It seems to me animals have the task of physical survival.
By and large, most humans on Earth now have migrated to the trickier task–well, at least DIFFERENT task–of emotional survival.
And that is really about the awareness of self, of being a floating body in space, and of negotiating how we interact with the universe and other people and things. Feelings guide us. Feelings can also confine us.
Love is really nothing more or less than a path out of solitude.