To be alive, what it takes is a heart that beats, blood that flows through vanes, lungs to feed the oxygen to a body,  
To be alive, the eyes allow us to see, the ears to hear, the nose to smell, the mouth to taste and consume the food eaten and the water to drink, as it flows to the stomach and is excreted through the bottom side .
To be alive, for the most part, we as humans are born with all we need. This leads me to the moral of my words as you continue to read!
I have always had a softness for animals of all kinds. But I'm stuck in my mind where we as humans came to conclude that just because animals are deemed animals to our kind, how we came up with they are so different than me and you. Indeed they are in many different ways, the ways of there survival, their looks yes indeed, their lack of the ability not to speak but to speak like you and me. But you see we aren't of their exact kind no matter how many tests with inconclusive results we may administer we as humans can only assume that they are so different than us , I would tend to disagree because,
To be alive like you and me you must have all of the above , animals do, they have a heart that beats and lungs to breath, just like me and you, they have blood flowing through their vanes ,a mouth, eyes, nose, and ears, a stomach, and even a bottom to excrete. They cry when they get hurt which tells me they have emotions, some more than others but so do we. Yet most of us have no compassion for an animal and I would have to disagree because if it consists of the same things to stay alive it's not much different than you or me.
I understand that God put some animals on this land for us to eat, but I believe every animal has a purpose and are not intended for anyone to neglect or beat.