Somewhere in the world, a fox is crossing a road at midnight. A pigeon is nesting beneath a bridge. A whale is changing its route through an ocean increasingly filled with noise. An elephant is walking along a path that once belonged to its herd but now runs beside a highway. A dog is sleeping beneath a parked car in a city that never really goes quiet.

And somewhere, someone is looking at one of these animals and thinking: It is just an animal.

Perhaps that is the problem.

We have become so habituated to sharing the planet with other species that we have learned not to see them.

They become backdrops that decorate our own worldview. A statistic too heavy to take into account, a nuisance too annoying to care much about, a pet for the sake of its cuteness, or maybe an attraction in the form of zoos.

But every one of those species is experiencing the world from a body that is not ours, responding to dangers we may never notice and depending on environments we are constantly changing.

This year’s World Animal Day theme, “See the world through their eyes,” feels almost deliberately uncomfortable. The official World Animal Day organisers say the theme is an invitation to move beyond a human-centred way of thinking and consider how human decisions affect animals.

So, for once, perhaps we should try.

What would a city look like from the pavement instead of the passenger seat?

What would a forest look like from the ground, where every sound could mean food, danger or shelter?

What would the ocean look like from beneath the surface, where a ship’s engine is not merely background noise?

And what would our neighbourhoods look like to the animals that have learned to survive alongside us?

I think most of us like to believe that we love animals.

We cry over rescued puppies online. We stop to watch wildlife documentaries. We admire elephants, pandas, dolphins and tigers. We give our pets names, birthdays, favourite foods and their own beds.

But our empathy has boundaries.

We tend to love animals that are beautiful, familiar, entertaining or useful to us.

The animals that frighten us, inconvenience us or live too close to us are much harder to love.

That difference exists almost everywhere.

A monkey can become an internet celebrity in one place and be considered a pest in another.

Pigeons are photographed in historic European squares and chased away from buildings elsewhere.

Elephants can be symbols of national heritage while simultaneously becoming a serious problem for farmers when their traditional routes overlap with human settlements.

Wolves can represent wilderness and freedom to one person and a threat to livestock to another.

The animal itself has not changed.

And perhaps that is one of the most uncomfortable things about animal welfare: our feelings towards animals are often shaped less by the animal than by what it means for us.

We call one animal beautiful, another dangerous, some very useful, others quite disgusting.

The categories feel natural because we have lived with them for so long, and society has a unique way of branding its utilities.

But they are human categories.

Animals do not experience themselves through our labels.

When we talk about animal welfare, we often imagine dramatic images. But much of the relationship between humans and animals is quieter. It is the bird that cannot find a nesting place. The animal whose migration route has been interrupted by a road. The bats which live around artificial structures. The dog which gets injured crossing a highway.

The global animal story is therefore not simply about “saving wildlife.”

It is about the relationship between human choices and other forms of life.

And that relationship is becoming harder to ignore.