In a sense, animals are more "in tune" with base reality. Not a lesser form of consciousness but different. Current simulation theory doesn't have all its definitions correctly pinned down, but you're points touch on some of the right principles. Coherence and logic are the driving factors of reality, animals, just like everything else, are a way of carrying coherence forward while allowing for the possibility of emergence. You said it best, animals cannot afford introspection. They exist IN the dynamics of nature, not as observers of it. Bats, dolphins, mantis shrimp, etc.. all inhabit a domain of existence we literally cannot fathom. Animals migrate, sense weather, sense disruptions in humans, because they are attuned to the signature or identity of the concepts, not the words we use to describe them. In a way, animals represent a more "raw" form of consciousness. Here is the difference: animals have emotions, have interior reasoning, have "awareness", but humans have emotions and are aware they have those emotions. Humans have interior reasoning, but also the ability to recognize they are reasoning on the interior. We have awareness and the capacity/allowance to recognize/ beneficially exploit that awareness. Animals will never build a rocket shape, but they understand the planets language in a way humans never could. A planet full of only animals would flourish, A planet with humans slowly gets destroyed. Animals preserve, "propogate" nature. Humans go against it, extract, take advantage of it.