Humanity should respect animals.

[Tenet Nosce]

It just means that we simply cannot deny The Other its Mystery and freedom, or we deny it ourselves.

And yet, while we persist as physical beings in a physical world we will invariably bump our heads up against this problem. There is no avoiding it.

What shall we do? Allow a swarm of locusts to devour our crops out of "respect"? Shall we allow a human being to die of pneumonia because the bacteria "have rights too"? If black mold is growing in our bathroom, shall we just "let it be"? If hawks come and attack our laying hens, shall we grant them their "liberty" to express themselves in this way?

I think most people would say no. To do these things would be ridiculous. And moreover, doing these things is not in any case necessary for our continued spiritual evolution as human beings. If anything, it is our continued evolution that will bring us to the point where we no longer require physical vehicles, and by then all these other questions will have become moot.

Finally- we should ask ourselves if "respect" is truly equated to preserving the physical form, at all costs.