I guess humans do run less on instinct than most other animals, but why should that make us superior? Those animals have their own evolutionary traits that make them successful, and we have ours.
Are even if we go by intelligence, orcas are a very intelligent species. They can devise new strategies to hunt, thus not relying on instinct. The rest of the great apes are extremely intelligent as well.
None of the Great Apes ever wrote the works of Shakespeare.
Oh wait-
Neither have tribes in the Amazon. 'All they've done is paint with their fingers and make sharp sticks.' Be very careful with that line of reasoning.
'Tribes in the Amazon' have accomplished great things, culturally speaking. Think of the Song Lines of the Australian natives. A thousand Illiads mapping the landscape, bringing the vast empty spaces to life etc. etc.
The gap between the animal and the human is there. The mere fact of language creates an unbridgeable divide.
What I'm trying to say is
we are the ones who are putting the line there. In the past we used to draw lines between the human 'races' as to who was higher and lower. Putting aside the possibility that adult chimps probably have higher cognitive abilities than a four year old human, we cannot assume what the thoughts of animals are. Dolphins may consider themselves higher than we do. How can we prove them wrong? Given that our entire existance is thanks to bacteria that coat every part of our internal and external anatomy, we might consider ourselves a 'higher' life form, but we are entirely dependent on some of the smallest life forms for our very existance.
