We are humans. We are animals. And we are more than that. Perhaps we are also lesser than that at the same time?

The duality was how the idea was presented to me - this is not my OC, or perhaps the words are but the concept I first heard told by an atheist apologeticist (if that's a thing) Daniel Dennett speaking out against Intelligent Design (which at the time was still a thing that people bothered arguing against). I believe he was relating it to a binary classification scheme such as machine learning approaches are often built to follow. Anyway it's just a vehicle for the conveyance of the idea - obviously nuances exist irl, yet there is some value in keeping things simple too, especially at first.

That style does seem to predominate, especially in video form, but there are others where humans compete more on if not quite fully equal than at least more equal terms. Babylon Five springs to mind there.

Also more outside but some still fully inside of "scify" the more "fantasy" elements may posit the existence of alternative universes that we travel to & from not by traversing physical space in between but through portals, accessible here on earth. Like Stargate.

So, those others are out there, but yeah it definitely meshes less well with what we see and know now about what might be in space.

Being concious of and being able to critically look at what we are and how we act would be one answer. Sort of like what you did when you made this post :P

The cat outside isnt arguing about ethics, doesnt think about the consequences and decide not to act on some base desire, etc