Why does the idea that people are animals scare me / us?

Its obvious that we eat drink sleep give birth all the fundamentals of a animal. The similarities are vast. So we are animals right? No ok well why not. Because we make tools well so do animals. Chimp use sticks to fish out ants. It's because we can learn and use symbols to communicate. Well no even dogs use arbitrary symbols to communicate with us. So why are we not animals? are we better and if so why? Is it because we eat animals? Thinking about it scares the **** out of me. I could be Soylent Greens tomorrow. But intriguing enough to push me past my comfort zone and beg the question. We kill we eat we have . Some eat each other and have with each other. Turn away from these facts sure but for some reason I must explore this idea.