The last frontier of empathy: why we still struggle to see ourselves as animals | Megan Mayhew Bergman

Champions of exceptionalism say humans hold a unique moral status. Yet there's only one species recklessly destroying the planet it needs to survive

At first light in Massachusetts bay, a North Atlantic right whale threads the shallows with her calf tucked into her slipstream. She surfaces, and the V-shaped breath - two brief feathers of vapor - vanishes in the cold air.

The calf is roughly three months old, about the length of a small truck, still learning the rhythm: rise, breathe, tuck back into mother's wake. They are doing what every mammal mother and baby do: moving toward food and a safer place.