If you want to call it their own “animality” that’s fine. I think you know what I am meaning here when I used “pesonality” to describe individual, uniqueness of a particular animal.
I just want to be clear many people use the distinction they aren’t people as the REASON they can be mean or treat them poorly and “reserve” better treatment for people. Angels are not created in the image of God, yet they are stronger than us, and at the current time, are HIGHER than us. Do they sit around and believe because we are lower (and currently have sin natures some of us are fighting) we ought to be treated lesser than they are because they are in a higher position? The only ones who treat us badly and encourage us to treat other people and animals badly are being tempted by the evil, fallen angels, appealing to the weaknesses and pain of people. Which ought to tell you why this line of thinking isn’t what God had in mind, to treat the non-human creatures He’s created, poorly because “they aren’t people”. Slippery slope. Treating animals well doesn’t mean you’re treating people worse or somehow neglecting them, or elevating them to people status, it’s not a zero-sum situation.
Scripture says you can find out a lot about a person in how they treat their animals. Because it translates over into how he treats people, especially those he believes are in a lesser station than he is.
The problem is, that's not the way the author of the thread used it...and that's simply the point I'm trying to clarify here since so many felt free to pile on without taking that into consideration.
"I just want to be clear many people use the distinction they aren’t people as the REASON they can be mean or treat them poorly and “reserve” better treatment for people."
I suspect that few if any animal abusers make such subtly nuanced philosophical distinctions or invoke such justification. Cruelty is cruelty and rarely is there a whole lot of thought behind it.