> The dog experiences illusions of thoughts, concepts, ideas, imagination (and many other things besides) that are about its environment. Those have been caused by the nature of its environment. The spinning top topples towards its final point as-if it understood, just like the dog.

I think it's the same case with humans. We wouldn't differ from monkeys without ability to store information and imagination/abstraction(I think animals might posses those as well). Biologically-wise we are striving for same goals just in different environment(influenced/created) by us and more means(posibble acions).