Animal consciousness and the ability to ask questions

Animal Consciousness Foundation - http://www.animals.org/

Please read a few examples that may convince you about animal consciousness: 

Bees, for instance, appear to meet one of the requirements for consciousness. They can create "mental maps," images they hold in their minds that allow them to navigate around their environments by picturing themselves there.

Chimps and elephants appear to exhibit another consciousness trademark: an awareness of death. Both animals grieve when family members die: elephants even linger over the bones of long-dead relatives, seeming to ponder the past and their own future.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/animalmind/consciousness.html

A hungry chimpanzee walking through his native rain forest comes upon a large Panda oleosa nut lying on the ground under one of the widely scattered Panda trees. He knows that these nuts are much too hard to open with his hands or teeth and that although he can use pieces of wood or relatively soft rocks to batter open the more abundant Coula edulis nuts, these tough Panda nuts can only be cracked by pounding them with a very hard piece of rock. Very few stones are available in the rain forest, but he walks 80 meters straight to another tree where several days ago he had cracked open a Panda nut with a large chunk of granite. He carries this rock back to the nut he has just found, places it in a crotch between two buttress roots, and cracks it open with a few well-aimed blows.

In a city park in Japan, a hungry green-backed heron picks up a twig, breaks it into small pieces, and carries one of these to the edge of a pond, where she drops it into the water. At first it drifts away, but she picks it up and brings it back. She watches the floating twig intently until small minnows swim up to it, and she then seizes one by a rapid thrusting grab with her long, sharp bill. Another green-backed heron from the same colony carries bits of material to a branch extending out over the pond and tosses the bait into the water below. When minnows approach this bait, he flies down and seizes one on the wing.

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/308650.html

Herb Terrace, the famous chimpanzee trainer, trained pigeons to peck at a series of lighted buttons to obtain food. The task was designed to make it impossible for the pigeon to use simple "rule of thumb" such as "red light equals food." All of the experiments were conducted in an enclosed box and controlled by a computer to insure that the pigeons did not receive cues from the trainer.

http://www.grandin.com/references/animal.consciousness.html

New evidence of animal consciousness

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=14658059&dopt=Abstract

The definition of conscience is pretty complex , you might say that animals have a subjective view point which is a part of conscience but they lack other important parts (like the symbolic function)  that allow us humans to ask the question of conscience. 

Although some animals have amazing qualities they all seem to lack some of our basic qualities, we may view this in many ways ( neurological difference , species communication , survival necessity , etc ) but we will always reach the same conclusion, animals are not conscience in the same way humans are.

This other abilities that us humans share give us the tool of "asking questions", but not only that we have this tool, we can have another tool  that is responsible for "thinking on thinking" this awareness for our thought process is probably very unique for humans.

We are not born with this ability and we start to find it usually in children at the age of 4-5. This can be a good explanation way animals can not do this function , merely because a child this age is already fur more superior in this sort of thought process then any animal.

But it does not mean that they can not feel some other sort of happiness or sorrow, this is the reason why we souled not abuse them.

You can ask the same question regarding other human beings.

You assume your peers are  consciousness because they behave similarly to yourself, and you're conscious - but you can never know. 

Ophir 

There is some evidence that some animals display patterns of behaviour that indicate self-awareness. For example a recently published study (which you can read

Every entity is concious, if you mean in a way similar to humans; primates and similar mammals.

My parrot asks me questions.

No proof needed, obivious and sensible, right?

It is proven, just go look for the proof.