As for animal consciousness, there are probably degrees of that. Humans are probably the only living beings on Earth that are capable of higher order reasoning and self reflection (meta-thinking). That's not to say animals aren't conscious; they probably just aren't able to reason about the world and their own existence the same way we are (since their brains aren't as developed). In the same vein, who is to say there aren't beings in this universe capable of reasoning on such a high level that even with sufficient explanations, our brains wouldn't be able to accommodate such reasoning on the biological/hardware level due to a lack of proper circuitry.
The universe is not the mathematics or physics that we use to describe it.
They may not be self-aware, but it seems reasonable to assume that animals like dogs (for example) have inner lives, after their own fashion, and are capable of experiencing qualia. Certainly more reasonable than to assume that they can't.
From that point of view we seem to be a miraculous needle in the haystack of the universe as we know it.