The Last Frontier of Empathy: Why We Still Resist Seeing Ourselves as Animals

At first light in a Massachusetts bay, a North Atlantic right whale eases through shallow water with her calf tucked into her wake. The mother surfaces and exhales two brief, V-shaped plumes that dissolve into the cold air. The calf — only about three months old and roughly the length of a small truck — is still learning the rhythm of rise, breath, and settling back into its mother’s slipstream. They are performing the basic choreography every mammal mother and infant follow: moving toward food and safer waters.

Across the same water, however, a different timetable rules. Tankers and container ships keep schedules set by distant executives; Boston’s approach lanes have been adjusted once to reduce whale strikes, yet maritime traffic largely moves to human priorities — fixed routes, steady double-digit knots, arrivals measured in profit and delay. Seasonal speed limits exist, but large vessels often flout them because commerce pushes the pace and consumers expect fast delivery. Many people profess love for whales, but for a species already reduced to only a few hundred individuals, yielding to our convenience can mean extinction.

Human exceptionalism: the background belief

Every pressure whales face — speed, underwater noise, fishing gear — traces back to a pervasive assumption: that human needs trump those of other beings. That assumption has a name: human exceptionalism. It is the conviction that humans are not merely different from other life but morally superior, entitled to first claim on space, speed, resources and survival. Exceptionalism shapes what we eat and how we farm, the habitats we clear for housing and roads, the extractive economies that move goods around the globe, and the emissions that warm oceans and melt glaciers. It is so embedded in daily life that it operates invisibly yet with destructive force.

Cultural alternatives and kinship

'Ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au' — 'I am the river and the river is me'

Many world cultures model another stance. In Aotearoa (New Zealand), the Maori concept of whakapapa links people with rivers, mountains and forests through genealogy. Lakota philosophy names Mitákuye Oyás'iŋŋ, meaning "all are related," framing animals, plants, waters and winds as relatives rather than resources. In Hawai‘i, the 2,100-line creation chant Kumulipo traces life back to Pō, the deep darkness, and honors humble beings like the coral polyp as ancient kin. These perspectives treat nature as part of an extended family rather than a commodity to be managed solely for human benefit.

Western societies could, at any point, acknowledge that we have misread our place in the cosmos and shift toward these older worldviews: humans as kin among other beings and systems, not as commanders of them. That suggestion can sound idealistic in a political moment when compassion for other humans is strained — refugees turned away at ports offer stark proof of our limited empathy — but change feels threatening precisely because it challenges the narratives that keep our lives coherent. Psychologist Erik Erikson called the human tendency to divide the world into "us" and "not us" pseudospeciation: drawing moral lines that justify mistreatment.

The science of continuity

Science has repeatedly shown continuities between humans and other animals. Charles Darwin argued in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) that emotions and their expressions are evolutionary continuities shared across species. The mid-20th-century turn toward behaviorism and the taboo against anthropomorphism pushed those ideas aside for decades, but ethology and cognitive neuroscience have since revived Darwin’s thesis. Primatologist Frans de Waal coined the term anthropodenial to describe the refusal to see humanlike traits in animals and animal-like traits in ourselves.

Genetic evidence underscores that closeness: humans share about 98.8% of DNA with chimpanzees and roughly 98.7% with bonobos. Recognizing these continuities does not erase human distinctiveness, but it should caution against equating uniqueness with moral superiority. Uniqueness is not a moral trump: if it were, a 2,400-year-old, 2,000-acre honey fungus or a bioluminescent lanternfish might claim equal moral status simply for being different.

Stories that normalize cruelty

Literature exposes how ritual and habit make cruelty ordinary. Shirley Jackson’s short story "The Lottery" depicts a town that calmly sacrifices one of its own because "it has always been done." The horror lies in how easily people accustom themselves to cruel institutions. That same inertia protects human-centered systems today, even when scientists warn they are driving a sixth mass extinction.

Policy, precedent and practical compassion

Despite political resistance, there are real shifts in law, infrastructure and culture. Legal personhood for rivers and ecosystems has moved from thought experiment to precedent: New Zealand’s Whanganui River and Colombia’s Atrato River have been granted legal standing; Spain's constitutional court upheld ecosystem personhood for the Mar Menor lagoon; and Canada's Magpie River has recognition through municipal and Indigenous resolutions. These rulings do not solve systemic problems, but they are meaningful steps toward rethinking rights and responsibilities.

Practical solutions show what decentering humans might look like on the ground. Wildlife crossings reduce collisions and reconnect fragmented habitats: Utah's Parleys Canyon overpass has dramatically cut wildlife-vehicle crashes, and the Wallis Annenberg wildlife overpass over U.S. Route 101 in Los Angeles is under construction. Conservation-minded ranchers and developers leave gaps for large predators and maintain corridors for movement. These are often pragmatic, bipartisan actions taken by people who may not label themselves environmentalists but who nevertheless act as stewards.

Resistance remains. As environmental writer Ben Goldfarb notes, political and regulatory mainstreams in the United States often view the idea of decentering humans as threatening. He cites an example in Utah where lawmakers passed a statute preventing personhood from being granted to any plant, animal or ecosystem after debates over protecting the Great Salt Lake. Still, rights-of-nature efforts led by Indigenous communities have advanced important wins, such as the Yurok tribe’s declaration recognizing the Klamath River's rights that aided dam-removal discussions.

What you can do

Policy will always be contested territory, but individual and local actions matter. Small, practical steps reduce harm and broaden our circle of care: swap lawns for native plants, avoid pesticides, feed birds responsibly, keep domestic cats indoors during peak migration, support wildlife corridors, back dark-sky ordinances, and consider reducing animal-based consumption. None of these actions is heroic on its own, but together they accumulate change.

The whale asks for more space. The river asks for standing. The tern asks for habitat and room to nest. We are not out of choices yet. If we can move from a mindset of domination to one of kinship, our institutions, laws and daily habits can follow.

Illustrations by Jensine Eckwall