This is a good point - I believe this is true, that everywhere people are in different phases of development, including their views on animals, but we're all moving toward the same end (gradually realizing that animals have feelings like humans and treating them accordingly).
This i agree and disagree with ("animals have feelings like humans").
I believe that animals do share many feelings/emotions in common with people, but they also lack many feelings/emotions that we have- what feelings or emotions an animal shares in common or lacks in comparison to us depends on the type of animal.
I grew up on my mums farm, and because it was a very isolated farm, i spent much of my spare time getting to know and looking after the various animals on the farm. I will give some example's of animals (based on my lengthy personal experiences) which have or don't have certain feelings/emotions that we have;
Chickens;
Chickens are animals that do share certain feelings in common with us, and i do believe they are actually quite intelligent animals (at least more so than cats).
Hens are very maternal animals and visibly seem to take great joy in raising chicks, and chicks themselves are also very emotional creatures- chicks cheep a lot and have different types of cheeping noises for the different emotions they feel- they make different cheeps for happiness/content, distress/pain and upset/anger.
When a hen starts to sit on her fertile eggs in an effort to hatch them, she goes to great lengths to achieve this- she will eat and drink as little as she can so she can sit on her eggs for longer to prevent them cooling down (and thus killing the chick inside). When sitting on her eggs and confronted by a threat, she will sit very still- if the threat/intruder approaches, she will try and peck the intruder even if the intruder (say a person or fox) is much bigger than her- only if her life is truly at stake will she consider abandoning her eggs, and even then many a hen has known to be killed by a fox for sitting on her eggs and refusing to abandon them.
(I might add here that not all chicken eggs are fertile and that hens only show this attachment to their eggs when they feel broody, usually in the spring and summer months- you can tell when a hen is broody simply by the fact that she will start to sit on her eggs a lot, instead of leaving them after laying them which is usually the case.)
As the chicks develop in the eggs, once they are developed enough they will start to cheep inside their eggs even though this happens long (weeks or many days) before they actually hatch. The hen can hear her chicks in her eggs and so she will "talk" to them- this helps develop a bond between the hen and chicks before the chicks even hatch (it also helps the chicks recognize their mother- unlike various other birds, chicken chicks do not imprint by sight but rather by sound). It also helps the chicks recognize threats or friends before they even hatch, for example if you go up to the hen and talk to her and she doesn't feel threatened by you, the chicks will register your voice (and so you as an individual) who is not a threat to them because their mother doesn't make aggressive noises at you (this is actually quite handy if you want to have close contact with the chicks when they hatch but don't want them to be automatically afraid of you).
The hen uses a special tone of clucking when talking to her chicks which sounds subtle and friendly.
When the chicks hatch, the hen will look after them to the best of her abilities- as soon as they are out of the nest she will start teaching them how to eat and what is good to eat. When the chicks are cold sit she will sit on them to warm them up and she will not leave them behind wherever she goes.
This sounds like blissful motherhood for any mother, especially human doesn't it?
But this doesn't mean chicken mothers are like human mothers.
Chickens instinctively roost on things like rafters or branches if they are given the option to- this helps keep them safe from predators like foxes when they sleep.
But it takes a long time before chicks are capable of flying anywhere and so hens have to nest on the ground with their chicks for many months before their chicks are capable of flying up onto safer places. Most hens do do this- however some hens do not (its usually the less experienced ones, although not always).
Some hens will just fly up into the rafters at night, and despite the constant crying/distressed cheeping of their chicks, the hen will ignore her chicks and fall asleep in the rafters. In the morning, she will descend from the rafters to find her chicks dead and cold on the floor (chicks are extremely vulnerable to hypothermia) and she will show no sign of grief whatsoever towards her chicks and simply walk out of the chicken house and socialize and eat with the other chickens as per normal- she will mate with the rooster/s and show no sign of grief or loss.
Now the thought to any human mother of letting her children die in the cold night, hearing their crying but being unmoved by it, and then ignoring their cold dead bodies in the morning and then simply going out to a cafe to socialize and even have sex with their boyfriend seems absolutely shocking and unthinkable to us.
Not all hens are like this (if they were they wouldn't survive as a species), but enough are. As a kid i dealt with this problem in a forceful way- if i found any hen up in the rafters at night ignoring her chicks i would catch her and put her and her chicks in a nest box and lock her up in it overnight with her chicks to ensure that she sat on them and didn't let them freeze to death overnight.
And hens can be vicious towards other hens chicks- if another hens chick comes close to another hen and her chicks, she will viciously peck the poor lost chick; usually the hen usually just does this enough to chase the chick away, but sometimes the hen will continue to pursue it and kill it. This is another thing that would be unthinkable to us humans.
And roosters do not make good role models at all. Roosters are constantly sex crazed birds and naturally spend the bulk of their day fighting with other roosters, taking their hens and mating with them or finding lone hens and trying to convince them to let them mate with them. Chicken social politics are very turbulent and if you spend enough time around chickens you will see hens swap between roosters and their hen groups every day.
Roosters show absolutely no concern over hens chicks (even if they are their own) and hens with chicks will usually avoid roosters as much as they can.
The pursuit of sex is all roosters care about and if they can, they will rape hens- which is why its so important to ensure that a rooster has plenty of hens, because if he only has one he will harass her so much trying to mate with her he will pull the feathers off her neck and make her bleed and give up her will. Roosters may even on occasion try to rape each other, and their fights with each other can be extremely vicious and cruel.
(I might add that not all roosters are as bad as each other, old roosters who are past their mating days often give hens much comfort and are not aggressive etc)
The loving attentive hen may have a lot in common with the human mother at times, but the rooster is a primitive animal that cares nothing for his young or the thought of forcing himself upon his hens, or murdering his brothers/father if he can.
And so chickens aren't like us- they do have some emotions/feeling in common with us, but often at times they seem to positively lack important emotions/feelings that we have, and this is why it would not be correct to treat chickens like humans. All animals are like this to some extent and this is why they are animals and below us.
BUT, this doesn't mean that we should treat them uncaringly or with disdain- they are intelligent animals, and most importantly of all, they are visibly able to suffer or experience joy (for example when chickens are happy and healthy, their comb upon their head appears full of color and is stuck on end- unhappy/unhealthy chickens combs are often dull in color and droopy etc. This is also not to mention the fact that they also have different noises/clucks for different feelings/emotions).
And this is why we should look after them well.