Meaning of life same for humans & animals?

The statement assisting too many queries since the day it originated. Some people, like my dad says that 'no, the meaning of life for animals are not same as they are just the slaves of their instinct, living & persuaing just the basic needs of life, living in just set-patterns without having grief for any customs, nor the urge for knowledge invention & discoveries.They say, that animals can sense danger but can't feel the death reaching them rapidly.
But some people, like me, always have a different opinion.I always have a question for the above thinkers, that life just means abilities they persist? Or life is more than that i.e comprises of strong feelings & emotions like happiness when together, sad & grief when looses someone, satisfaction when stomach is full, love & care for the near & dear ones, anger leading to immense fight & destruction, fear of something or someone etc which exists commonly in both, maybe of high or low intensity, may be human brains can't analyse. Infact they are the ones adoring pure & pious emotions unlike us i.e faking out & manipulating everything. Even their level of consciousness is much high & have some or the other specialised ability in every species.Moreover, commenting on their ability of not feeling the death & understanding the logic behind it, then I would really love to ask, then why buffalo runs frantically from the lion chasing it as it's prey? Yes, you can call it fear, but fear from what? Fear to loose life, to be killed(death).
We, humans, thinks that they have no big duties, no characterisation of good & bad deeds, no religion, no spiritual propagation, limited thinking & thus God gave us the duty to care & protect them also but do we do that? As always we manipulate this rules too. While the debate of equality in meaning of life for animals & humans, at this point i'll say that yes it is not. We exploits them, use them for our benefits, experiments our discoveries & technologies on them, treat them like they don't even have life & feelings in them, depriving them & fleecing our ability of choices, failing badly in execution of our duties assigned by God, unlike those poor innocent souls.
-Fauzia Afreen