Are we silencing the lambs, or are we silencing our own?

Ok, so this post doesn't include music, but it has a movie instead.  Yesterday, I watched Silence of the Lambs.  Ok, so I haven't finished it yet, but I can't wait to see the second half.  As I went downstairs to let my dog out, I slowly walked around corners and kept glancing behind me, thinking the entire time Hannibal Lector would just appear behind me.  This is typical after I watch a scary movie.  But I started thinking about how society looks so negatively at murder.  I mean, I wasn't shocked by that, because obviously it is something that should and does have a negative connotation.  The issue was, why as humans, we only look out for number one, as a whole.  Yes, there are animal rights activists, but as a community, and a nation for that matter, animals are pushed aside, and our species grabs the spotlight.

If a person hunts, whether it's for sport or for food, it is considered socially acceptable.  We can easily take the lives of another species (except endangered species) and have no repercussions.  But when an animal kills a human, oh boy do we hear about it.  Stories cover the news and it becomes a controversial issue, usually resulting in the death of the animal.  I remember the news of the whale that killed its trainer, which happened this past February, and the amount of coverage that story got.  Everyone was up in arms that the whale killed his trainer, but when a human goes out and kills some deer,  rabbit, etc. no one has an issue.  We focus more on ourselves as being the "superior" species.  

This idea of superior species is also an interesting one.  We have been discussing race in class, and how divided human beings themselves can be.  How is it that we see ourselves as a superior species, when we have our own internal turmoil, separation, and disfunction.  People think that humans have many different races, and in today's society, it isn't acceptable to discriminate between these 'races'.  This being said, is it fair to treat animals any differently because they are a different 'race', or are we really the more superior species?