Man V.S Animal

Man perceives himself as something powerful and cleaver; a life being like no other. However, in Nietzsche’s “On Truth and Lying in an Extra-Moral Sense” humans are illustrated to be but “clever animals”. Nietzsche comments on how a human’s intellect is” purposeless and arbitrary.” Humans claim to know the truth and to be above all other life forms. This of course is a misconception humans have, for how can one really know truth, how could one communicate with for example a gnat? Would not the gnat as Nietzsche stated swim through “the air with the same pathos” and feel “within itself the flying center of this world”.
When observing other life forms such as animals humans feel superior, they believe they are more intellectual. According to Nietzsche humans are actually the most delicate and perishable creatures for only the “most unfortunate, most delicate, and most perishable creature” posses the ability to create “truths” and concepts “in order to preserve it for a moment”. Humanity is “denied the horns and the sharp teeth of beasts of prey” thus what Nietzsche is saying is that humans are but animals without the ability to protect themselves; the only way a person can protect and preserve itself is through intellect. People use their intellect to live “socially in the herd”. They create lies and metaphors and call them “truths” so that they can feel superior to animals and other life forms. However, animals are also intellectual in their own way. Animals like humans, communicate and create relationships as well as breed to create new life. The only distinction is that, according to humans, a person is superior. This claim however, can be considered rather false for the life beings that believe this are humans. Thus, the distinction “between individual and species is anthropomorphic”. One does not know if animals, themselves, believe they are superior as well because a human and animal cannot communicate. Humans avoid thinking about how animals perceive the world, perhaps a bird view the world in a completely different manner. Which view would thus be the “more right” way of seeing the world? There is no answer because as Nietzsche stated this question could be “decided only by the criterion of the right perception” which does not exist. Humans and animals are different in various ways however they both survive and live in similar manners: the animal protects itself through its physical abilities and the human (or clever animal) protects and preserves itself through intellect.