Human beings the most Intelligent?

I hear this far too often. "Humans are the most intelligent species" or "Animals are inferior and humans are superior we use tools" all the time to justify our use and abuse of animals, it is the most often used superiority complex in history, longer than the Crusades, longer than the Nazi regime. but no different in its violence towards another being. i never could understand it because, frankly, i do not see our species as intelligent. violent, destructive in ways that animals could never be? sure. but intelligent? no. let's do a run down shall we?

1. What truly rates intelligence? an IQ test designed by and for humans?
Many try and use the long-used Intelligence Quotient test, designed by and for humans, to rate how 'dumb' animals are. when the cow, for example cannot figure out how many 'people' are in the puzzle, the animal fails. of course, i failed this test too, as i am not good at patterns, puzzles, and math, which  the IQ test favors. i favor real knowledge that obviously is beyond the scope of the IQ test's favoritism of memory spans, and pattern recognition. if the IQ test could rate real knowledge of real life events, history, biology, psychology as is used in the true reality of things, many humans who pass as a 'genius' would fail miserably.

                                          "our shields are down! we are defenseless!"

2. But humans have 'evolved' to use tools, animals have not! that makes us the superior being!
Incorrect. true, we, after learning how animals do it, have in fact replicated tools that help us do what they do, such as fly using aircraft, or dive using submarines, or to simply survive (Air conditioning? stoves? homes?) but is that truly superiority, or living inside a bubble to keep our species alive. i am  not kidding when i say we are on technological life support. animals can survive without tools, their anatomy geared for even the harshest of conditions, but humans? we are only as superior as our infrastructure permits. if, by some miraculous event, the infrastructure collapses for long enough, as evidenced by any major disaster (Hurricane Katrina, Japan's Tsunami, etc) we are defenseless. our deflector shields have failed. our weapons, offline. we are now exposed to the very world we seek so hard to stay away from. we are now on the 'other side' of the food chain, prey, weak, dead! many do die in such events proving nature's true superiority over us. not ours to it.

3. But does not religion give superiority to humans?
this argument by far is the hardest to argue for it is based entirely against logic. i do not myself believe in God anymore, for i have seen no proof we can use to support any existance of a higher power. as far as i am concerned God is just a fairy tale made up by people over centuries who are trying to explain the unexplained, to find some justification for death, to explain it, or to ease grief-stricken folks who have lost someone they care about and refuse to accept it. But other than that, i lose it. God may be nice if used to do the latter, to find meaning in something as awful as death, but when it goes so far to infiltrate our justice system, to promote mass death to animals or mislabel our species as 'superior' or the 'master of all creation' i am lost. i have seen nothing of our species that resembles even remotely superiority in the most true form. we commit acts of barbarism that even the most vicious carnivore would never do to their prey. we commit this for no logical reason--we do NOT need meat. pure and simple. it is completely un-natural to drink milk after infancy or from another species. for a species which loves to say how high and mighty they are, i can only agree if they are discussing how destructive our species has become. the meat and dairy industries are the #2 contributor to Global Havoc, which i use as a more accurate term than the largely misleading 'Global Warming' (because many who are now freezing where it was once warm are the ones who are largely in denial over the whole thing, i do not agree with using the latter term). so long as we continue to live life as we are now, we will never see an end to the destruction, or war, or hate. humans love to brag how 'evolved' we are, despite how they never know the meaning of the word, but refuse to go any farther. they want to stick in this rut they created for themselves, never caring at all about the world around them that is collapsing as we speak. one day, we may see our infrastructure fail, and then survival of the fittest will once again re-establish itself, and we will finally see who is truly, the superior species...

"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives, i rather believe time is a companion, who goes along with us on the journey. teaching us to cherish every moment, for it will never come again. after all, Number One, we are only mortal!"

--Captain Picard, Star Trek: Generations