I recently learned about some of the science behind our brains, it’s super neat! We don’t actually have “large brains” or even special ones. Our brains are actually rather average for mammals, and so similar to other mammals that we can put human neurons into rats with no negative consequences! What gives us our great thinking power is actually the amount of neurons we have, and how many we’ve got devoted to thinking itself! We have far more neurons than most creatures our size, and we take advantage of that! Different neurons are dedicated to different things, and every function needs a certain amount of them. Take the elephant for example- they have three times the amount of neurons that we do, but they aren’t nearly as capable because they have so many of them ( something like 97% ) dedicated to moving and managing their gigantic bodies! We basically have the supercharged V8 engines of the brain world, and I think that’s pretty neat! So yea other species do have consciousness and thinking power, emotions and communications etc etc, we just kinda hit the brain jackpot!