The appalling news just hit the internet about how despite humans making up only 1% of the Earth's overall population we managed to kill over 80% of its living organisms in a century.

We can pat ourselves on the shoulder for this absolute degree of annihilation. At this rate I doubt we will need a doomsday of biblical measures; we can single-handedly deal with this just fine.

We are more advanced than we've ever been, yet still the stupidest. The arrogance of the 'civilised' or more likely 'self-proclaimed civilised' man is showing once again over the humility and respect of what we would call the 'primitive'.

The past couple of articles I read that inspired me to write about this issue conjured up the memory of that one scene from Dancing with Wolves where the tribesman along with Kevin Costner pursue a horde of buffalos. When they find them, they stand aghast at the graveyard of massacred bodies spread across a stretch of land. Dozens, if not more. Shot, but for what? The bodies are intact; they were killed for fun. They were killed because the ignorant White men had guns and were bored and that gave them the impression that everything around them was theirs to take.

Incredible waste, it was. The tribesman knew this. A buffalo can feed half a village if not more; its teeth, skin, hooves, bones can be used for weapons, clothing, etc.

The Native American Indians knew they were dependent on the land and thus they had to respect it in return.

It is this knowledge that people forgot. To respect life and the environment and give back what you have taken and kill with grace and gratitude.

And before anyone throws the first stone as to why I'm preaching and whether I'm an absolute vegan or only photosynthesise, the answer is no. Had I the power, I would make sure that all stray dogs have shelter and a loving family, that the meat I eat comes from animals who had a happy life on a vast farm with quality food and care, that makeup is tested on peadophiles instead of bunnies.

We think we are superior because we made an evolutionary jump. Guess what? Evolution is pure chance. It could've been another animal. Yes, it is thanks to our styloid process and opposable thumb that we were able to get where we are but we forgot where we came from.

Maybe it is because I worked in customer service and hospitality for so long that I developed this loathing for the average human who thinks service equals inferiority. That also made me think that a dog would never treat you with anything but respect for giving it food.

There were mainly three stories that sparked the idea for this article all if which illustrate clearly the absolute disregard for life and the differences we make on account of being humans in certain cases.

The first one blew up a nation.

A pregnant meerkat was killed by a 12 year-old boy in a zoo. After several warnings the kid proceeded to prod the animals with a twig, which then assessed the situation as threatening and bit down on his finger. Reflexively the child, trying to get rid of the meerkat defending its territory, started to shake his hands and ultimately flung the meerkat onto the ground with such force that its aorta burst and died instantly along with its unborn twin pups.

The public outrage was absolute. People have suggested to murder the child the same way it murdered the meerkat or to be hanged and flayed and other atrocious ways of retribution to be performed on him. Most were advocating that these sort of people are mad since that is a CHILD and one was a meerkat or three.

I saw red too.

I didn't campaign for hanging, but I did not see why some would have refrained from punishing the child at all because his mental health was more important than the fact that he was responsible for the taking of three lives. It is a crime to kill.

I am sorry, but a life is a life. The distinction to be made should not be between whether to punish or not. It should, after all, be the degree of punishment that is to be decided.

The moral of the story is that humans should know better. Especially if they were warned multiple times. Humans, because of their enlarged brain, are able to assess consequences and have foresight to evaluate the possible repercussions. While animals have some semblance of this they're mostly instinctive. Besides, have you seen the brain of a meerkat and that of a 12-year-old kid next to each other? It would dissolve the question of responsibility at once.

I was grateful for the outrage because it meant that for some reason, people thought the act in itself was non-redeemable, whether they blamed the zoo, the parents, or the kid itself. Some, however, dismissed it as just a meerkat, saying there's a lot of them in Africa anyway, one doesn't matter... Which I found revolting.

The next blood-churning article was about a cougar attacking two cyclists up in the mountains. One survived and called the ambulance and help leaving his already dead friend behind.

The cougar was tracked down and shot.

I remember the scare-monger sensationalist series about animals developing a singular taste for human flesh. Mostly big cats. The theories were, of course, after having watched one of these beauties, I realised, vehemently disproved. Yes, there are big cats and other animals that attack humans. However, there are at least three plausible reasons before fancying a bit of your juicy neighbour Steve becomes the fourth one.

One person accused the cougar of not behaving normally by attacking the cyclists... It is kind of a well known fact that animals get desensitized to human presence the more they're around it. They will be less afraid. Their motivation for attacking is either that prey animals were scarce or that they're aged and slower targets are an easier catch. One or the other. There was absolutely no reason to punish an animal for performing what constitutes as 'natural behaviour'. Cougars being predators will kill however as long as it's not humans we can leave them alone.(?) One human dies of circumstances unknown since we only heard a single person's testimony who must've been shocked and scared shitless by the cougar therefore we don't know whether it was out of the human's mistake that the cougar decided to attack.

Had it been a hunter who accidentally shot the cyclist mistaking it for a fast moving elk or such, he would face a trial. He wouldn't be shot on sight. Not to mention, the instinct versus conscious, calculated thought debate again. (I t was said that one of the cyclists hit the cougar with his bike before his demise, which apparently is the protocol when in this situation after attempting to shoo it away.)

What did they do to the corpse of the cougar? Burned it probably. The family of the mauled cyclist got their culprit even if their son was reckless enough to go into the mountains without a pepper spray or a gun that would frighten the animal. To me it was no better than poaching, a senseless act for the family and the surviving cyclist to direct their blame at this animal that tried to survive.

Let's be honest, there would've been other options before killing the cougar...

The third is comprised of more than one article — it's more of a list, really.

A pregnant doe chased by a kid until it collapsed and died of exhaustion. A kitten tied to the back of a truck and pulled until it died; every time it couldn't go on the three teenagers would stop and then accelerate until it was limp. And then to disgrace the animal even more and show how fucking cool they are, they put a picture on the internet with the dead kitten, an eyeball hanging out, bruised and burnt from the friction but dead at last, wreathed in three faces of three smiling monsters.

Then allowing fox hunting in the UK again so that these wonderful animals could be torn apart by hounds for the enjoyment of those who lick the monarchy's ass.

Some want to legalise shooting bears in Yellowstone to curb overpopulation even though the grizzlies were brought back from the brink of extinction.

The numerous cases of starved animals left out in the heat, of dogs left on the sizzling hot asphalt in a bin-bag, mouth, legs, taped together to die there, desperate, not understanding...

Who are we that we allow ourselves such cruelties? Why, in the face of these events, are we still not appreciating these wonderful creatures? Why aren't we punishing humans harshly? Why is it more okay to take a life that isn't that of a human?

Humans are rarely completely innocent. Animals are. They hunt to survive, they protect and attack, driven by age-old instincts that we too have but have forgotten. They do not feel the need to conquer and rule. They're better than us because they're not corrupted by hate, greed and arrogance. And we envy that relentlessly.

I watch my cat sleep so peacefully in my lap, so trusting; she let's go completely. We underestimate them so much. What they're capable of and the wonder they can be as well as the joy they bring.

When an animal kills a human or is blamed for an attack, it's never its fault. It is the ignorance of humans, the way we don't know their every move; we forgot to read them and our absolute disrespect for them makes us underestimate them in these situations. They're not commodities.

And when it comes to finding a culprit we need to be reminded that humans made the evolutionary jump; it us that need to understand the responsibility we owe to other species and our own, too.

They don't know better. We could. We should.