I guess more intelligent animals like apes and dolphins shouldn't be tortured because they're closer to people
Sorry to sidetrack the discussion but that's just fucked up... So you're saying that the acceptability of torturing animals is inversely proportional to how similar they are to us?
That's the kind of logic that makes killing 1/2 million Iraqi civilians acceptable when a couple of thousand dead New Yorkers is the greatest crime against humanity since the holocaust... Both are fucked up in direct proportion to their fucked upedness, not in proportion to how bad bad it hurts your fucking ego...