If you're going to start with a conclusion, "animals can be intelligent because pigs are intelligent, QED" where does that get you?
Why, exactly, are "pigs considered intelligent"?
And, note that I'm not saying animals are dumb as rock, there clearly is some level of intelligence involved in navigating the world, finding food, finding mates, avoiding predators, and a level of difference between say hamsters and elephants. What I'm contesting is something like "approximately all animals must have the same capacity of thought as humans because humans are animals", or the original statement more like "we shouldn't be surprised if tests show animals do have because we should have been assuming that all along even without evidence".
> "It doesn't help to say that. That's true. It's a good thing no one said that though."
fine, then I don't disagree with your statement that "pigs are considered intelligent" in the sense that "people consider pigs intelligent" but I disagree that they are intelligent in the same way that humans are, and the reason I disagree is that they haven't been proven to be such. Occam's razor, if they haven't been shown to have human-level capacity for (invention, language, music, mirror neurons, communicating abstract information, symbolic manipulation, arithmetic, planning, teamwork), then we shouldn't assume they have it unless necessary.