Are animals inferior?

“There are times when having too much to say can be as dumbfounding as having too little.” (pg.24) the narrator doesn’t know how to approach Ishmael’s story and I am found in the same situation as he is. Many thoughts are running through my mind and I don’t know how to put them in words. I guess I’ll have to start out talking about the author’s intentions before I talk about the characters and the story itself.
I think a book is like a map, or a journey. At the end of the book, you should get a message, this is your destiny. This message should be personal and not necessarily an easy interpretation. The harder it is to find the message, the deeper it is. Daniel Quinn tells a story about a gorilla and a human being but at the same time, shares his philosophy of how our actions as human beings affect the world.
What makes Ishmael so interesting is its uniqueness. The irony behind a gorilla teaching a human leaves a great message. I was stunned when I found out the teacher was a gorilla and I had to ask myself why the author had such a wild animal, an animal we would call Goliath, as such a wise one, with the name of Ishmael. At the beginning, I convinced myself it was a small detail, but as I read further on, I couldn’t stop asking myself- why a gorilla? The conclusion I got to is the following-
Our civilization sees gorillas as one step before us. We think we are the ones who teach animals but can’t accept learning from them. We see flora and fauna as inferior beings and erase the idea that they too have things to teach. The message Quinn is trying to bring is that we, humans are very proud and conceded. Many of us don’t even accept help from other human beings and are convinced we are right and everyone else is wrong. So, if we can’t accept help from other human, how are we going to listen to species we see as inferior?