It may be a stretch but since we don’t know the exact criteria for the kind of consciousness the article and scientists refer to, it seems rash to dismiss it out of hand. And quite the leap to call it “absurd behavior”
Moths are not flying around your lamp because they think it's good craic to do so. They do it because their brains and programming are simple and with slightly wrong inputs they will display absurd behaviour. This is just a well-known example but tons more have been observed.
That said, it doesn't strike me hugely contrarian to say that this entire thing is very hard to prove, if not outright unprovable. I feel people really are jumping the gun here. I suspect morals are kind of getting in the way of clear thinking here. And look, I'm one of those vegan woke bleeding heart libtard types and actually care quite a lot about this sort of thing in general, but I just don't see the evidence of consciousness here, under any meaningful definition, and don't see it being very likely either.
This too is an opinion though.