Part of what drew my attention was the last little section I copy and pasted above, which I'll repeat for easy reference.

Author Eugene Linden, who has been writing about animal intelligence for 40 years, told ABC News that Moscow's resourceful stray dogs are just one of what are now thousands of recorded examples of wild, feral and domesticated animals demonstrating what appears, at least, to be what humans might call flexible open-ended reasoning and conscious thought.

I have long thought that we humans are amazingly arrogant and anthropomorphic to think we are the most "intelligent" species on earth. We likely fail to comprehend, much less appreciate, consciousness and/or "intelligence" that might be very different from our own. We mistake ourselves for "the gold standard." Even beyond that, we have some pretty rigid ideas about what comprises an "intelligent" human being, and falsely assume that greater "intelligence" as measured by standardized IQ tests suggests a more adaptive human being, and therefore more likely to insure the survival of the species.

Psshaw!

We used to think that what distinguished us and our evolutionary homo ancestors from the apes was the developed capacity to create and use tools. As research in the neurosciences progresses both in human and animal research, that distinction is proving to not be so clear cut.

Not having a television I tend to be a little behind the curve in learning about and watching some stuff that has been around a bit. I just finished watching the 3 part series on Nova "Becoming Human," from 2009. Enjoyed it immensely and learned a lot. But also have the benefit of reading news reports on scientific research and speculation a mere 3 years later that I did not find surprising, but which some of the scientists in the series apparently would have found surprising from their assertions and implications. All Non-Africans Part Neanderthal (Jean Auel got it right.) What struck me most about the series, however, was so much of the quest seemed to be about identifying what makes us (homo sapiens particularly, but also homo species in general) special.

Special? If we do not lose that notion of "specialness" and our arrogance about ourselves as a superior species we are headed for being another dead end on the evolutionary tree of life on earth.

In the event the evolutionary homo line survives long enough to encounter other life in the universe, if we have not learned the lesson that "intelligence" can not be anthropomorphically defined, even if our limits of understanding are anthropomorphically defined, we are in even bigger trouble than we are now.