If we're God's favoured species....

But God can do anything can't he? What was stopping him making us smart, able to manage our environment, have eagle vision and the strength of an ant etc?

So we would need each other and we would need him as our God.

God gave us mastery over the animals, thereby giving us all those abilities by proxy. Hawks, dogs, and lot's of other animals can be trained by us, and that allows us to use their abilities.