CNN Legal Analyst Laura Coates says this irrational vulnerability we seem to have for animals extends to the actual courtroom.

As a prosecutor, she’d had to recount for a jury the gruesome acts of a rapist or a murderer on trial.

“Strangely, when I would relay even the most horrific details, the reaction by juries was always tempered,” she says. “But when I had an animal as victim? Please. I could have simply held up a dog biscuit during my opening statement and secured a unanimous verdict within minutes.”

Coates uses this striking example to make her point. The petition calling for a criminal investigation into the parents of the boy who tangled with Harambe has nearly 330,000 signatures. A petition calling for justice for 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was shot and killed by police while holding a toy gun, has about half as many.

“Frankly, the level of concern that one would expect for an act against a human child pales in comparison to the universal cries for justice when an animal is hurt,” she wrote for CNN.