I agree that they feel loneliness too. But not the same level of anxiety about “what if I don’t exist, or my species or bloodline” doesn’t go on.
To some extent, sure. But I think some of this is us habituating to pets who were sterilized prior to puberty. In post-pubertal animals the drives to have and rear children are pretty strong.
That is self contradictory. A lot of species go extinct due to other species.
If we don't have that "right", that makes us special.
IIRC early Christianity thought acting violated the ten commandments, and some fiction writers today say their job is to tell lies for money.
That a lot of us refuse to see ourselves as part of the animal kingdom is indication enough.
Let's also not forget our pompous assumption that only humans can make and use tools (debunked), only humans can feel emotions (debunked), and so on.
If something ferocious ever comes around to knock humanity down several pegs, it will be very deserved.
"Deserved" is a human concept. Pretty much all 'smart' animals (orcas, dolphins, bonobos, etc.) engage in extremely cruel behaviors towards other species or even to their kind. They are no better than us. We're the only ones who are having moral qualms over it (and we should).
Something as pea brained as a groundhog has calls to describe the shape, color, threat level, and individuality of any number of warning calls. Orcas literally have memes. I’m sure if dolphins could use the internet we’d get so much “dead fish on head” r/fashionadvice.
On the other hand, I have a hard time squaring that with practical morality. If all life is equally valuable, we all commit the crime of murder just to eat and survive. That does not feel quite right. And if we say that life is maybe not so valuable, then does it mean the crime of murder itself is not wrong? I think that also doesn’t feel right.
So maybe it’s not that all life is equally valuable, but rather life is valuable. Equality is a human construction, after all - unchecked nature is much more vicious in dealing with inequality in the margins. Life consumes life, that is how it is. It is a cycle that doesn’t quite repeat, and there is no destruction of life in sustenance, only transformation.
And maybe that is what happens when one species - or a million - dies out. Perhaps that is nature’s brutal callousness in action, and as such is a perfectly natural thing to happen. I don’t think I quite like that either.
Every time I have a deep think on the way things are, I’m reminded of the Buddhists, who I think found at least some truth in it all: “life is suffering”. I’m not sure there’s much more to it than that.
I'm not familiar enough with birds to speak about them, but other mammalian species absolutely understand loneliness, and understand the difference between having human friends and having friends of their same species.