[Pseudosudowoodo]

Consciousness is tricky philosophical business.

The reality is that on our planet, even something as simple as a plant (or fungi) can have memory, communication, and the ability to anticipate results. Where do we draw the line? Is there even a line that can be drawn? This issue goes way beyond just animals and until we have a functional metric of intelligence, I can't see us getting any real answers past simply recording data.

A link to a researcher on this subject as well as some of her published work: http://www.web.uwa.edu.au/people/monica.gagliano

There are quite a few people, all more qualified than I, researching matters like this. Figured that this was something that most might not even consider and thus was worth mentioning.