To be fair... We have created societies, developed uniquely complex languages across the whole world and then managed to learn each other's languages, we write books and online posts to transmit knowledge through generations, we have managed to take over a good chunk of the earth and destroyed most of the nature in it, and we can develop technology like no other species... We have even gone to space! I do think we are pretty special in many ways. Not everything is good, but we are still special.

Consciousness, though? I suspect that the underlying phenomenon is fundamental. I don't think that there is an 'on/off' switch that gets triggered only after some information processing threshold is exceeded. But maybe it does, we have no way of measuring this. All I can say is that my guess can't be much better or worse than any other guess.

I was working out how to reply without saying we’re ‘dehumanising’ animals, but apparently even the language we use dismisses other animals in that way.

Human brain is the most complex thing in the universe that we know of so I'd say we're somewhat special. This however doesn't change the fact that a rat's brain ranks pretty high up on that list aswell.