Reading this article is a total waste of time; you might be just a teensy bit more smarter at the end than you did in the beginning.

To save you a click:

A big consciousness experiment that was meant to solve a big scientific dispute came back as inconclusive.

We don't know how consciousness is generated.

We still don't know if animals are conscious,

Some researchers, using one unproven model, think only three groups (mammals, cephalopods, and arthropods) might be conscious, but the actual evidence (especially for arthropods) is weak.

Some other researchers, using this other unproven model, think consciousness started with the common ancestor of jawed vertebrates, which would mean a whole bunch of creatures (including insects and most fish) are conscious.

But we don't know.