The 1957 science fiction short story The Cage appears in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories #19 (1957), DAW Books, 1989. I first read it many years ago and the final, amazing line stuck with me. It is well into the future as an interstellar expedition finds itself crashing on an distant planet. Although the explorers survive the hard landing, the ship is utterly destroyed and the omnipresent fungi consume the rest of their technology and clothing. They are stuck on an extremely humid and warm world, with no means to even start a fire or make tools...although at least the fungi are edible and the temperatures, although uncomfortable, aren't extreme. In deep survival mode, they have to assume that no rescue party will come anytime soon and that they will have to make their own society in this place, complete with rules for mate selection. In the middle of a staged fight for a mate, an alien ship comes down and whisks four of them away. They find themselves caged and quickly realize that their captors, rational beings but physically very different from humans, regard them as lower, unreasoning animals...and there is no way to convince them otherwise with no technology, fire, or even clothing that might signify higher intelligence on their own part. How this situation gets resolved...well, there's that last line I was talking about...
The Cage is only fifteen pages long, an example of how much bang one can get out of a story if the author sets it up carefully...and provides that knockout finish to make it memorable. I've looked over the Internet but haven't been able to find it, so the copyright must still be in effect. Still, it's in a lot of anthologies...might be worth looking into, especially if you like reading good science fiction short stories like I do...
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