I've had conversations with people who are entirely convinced that animals like cats, dogs, birds, have no conscious experience and therefore are not aware of o

I've had conversations with people who are entirely convinced that animals like cats, dogs, birds, have no conscious experience and therefore are not aware of our presence or feel any pain. They think the pain is simply a signal to make the animal act in different ways, like a robot would. It actually made me speechless to hear that people believe this, and I wonder if it's an effect of being too distanced from the animal world so we start to think of animals as being there for our benefit and nothing else.