Cruised off the logging road along the edge of a marshy pond and came across a significant trail through the tall grass. Thought it might be a moose and so followed. After about 50 metres along the edge of the pond came to a clearing beneath some tall pines where the ground was covered in black and white fur with bones scattered everywhere. A long length of neck vertebrae, still attached to the skull, lay on the ground. It had been neatly sheered vertically down the centre. The other half of the vertebrae were nowhere to be seen. The other half of the skull, still covered in fur and skin and one antler, was wired up to a tree, hanging.
One might imagine some horrendous forest creature ripping the buck to shreds in a frenzy, except for the wire. And so methodical too, the spinal sheer was so symmetrical. Definitely human; the unnaturally perfect symmetry the signature of the sheered perception.
As humans we need to admit that we are murderers. Consciousness makes us more than just predators, because consciousness ensures that we must to some degree face ourselves and our means of living.
At best we are the most methodical of predators, killing quickly and cleanly like no other creature. At worst we are cruel and barbaric in ways inconceivable to other creatures. Or else, we are still more methodical, dispatching our own species by the thousands with utterly detached mechanical precision and efficiency.