Hierarchical Thinking

When we talk about issues such as animal ethics, the discussion about who deserves rights often leads to hierarchical thinking- that is, ranking things in order of how much they matter (often in relation to the person doing the ranking). It may be human nature to want to categorize everything and place a certain value on everything, but that does not mean it is correct to do so. It is important to recognize that things we cannot directly relate to, such as animals, are simply different than us, not necessarily better or worse, smarter or stupider, more important or less important. Somebody said in class that is impossible to get rid of our human bias, and it's not wrong to have it. While this is true, we need to keep in mind that since we can't think independently of our experiences as human, we also can't truly judge the value of an animal, because we are not objective (and never will be). We can all probably agree that the quote "better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied" is speciesist, but no human would trade their life for a pig's because we will always prefer our own species over another. It's not our fault that we have this bias, but we have to be aware of it and we shouldn't categorize things in relation to us. We show preference towards animals that are more like humans (such as apes) over animals that don't have many human-like qualities (such as ants). These preferences rely on the premise that human-like traits are the criteria for moral consideration. This is problematic because it is a form of prejudice; it is favoring sameness over difference. We need to accept differences as just that: differences, not deficiencies.

Question: If animals have some skills that humans lack (such as a dog's sense of hearing), why do we still place humans at the top of the hierarchy?