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Much of the science i've been taught in my high school and college years is in essence reductionist theory.  We give lip service to the idea that other animals may have "at least some concept" of self, that the "mind" or "soul" exists outside of the physical nervous system and then we quickly dismiss these ideas or at least let them take second place to theories that are easier to support.  Off of what EB Ver Hoeve was saying our observations of animals are really just that-external observations.  Some of the things that we do, in all of our glorious consciousness, would probably be hard to prove as the workings of the neocortex if we did not have the subjective view that we do.  Unfortunately it seems as if all of our observations of other creatures will have to be from outside their minds unless we find a better means of cross species communication.  It is tough for me to believe that as humans, we are the only animals with a sense of self when my only evidence/observations toward this end are a lack thereof.  I could just as easily attribute my observations to naïveté on my part as to the internal workings of an animals "mind".  A cute quote from Douglas Adams that sort of has to do with this (okay, so mostly i like it and want to share it with you all):

"Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much... the wheel, New York, wars, and so on, whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely the dolphins believed themselves to be more intelligent than man for precisely the same reasons."