You’re talking about animals with someone who couldn’t care less. You want to bring the conversation around to their side of things to increase your chances of winning then over. Somehow, the words slip out: “okay, at the end of the day they’re just animals, but…” You stay awake for hours at night – was it worth it?

You’ve committed one of the offences outlined by Karen Davis in a United Poultry Concerns PDF, part of the ‘rhetoric of apology in animal rights’, namely ‘Patronizing animals.’

“Of course they can’t reason the way we do. Of course they can’t appreciate a symphony or paint a great work of art or go to law school, but . . .” In fact, few people live their lives according to “reason,” or appreciate symphonies or paint works of art. As human beings, we do not know what it feels like to have wings or to take flight from within our own bodies or to live naturally within the sea. Our speciesrepresents a smidgeon of the world’s experience, yet we patronize everything outside our domain

Good point Karen. Have you seen the video of the elephant painting a picture of a flower? Now I don’t know or care if that’s a trained elephant or not, he does a better job than I do and I call myself an artist (sometimes). Check it out if you haven’t. There are more videos where this one came from.