Philosophical Vegan Forum

My knee-jerk reaction is no. Or, at least it doesn't matter on an everyday basis. I mean, when do we come face to face with the need to either kill one or the other, a chicken or a goat, lest there be X consequence? Never, of course, but on a philosophical level, is one of their lives more important than that of the other?

Here's where my thinking comes from:
I've volunteered at an animal sanctuary for some months, and whilst I love and adore and find great joy in all of its residents (except, sometimes, for the ducks who are total jerks), there's a sizeable difference between how, say, the goats and chickens perceive me and their surrounding world. When one of our elderly goats died, mother to twins, and a rescued dairy goat, I cried and kept some of her shredded coat in a matchbox to remember her by. She was a darling, and I believe she recognized me each time I entered her barn to feed her and her kids. I feel almost guilty to admit, then, that the several deaths of chickens at the sanctuary have caused me significantly less distress. I care for them too, have petted, and held, and loved them, but I never feel the same reciprocation. Is that selfish? Am I a speciesist, then? Must I think all animals are equal not to be?

It sounds like you bonded to this goat much more strongly. There could be any number of explanations for that, I don't think that makes you speciesist.

In terms of moral value, it's possible that a goat has more value than a chicken. They may be more sentient, more present in the world and more aware of others and able to relate to us.
With closely related animals, like between mammals, brain weight mostly maps to sentience. It's tricky between mammals and birds because while birds have smaller brains they also appear to operate more efficiently by weight/volume (an adaptation for flight perhaps) and there are proportionally many more neurons in the executive parts of the brain associated with sentience/consciousness. It's hard to speak absolutely of relative sentience in that respect, but it's very likely that due to the large disparity in brain size that goats still have the leg up on that one.

I don't think it's wrong to recognize actual differences between species. Those differences will affect how animals and humans relate one to the other. But also how different animals relate to other species. For example is a prey species life less important compared to predator species? No, each specie just adapted differently to it's environment and fulfilling a needed role in the ecosystem. As for humans and animals it's easier to bond with certain animals that are more like us, domesticated and sentient being able to have some kind of mutual relationship. Not something that has to do with you, it's how it is and the reality is if faced with the choice of saving one life over the other it's a matter of consideration. I wouldn't say it's so much weighing life, but looking at the truth and accepting it in one's decision making.