What we’re exceptional at is survival. To the point where as few as 1% of our species even needs to think about making food. Also, citation needed on the complexity of whale songs exceeding the complexity of human language.

But besides, this is not the point. What I question about this rhetoric is using human-developed moral frameworks to justify that we’re somehow a “disease” roaming the planet. As if a tapeworm that were to achieve total worldwide domination would stop and think “wait, I shouldn’t reproduce further because other creatures may suffer”. Same story with any other mammal.

The reality of it is that we are clearly among the most successful species. Keeping the environment safe from us is extremely important, but undermining our own achievements and romanticizing other species whose only virtue is being less successful at surviving than us is strange. With our own moral codes, no less.