answer:This is a really good question. Everyone has different beliefs on what it is that makes us conscious, some say it is God that produces our individual consciousness. Others think there is a common consciousness between all living things and variations upon that idea, such as reincarnation or the universal mind (I personally like this story as an offshoot of that theory.) I think that animals have more consciousness than we give them credit for, but other people vehemently disagree, as there is no proof. But, I’m not sure we’ll ever know. Even Albert Einstein, one of the greatest minds that has ever received popular appeal, couldn’t fully explain his own beliefs: “You know them to be true but you could spend a whole lifetime without being able to prove them. The mind can proceed only so far upon what it knows and can prove. There comes a point where the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge, but can never prove how it got there. All great discoveries have involved such a leap.” I believe a part of humanity is being unsure about our roots. We don’t know why or how we came to be. We are forever searching for the answers to very basic questions, and even the most accepted are usually proven to be false. Sometimes we land on an idea and stick with it for a while, but can really only be accepted with a willing suspension of disbelief, eventually rationality takes hold. And again we are searching.