i stood still in the rain for a few minutes, watching five or six robins hopping around, looking for food on the front lawn. Maybe they wanted worms. "What's going on in their heads?" I wondered. Then I thought, "how could anyone think that they are any less complex than we are, when they have their own thing going on that we do not have the cultural knowledge to understand?"

I told this is David later, and he challenged me with the example of robots. "But we made robots," I answered. We know what's going on with them...at least to a point. We don't with robins...how can we say we do? Even if God created them, or someone or something, how can we say we know what they know in creating them?
No. No.
How can we think they are any lesser than us? Because they are small? That is a petty excuse. We have no idea what they are thinking, what they aim to do in their lives, other than what we see as obvious: eating and making babies. But it could be so much more than that, and we don't even allow for it, or we chalk it up to "natural processes." It's a pity. Because we give them no room to be just as complex as we are, only very different.
If onl we could apply relativism to all species, instead of all cultures.

But they think I'm crazy.