> That's an interesting observation. Though, there are many simple animals. How do you define consciousness here? Is it automatically conscious because it is an animal? What, then, is an animal defined by you?

Imagine consciousness as a 0-1 scale. Simple unicellular organisms will be closer to 0, while apes and humans closer to 1. I'm not suggesting that assigning this value rigorously is possible or that humans are at a 1. Perhaps the total consciousness in the universe (i.e. the sum of the consciousness of all organisms therein) is constantly increasing, like entropy.