Searching for animal intelligence certainly feels like an exhaustive search of all possible perpetual motion machines, and similarly, people keep on enthusiastically nearly finding it. And of course this is plagued by a lack of a good definition, and crows unlocking puzzles and other animals doing other scraps of smart stuff.

It seems like nonsense to be searching for things without perfectly clear criteria. Don't look for things if you don't know what you're looking for, or at least don't call it "looking for", just call it what it is: "poking around and brainstorming."