Humanity

Note: Summary at the bottom.

The supposed traditional view is that humanity is superior to animals only in our intelligence. This can be seen as far back as Greek times, with the myth of the creation of all animals and humans. Created by two brothers, one made animals - quickly and with little thought, lavishing all of the limited 'gifts' available on them. The other made human, spending much time making us in the image of gods - but when he finished found no gifts left. Instead, Prometheus gave us fire (Fire often representing knowledge) to let our minds raise skywards with the smoke. However...

Humanity is far from weak compared to animals. There are traits where we excel, and even some where we excel uniquely - before even getting into our brains. In fact, we are the Terminators of the animal kingdom!

Trait One: Endurance. Humans may not be able to sprint like a gazelle, but we can nonetheless run one down in a tactic called 'persistence hunting' because while the gazelle can sprint, it does so for a shrot period of time. Humans can walk, and walk, and walk, and walk... We also sweat all over, while most animals need to find shade for any hope of shedding heat. In hot climates, we go from being the top of endurance walking or running to being closer forces of nature.
A youtube video of such hunting can be found here, though it focuses on tracking as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wI-9RJi0Qo
As for why dogs were domesticated from wolves so early in our history? Wolves are essentially the only other terrestrial animal that can keep up with humans, and even they are not superior in that category. Horses and oxen are capable of walking alongside humans, but only given very good food and excellent places to rest each night.

Trait Two: Vision. Humans stand on two legs, making us about six feet tall. What would be perfect cover against a lion, only a few feet above the ground, is nothing for us. In addition to this, highly-developed binocular vision with unusual acuity and color vision translates to us being able to see prey from far, far away, as well as letting us see tiny details to allow tracking animals that passed hours, if not days ago. An important note for tracking is that humans pay attention to still details more than most species: We don't have the incredible eye for movement or pattern that an eagle has, but we pay attention to details in the environment that an eagle sees as mere background.

Trait Three: Accuracy. Humans are the ONLY species known to be capable of throwing accurately at a distance. Despite the idea that other primates will fling nuts, pebbles, and other objects with painful precision, they rarely do so out to more than twenty feet. By contrast, a human without training or practice will often have this accuracy, and we developed projectile weapons to take advantage of this - shooting ranges will often have distances of three hundred feet. A human hunter could use a sling to fling a stone with deadly accuracy from ranges that many animals cannot even see to. (Yes, slings are a deadly weapon - used by ancient armies, against other armies, to great effect.)

Trait Four: Dexterity. Imagine, if you will, another animal with the manual dexterity to operate a computer. There are very few indeed. Most such animals would also need extensive training and practice, while simultaneously not approaching a human typist's speed. This co-ordination (and thumbs) allows us to make not just simple tools - seen in use by several species, especially primates - but complex tools, or simply far more refined tools.

Trait Five: Voice. This might not seem to be obvious at first, or useful. Almost everyone, however, seems to know someone capable of mimicking an animal's cry, sometimes with great accuracy - Not to mention the sheer power of complex language to organize. Human vocal cords, tongue, and mouth design combine to create a flexibility more or less unmatched - while some animals can operate outside a human vocal range, few can operate in a larger range.

Trait Six: Adaptibility. For all that this point, at least, is fairly common, it needs a more simple explanation. There are animals which climb, those that sprint, those that swim, those that create packs, even other animals (mostly mammals) which communicate in surprisingly complex ways. But humans are the only animals willing to do all this - and to learn these things. Where humanity first developed, water for swimming was in short, if not nonexistant supply. And yet almost every culture with access to such bodies of water will swim. People in jungles will climb. People who can will sprint from predators, or sprint to corner prey. We create packs - in comparison to most animals, enormous packs. Imagine wolf packs: How many have you heard of that numbered even forty, let alone one-hundred? And yet we theorize that early human tribes, clans, and other groups could be up to one-hundred-and-fifty in number! Our language, while less unique than once thought, is varied and complex.

To summarize:
Endurance.
Vision.
Accuracy.
Dexterity.
Voice.
Adaptability.

All these combine to create (before intelligence or even creating tools) an animal that, in human terms, will never stop, will see you from miles away, can harm you before you even see it, let alone get close, can fool your ears or call in even more, can follow you anywhere, and can do just about anything you can do - maybe better. We may not have the short-range speed, deadly claws and fangs, scent, or unique abilities of most animals, but we are still an incredible species.

The Terminator never needed to be a robot; humans have done everything he did for thousands of years. Did I mention that compared to most animals living long enough for their hearts to beat just under a billion times, humans can apparently live for up to two billion? Even over one billion is rare.
As for being prey: We are squishy, like any other prey. Unlike any other prey, the other humans will notice, and they will get ANGRY. This means that there is in fact a...

Trait Seven: Vengeance. Things which actually tick off humans generally face the many, many problems of doing so. Just look at coyote hunts, and that's usually for attacking a pet - non-fatally.

Comments: Please, comment! The only rule I'm putting down is trying to pull this into evolution vs. creationism/intelligent design. My feelings on this are obvious, but the impact of this article are the same whether we are the pinnacles of evolution or closest to the divine.
Relevant Trope: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HumansAreCthulhu (See especially the 'Real Life' section.)
WARNING! TvTropes can be an addictive experience!
WARNING! The trope listed was not used in the creation of this post - if you read it expecting a continuation, you may be deservedly disappointed.