...we actually do have examples of beings that approach what we consider consciousness and culture in humans. Apes of course, but also cetaceans, and in birds, corvids and parrots. To me the example of birds is the most interesting, because our common ancestors diverged in the Carboniferous period. Yet many of the complex behavior they have parallel ours.
Even more striking is the case of cephalopods. Though I think some of the examples of octopus intelligence aren't actually that unique and can be found in other animals, what is really striking is that their capabilities for problem solving and what I could call an 'inner world' have evolved in animals that diverged from us before the Cambrian. And they are really different from the mammal, or vertebrate standard. They aren't long lived, most species (all, as I understand it) famously die after reproduction by programmed senescence. Their nervous system is made by neurons like ours, but it is distributed all over the body, without centralization. They are completely alien from us, and yet they display the capability for problem solving that could be potentially extended to much larger problems, the self-awareness that might or might not be behind our ideas of personhood and culture.
Oh, and what about AI? Entities that can understand human language and concepts. What happens when one of these entities isn't used as an advertsing chatbot, but given a body and constant interaction with the world? This ramble has gone long enough but let's say I can still talk about it.
All of these intelligences come from the same animal kind of life. It is perhaps a mere whim of time that animals exist at all. The Rare Earth Hypothesis which seems to be the best guess right now predicts that simple life might be possible and common, but complex multicelullar life might be very rare. In fact, I can certainly imagine many complex ecosystems with no need for animals at all, where slime-mold equivalents as higher descomposers fulfill the role, or where autonomous animal-like structures with nervous systems just never evolved. Why should we assume that nervous systems are necessary? Fungi and plants don't have them at all. They don't even have organ systems as we understand them. Yet they live and thrive.
Where I'm going with this is that we we think about the alien other, biologically speaking, to think just about a human but weirder is a lack of imagination. Of course Star Trek couldn't afford to create brand new aliens every time (they still did from time to time) and many of their social metaphors work best when considering near-human societies. Of course people like aliens they can relate to.
But if you really, really want to see what biology looks like and how it defines intelligence? If you really, really want to explore that? Take a look at a crow.
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