I wonder, what it is that makes us human? Perhaps, it’s beauty. Not being beautiful, but perceiving beauty.

When a cat sees a bird, it sees food. Fairly so, since cats eat birds - it is instinct for them to see birds as food. When a cat sees a flower - unless it sees it as a toy - it disregards it. There’s nothing instinctively useful to a cat in a flower.

But when a human sees a flower, they can see it as beautiful. Fine, it has no instinctive use, but appeals to our senses. But when we see a bird, we can also percieve that as beautiful, even though our instinct should be telling us “birds are food”…