The trait that gives us sovereignty over animals

Is there a TRAIT within animals that if were not present in humans, would justify us treating humans the way we treat animals?

A common form of argumentation among philosophers and animal rights activists, the challenge popularized by Vegan YouTuber ‘Ask Yourself’ in 2015 through a series of debates is a popular way to argue for animal rights. All arguments made against this statement either cause one to adopt logically inconsistent positions or accept moral atrocities.

Why? Because no ostensibly sane person would shoot a baby if it was not intelligent enough or lacked the ability to reciprocate rights. We would not kill a human that wasn't part of our in-group social circle, nor would we deem it morally acceptable to kill a mentally retarded child that lacked the potential to obtain greater self-autonomy. Whatever justification one can devise for not slaughtering human animals needs to be justified to explain our slaughter of non-human animals without creating double standards.

If one does not however believe in human rights nor believe their arguments to require logical consistency, it becomes acceptable for others to rape, kill, assault you without a sound logically consistent defense as to why it is wrong for them to do these things to you.

Rights are based on the scientific doctrine of the golden rule:

“Do unto others, as you would like done unto you.

Humans are animals, albeit with a greater awareness and ability to manipulate our environment than most of our non-human brethren, what is the fundamental trait or distinction that gives us sovereignty over other individuals?

Self ownership
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all individuals are created with self ownership, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.
These rights known as ‘natural rights’ are not democratically decided by the society however as Thomas Jefferson put it, endowed to us by our creator or in other words, self-evident truths found within the nature of the universe. This is by virtue of the fact that we own ourselves and thus are entitled to our own bodies, minds and the product of our labor i.e property.

One of the common arguments made within libertarian circles is that humans have the ability to own other self-aware individuals that do not possess an adequate level of awareness to own themselves.
What constitutes and adequate level of self-awareness? Verbal and non-verbal communication? Awareness of property? Emotional intelligence?
Many animals show the ability to master various verbal and nonverbal forms of communication and have an innate understanding of property. Dolphins for example possess complex languages with dialects and sophistication beyond the human language. Moreover, many great apes are capable of mastering sign language, displaying an array of emotions and have an understanding of property and territory.

This behavior of-course, is not found in all animals and thus many would argue that these animals should not be kept in captivity and extended many of the same rights as human beings.

Do we have a bias when dealing with human animals? Many parents claim ownership of their young due to them not having developed agency or self-ownership. The reasoning being that once these children have developed their agency, they become self-owned human beings with the full natural rights that come with this. The idea should however be self-evident that one cannot own another individual, be that a child or any individuated consciousness that has awareness. One may have guardianship over an individual for protection and guidance, however to own an individual, even if one is responsible for it’s creation, would entitle one to do as they will with that property including assault and murder. This of course legitimizes slavery and would be against the very bed-rock of the golden rule.

The line
What constitutes an appropriate level of sentience in organic life for self-ownership?

Applying the Turing Test, a test showing sentience in A.I when a human being is unable to distinguish the machine from a real human being, is a possible future application however one would need to account for the variation in the criteria for sentience within different species.

Would it not be immoral for humans to be slaughtered by a more intelligent species requiring human meat for survival as it would be for us to kill less intelligent sentient species despite us not being obligate carnivores?

To deny this, forces one to appeal to logical inconsistencies or arguments around our basic nature determining what is right. This is not in accordance to the basis for Natural Law.

Natural Law
Whereas various philosophers have had their subtle variations and interpretations of Natural Law.
It is a philosophy based on the laws governing morality; the scientific
doctrine of the golden rule. 'Do unto others as you would like done to yourself'. The theory holds that humans and I would add 'sentient beings' have absolute natural rights that are inherent in the nature of ethics (not the nature of that being), and not contingent on human actions or beliefs.

The theory, espoused by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke among others, originates with the concept of natural justice or natural right of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.
Should we conflate survival with morality? A common argument proponents of wage slavery make is that it is immoral for employers to pay their employees subjectively 'low wages' which we refer to as exploitation because the employee would not 'survive' if they refused and would have no alternative but to starve. If we presume that Natural Law is immutable and does not discriminate. A human that kills another sentient being similar to a wolf that kills a rabbit is in the same way violating Natural Law.
Whereas choice and moral agency are key factors in our subjective prescription for the punishment of a moral infraction, with a wolf having far less agency and choice than that of a human, it does not change the inherent nature of the violation.

If an alien being required feeding on you to survive, would you consider it to be morally acceptable for it to do so? Whereas we would be more inclined to understand this, we'd ostensibly deem it to still be wrong for them to enslave us the same way we enslave animals despite their protests that we lack the level of awareness or do not measure up to their criteria for sentience. The alternative is to accept anything is justified if it is within one’s ‘nature’.

The nature of an individual however is not fixed and it is incumbent upon us as conscious beings to evolve to a higher standard of ethics and morality if we are to be worthy of sharing this planet with the animals we so often claim to love.