why are humans so cruel to animals?

we, as humans, have tortured animals for centuries, likely since the very day humans came to be, why? from needing to eat them to survive as cave people, to using them in circuses, caging them up for entertainment, and now, destroying their homes? we humans are killing wildlife, knowingly or not. i’m someone who loves animals, all of them, of course some i’ll love from afar, whether that be they’re too deep in the ocean or i’m just scared of them. yes, of course, fear is a natural thing, everyone is scared of something, but why kill out of fear? humans kill animals out of fear, a lot. bears, wolves, insects, spiders, and PLENTY of other wildlife get killed regularly and people don’t seem to care, yet if it’s a “cute” animal that gets killed everyone cares. i think that’s just one thing that shows how terrible us humans are. maybe still, an animal can be considered cute and still be killed, like with how people will hunt deers, what have deers done to harm us? nothing, they mind their business, so why can’t we? it’s the same thing with plenty of other animals too. us humans are causing a mass extinction, if not potentially the most extinctions in such short time. our waste, landfills, plastic, the poisoning of water? those are all not just killing humans, but animals too. waste getting into oceans, killing sea life, the air becoming more and more toxic every day, noticeable or not, the landfills that go on for miles and miles taking up what could’ve been a forest, a beach, anything that could’ve helped the wildlife strive, yet we don’t seem to care. will we care, when we see the last grizzly bear die? the last whale, the last animal. are we going to care when bees die out, or the other insects there are? the butterflies are losing their color, and there’s less and less every year. it may not matter to you, but will it matter when you need to survive off of lab created foods because the food chain is broken? if the insects die, who will pollinate the flowers, the flowers that grow food that we eat? of course, humans could, but will they? the only possible way humans would even consider pollinating every plant is if a billionaire paid them to do so, or with how almost all billionaires are, paid them a minimum wage, or would they even get paid? maybe in pennies. we need animals, insects, we need them. if all animals die the food chain collapses, plants stop growing, the earth slowly begins to die out. sure, it may not happen in your life time, but at the rate we’re going it’s not going to be to far off from our lifetimes either, will it? hunting animals needs to stop, landfills, toxic waste in our air, poisoned water, everything that harms both us and wildlife, i’m not going to say we need to stop eating animals like cows or chickens, because i know we’re not going to do that for a while at least, but why kill animals that we don’t eat for fun? go look after your local wildlife, we need to stop treating this like it doesn’t matter and that it’s nothing.