In my mind, ability to experience suffering increases with intelligence.
i dissagree with that entirly unless you mean they less intelligent the animal the less understanding it has of the pain. but i personaly believe if you rip off a crickets leg it will feel the same amount of pain a cat would if u did that same thing the cat however would have a greater understanding of the pain. but to scale they would probably fell the same amount of pain. the nerves still fire, sending messages to the brain telling it the animal is wounded.
So taking antibiotics is as bad as torturing a few million monkeys to death? Crop dusting is as bad as poisoning every last person in a whole continent? Why should we bother trying to talk people out of mistreating their pet cats and dogs? If we're lucky we might help a few animals here and there. If we step out into the garden we can probably save a few thousand insects.
I don't think any animal wants to be eaten, cris
No animal is 'supposed' to be our food, but I suppose you could say we are 'supposed' to eat some of them. In any case, all mammals are pretty much as nutritious as each other, all birds are pretty much the same as the mammals (relatively speaking), fish are a little different, but most are reasonably similar to each other. Invertebrates vary heaps.
When it comes to animals, my philosophy is "Get in my belly!"