Tossing this out there, if we are going to take this into consideration...
And what happens when you find that "pest" animal is actually a race of sapient beings? Creatures that are wise, sane, perceptive...etc can be found around us.
If we are using Sapient, quite a few animals could fall under that idea such as Dolphins, Dogs...and RATS. Rats are considered to be rather intelligent, emotional, and very into community. They are puzzle solvers and can figure things out using intelligence rather than their animalistic qualities. This is one reason they have survived in many instances, despite many attempts to wipe them out. They are also considered a pest.
Pigs are another creature that we tend to kill on a massive scale. Pigs are incredibly a lot like Humans. They are intelligent, being smarter than dogs and most other creatures, building attachments similar to humans, having emotional and characteristic ranges as wide as humans (so yes, sadistic pigs, loving pigs, etc), and even physically being close enough to humans that we can use different body parts of theirs in transplants for humans. We can grow those body parts (pig blood, hearts, ect.) to be replacement parts for humans.
We eat bacon, hot dogs, and a ton of other things from these intelligent creatures.
It seems that people have an EASY time considering creatures in a fantasy game as being things we need to treat like humans, but when it comes to REAL LIFE examples of things that actually have some intelligence or show qualities of humanity and intelligence in real life...we discount what we are doing and the killing we participate in (many times, everyday).