My friend Adrian has been considering the intelligence of creatures like dogs. This was prompted by an article at New Scientist (one of those journals with items that often make one go "hmmmm" in delighted reconsideration)

Well, you may guess how I regard my four-footed babies. Even when the two cats have just run over the kitchen counter and then my desk scattering all and sundry including my fresh hot coffee from here to there! It's taken me a good twelve months to stop feeling so sad about having had to put my beloved Roj-dog down last year (he's buried under a deep red smelly rose ... only the best for my handsome lad) and even my young dog Yonja Jamtart Wigglebottom (and that really is her name!) has the beginnings of intelligence and consciousness. Leastways, I'm convinced of it!

I was intrigued by a recent (very late night) TV documentary about dolphins and the combined research with SETI to find out if they are conscious or whatever. I think it would be very frightening if it were discovered that cetaceans were "intelligent" and possibly conscious, but expect some people to use that as an excuse to then kill them even more *sigh*
I still look forward to the whole idea of discovering some other way of looking at the world, even if the aliens have been living next door in the oceans all this time.

But the big question is the difference between intelligence and consciousness and does one need one to have the other or can one be intelligent with out consciousness, or conscious without being intelligent?. And after all, what are these two states of being?