There is no vertical hierarchy of life; the boundaries of life are always dissolving into horizontally immanent complexity.

Life is always moving through death in a labyrinthine ontology of infinite scaling. Objects on any scale are always dying: the death of what we deem life is merely the elimination of stop signs in an infinite traffic of intensities. Land 92
(Lecturer in Continental Philosophy at the University of Warwick, The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism, Routledge University Press, NY, 1992, p. 171-174, [CL, thanks EM])

The death of a highly organized animal triggers a crisis across a large spectrum of its biochemical composition, but it does not precipitate a return to some zero-degree of chemical organization. In effect, death is nothing in immanence, but due to the fact that it is nothing, no being is ever truly separated from it

We exist as something more than biology an excess of life which creates infinite chains and connections between all other beings, emotions, flights, feelings, and existences. The universe in this sense is fully immanent, fully connected, and the simple difference of life or death is a meaningless conscription which can only turn us away from an investigation into the particulars of life. Instead of fearing death, we should affirm the precariousness of life, and all that makes it worth living. The affirmative is against death, in opposition to this, we affirm life Lanza 2010 (Robert Lanza is considered one of the leading scientists in the world. He is currently Chief
Scientific Officer at Advanced Cell Technology, and a professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. "Who Are We? Experiments Suggest You're Not Who You Think" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robertlanza/spirituality-who-are-we-e_b_551719.html)

We are more than we've been taught in biology class.

"No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon."

That's why in real experiments, not just the properties of matter -- but space and time themselves -- depend on the observer. Your consciousness isn't just part of the equation the equation is you.