. In fact, Abdu’l-Baha is making it quite clear that from a material perspective, human beings and animals have the same qualities. It is only when we look at this quality of consciousness or insight – a spiritual quality – that the Baha’i Faith recognizes a difference between humans and other animals.