Equating Characteristics to Equal Equality

In Coetzee's novel there seems to be the controversy over whether or not animals are on the same level as humans. Whether they have the same type of conscience as us or whether or not they think as we do. Elizabeth Costello seems to think that since we are all beings that we should be able to put ourselves into the thoughts of an animal and understand how it is thinking. This way we can understand where certain animals are coming from and how they think. I do not agree with this. How do we know that animals have a conscience that is simlar to ours? Couldn't they have a conscience except it is structured differently than our own? Are we as humans so closed to other possibilities that animals may in fact actually have a conscience that we just cannot understand. Just because we cannot prove something does not mean it was true. In Elizabeth Costello's speech she proposes that Descarte did not have sufficient information about Apes and Dolphins and was therefore only capable of making his assumptions based on what he had. In the future we may in fact prove that animals have a conscience adn can think, except they may just think differently than us. It is possible that we just haven't prgressed that far to prove it.