I was in Jutland, in Northwest Denmark recently, and the backstory of that place is that a thousand years ago it was covered in thick pine forest. Medieval people cut the trees down for firewood and agriculture, which led to an ecological disaster from erosion that covered entire farms and villages in sand. Hundreds of years later, at the beginning of the 20th century, however, people started replanting forests and have had success in mitigating a lot of the erosion.
Now, knowing that the line between man and other animals is totally arbitrary, we should be fine to retell that story with beavers instead of people, right?
(I won't even get into how I flew there at 1000kph in a giant metal vehicle and carried a universal translator in my pocket, also neither of which were made by beavers.)
If beavers had done that, why wouldn't we tell that story with beavers? They certainly do on occasion damage a local ecology whose hydrology they've failed to entirely consider. Their scope is smaller than ours in that regard, I grant, but I've also seen spiders and wasps perform feats of engineering that many wouldn't credit. I don't see reason to think what qualifies a project as the respectable product of ingenuity is only its size or the species of those who pursued it.
Addressing the question at hand is an improvement, but arguing your case entirely from assertion and anecdote leaves considerable further scope. You claim the difference is of kind rather than degree. I can see some credible arguments for that claim. Can you?
Now, knowing that the line between man and other animals is totally arbitrary, we should be fine to retell that story with beavers instead of people, right?
(I won't even get into how I flew there at 1000kph in a giant metal vehicle and carried a universal translator in my pocket, also neither of which were made by beavers.)