some say humans have self awareness and animals do not
humans can also think in terms of the past, present and future, and from observing my cats behaviour, id say cats at least can not do this
animals have instinct behaviour, humans can actively seek to learn new behaviour, and not just be conditioned into it
lots of animals have different levels of intelligence, some dogs are dumb as shit, and then theres lassie
"i know cats and dogs that are smarter than corey and trevor"
were not that different from our animal friends though, most creatures on this earth have 2 eyes, a heart, lungs, we all need to eat, have sex, sleep, and all that business, which indicates that if you go far up enough the family tree (evolutionary) we're all family members... unless life started at 2 separate points
but i guess if you apply that theory youd have to say that us and trees are somehow biologically linked (apart from the whole trading oxygen for carbon dioxide cohabitation)
we just ended up with a new part of brain that allows us to think about our new part of brain
