We’re the ones who make the definitions - in fact, we invented the concept of definitions - and we’re the ones who make the rules. If we decide that “animal” refers to all animals other than us, then that’s what the word means. Who’s going to challenge us?
The philosophical questions are not about whether humans are animals. They are about sentience, sapience, personhood, etc. Those are what determine whether we can put ourselves in a different class of being for the purposes of philosophy.
Animal is a biological classification, even in its common use. And humans fit all the criteria. There is a linguistic shorthand to use the term only for non-human animals. But that is in the same vein as using parallelogram to mean non-rectangular parallelograms. Or using sandwich to refer to non-hambuger sandwiches.
When people actually state that humans are not animals, 99 times out 100 they are actually making a claim against evolution. They are making a fallacious claim that humans were created or formed separately. They are claiming we have no non-human ancestors.
But we very much do, so I definitely voted that humans are animals. That doesn’t mean non-human animals are the same as us. It is entirely debatable if there are any non-human persons. But “You are a Human animal.”
We are animals who can think abstractly and manipulate symbols. We have longer thumbs and are bipedal. Our females don’t go into estrus the way other animals do. Saying that we are animals doesn’t mean we aren’t different from other animals in significant ways. One way we are different is that other animals don’t ask the question.
Regards,
Shodan
John Merrick disagrees with the poll results.
They poot, don’t they?
Of course humans are special, in a number of ways. That just means that some animals are special.
No, I wouldn’t want a zebra sitting on a jury, but I also wouldn’t want to pet a cockroach and scritch it behind its ears. Does that mean that dogs aren’t animals? No, it just means that dog animals are different from cockroach animals. And human animals are different from zebra animals.