To a lay-person it seems like we are just being know-it-all jerks. But it's actually really important to use proper terminology when communicating science information. Scientists spend a lot of their time just learning proper terminology and how to communicate properly. Stuff like the difference between precision and accuracy, centrifugal and centripetal forces, etc...

A good example of this is, that niacin used to be called nicotinic acid. As a result, many people tried to supplement niacin by smoking nicotine. When we communicate scientific concepts to lay-persons we have to be EXTRA careful. We had to language revise and rename the vitamin as niacin to prevent misunderstanding.

If you're cultivating a herd of uneducated emotion-driven stressed-out people by destroying education, getting everyone hooked on addictive social media and killing the economy every couple years, then yeah, you got to be careful. Better put that "do not eat" sticker on a box of moth balls.

But I think we'd be better off teaching people how to think properly, than trying to dumb down everything to a level of a toddler.

What biologists have done in this case is removed the definition of "Lower Animals" from their context because there was no agreed upon definition of "Lower Animal." The term was too vague and could not be defined properly and was useless for scientific communication. There was no way to taxonomically define a "Lower Animal" except in a biblical sense. Even then, few can agree what it actually means.