OK, maybe I wasn't explicit enough, then. I wanted to stress the fact that, even though most atheists completely accept that humans are animals like any others, just with "bigger" brains, there is still vestiges of the time where we thought it was not the same at all.

Some of those vestiges can be found in our language. Here, it was saying "human and animals" instead of the more correct "human and other animals" (without the emphasis of course). This kind of phrasing tend to promote the higher status of humankind as self evident, while frankly it is not. (I've read once that Dolphins may be almost as sentient and sapient as we are. In this case, they should have right they currently don't have.)