Jonquilyn Hill interviewing philosopher Jeff Sebo on Vox:

‘There are many factors that shape how much empathy we have for non-human animals of various kinds. Are they cute and do they look like us? Do they remind us of ourselves? What role do we assign them in our lives?

We have more empathy by default for animals who play companion roles in our lives as opposed to animals who play commodity roles in our lives. This is why we can often have much more empathy for some animals over others, even if they display the same markers of sentience and the same markers of intelligence….’