Sorry for the confusion then! I suppose I place some value on life itself (or maybe more fitting in this discussion, on awareness itself)
Which is to say that for me, ending the life of a being who is aware is at least one of the worst things you can do. Like, if I were forced to choose between millions of years of suffering or immediate death, I'd probably pick the millions of years of suffering because at least I'd still be aware. Of course I might regret that decision later on but that's where I'm at right now. But also I couldn't imagine being tortured for millions of years and the toll that must have on someone. So torturing someone for millions of years has, for me, very similar moral weight to genocide. Again I don't feel able to quantify them personally, and for me deciding which is ultimately worse is probably not possible. I'd guess the answer would vary from person to person based on how they weigh life itself vs experiences in life, and whether the conscious experience of being tortured is worse in their opinion than not existing anymore. I consider life valuable because I consider my life valuable (valuable to me, not necessarily to anyone else), and I consider my life valuable because I really enjoy the ability to think about and experience things. One of my favorite thing about us is that we look up into the sky and wonder, look down into the ocean and wonder, look forward in our future and wonder, look back on our past and wonder, that we can look at other people and wonder. That we can look at any of the above and love and write and sing. sentience might as well be magic lol. Having that taken away from me is the worst thing I can imagine happening to me, which might skew my perspective in conversations like this one. And idk if most people would agree with my reasons for valuing life.
it was me using simpler phrasing in part because i couldn't remember the details very well
but i was referencing an experiment where researchers wearing "threatening" and "non-threatening" masks interacted with and marked crows, and other crows in that area who they had not interacted with recognized them later. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003347209005806 (however that crows tell stories is, as far as i know, only a popular interpretation, their official conclusion, at least of this experiment, is that crows are capable of long term memory retention and fine-feature discrimination)
and simple observations suggesting prairie dogs may have a very advanced language - which went viral in my online circles with people joking that they gossip about us, which probably just stuck with me because i think it would be very cute
i personally believe that animals most likely do communicate among each other and the complexities of their languages just varies, even if most are not obviously very complex. my personal beliefs are that communication is complicated and can happen through more than verbal/vocal language, animals are clearly capable of feeling complex emotions and pain which is enough for me personally to consider them sentient, and (again this is just my personal belief) i believe it's probably better to treat them as if they are sentient until proven otherwise than the opposite. and just to be upfront and honest with others and myself about my possible biases, i believe in the Buddhist concept of Saṃsāra, and believe that that we're all a part of the same cycle of death and rebirth
edit found some more info:
prairie dogs: https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/prairie-dogs-language-decoded-by-scientists-1.1322230
crows: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/the-interesting-thing-that-crows-do-when-they-see-one-of-their-own-dead/2016/03/18/78d97a9e-ec48-11e5-b0fd-073d5930a7b7_story.html
that article also mentions that crows have been observed to make and use tools, which is something i knew but forgot to mention and is interesting and feels relevant to this conversation