Some people place humans as 'higher animals' because we are uniquely capable of rational thought, while most other animals are not.
This assumes that the trait of rationality is superior to other unique traits that other animals may possess. For example, suppose that bats are uniquely capable of echolocation, while most other animals are not. Why do we not place bats as 'higher animals'? There seems to be an inherent assumption (or bias) that rational thought is the greatest of traits among the animals.
Are there writers on this specific bias towards rationality? Or even better, could somebody point me to some recommended readings?
Something like Nietzsche, when he writes (On truth and lying in a non-moral sense):
...how pitiful, how insubstantial and transitory, how purposeless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature ... the intellect is human, and only its own possessor and progenitor regards it with such pathos, as if it housed the axis around which the entire world revolved. But if we could communicate with a midge we would hear that it too contains within itself the flying centre of this world.