may seem far-fetched to suppose that a zebra “understands” the consciousness of another animal, but it seems that way only because we humans think of consciousness as a noble characteristic, special to us and rich with cultural associations. Zebras shouldn’t have the poetry or complexity for it. But that’s just our ego talking. I suggest that consciousness is an ancient part of theory of mind; it is a simple, efficient model that is used to make predictions about the behavior of animals and is likely to have evolved long before humans.
