I think your assuming alot about the awareness or lack there of, of "animals".
We base their intelligence and awareness on strictly human terms. Verbal communication... words... are like little boxes for our thoughts feelings to fit in; and they are all disgustingly too small. If a hawk cannot speak to you, or build a television.. we judge them as being stupid creatures.
I am a musician, and was traveling with an intelligent companion once who was not. He claimed that the guitarist of a dime a dozen pop-rock band was superior to me in terms of composition and playing because he was on the radio and I was not. I tried to explain to him the difference between making art and making fodder for the media... IE Miles Davis or Radiohead vs Brittney Spearse or Maroon 5. He literally could not understand. He brought up the example of a runner claiming " i could win this race, but i choose not to" implying that the one and ultimate goal of a musician was record sales.
Before I risk digressing, I will tell you how this applies to my original point.
When a lion grazes in the field... is his mind blank? If not, is his mind just filled with thoughts of food and shelter? the same could be asked of the cow? The dog? The peace of a grazing animal brings alot of wisdom. Society has engraved an immesurable number of taboos and goals into our brains. Its psychological warfare that even the most perceptive of us fall victim to. Animals dont live by the same rules and limitations that we set for ourselves. The biggest problem we have is the opinion of our supposed superiority.. that does not allow room to believe that another creature could possibly be as deep or intelligent as us because they dont submit to such superficial aspirations as man. When we attempt to quantize the level of which an animal experiences life, we are only looking at it from the perspective of a human. There are things in reality that exist we are not capable of even comprehending much less sensing. Its a matter of perspective.
