You get a addictive behaviour and slowly immunize yourself with microdoses of poison.
You hunt your prey in a poison diluting or neutralizing environment.
You set the plains on fire with dryd grass to interrupt the feeding cycle of the plague and eat the denatured poisonous creatures.
There are a lot of different strategies. One must admire the crows for eating the fugu though.
There are sources for addiction regarding animals on the web. Its quite interesting what horses and goats do for some weeds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_toad#Drug_use_o...
The war on Horse-Drugs should have priority. Give the DEAs some hoes to whack out the danger.
Sentience is the ability for subjective experience, which applies to any of the animals being discussed here. If you're thinking of something like self-awareness (a totally separate quality), you're probably correct. But that has nothing to do with the ability to learn.