I can pass on to you the concept of 'sentience', the term used by Carl Sagan to describe an awareness of ourselves and our surroundings.
To use your term of "mentality" it definately is an attribute of widely varying degree seen in nature. The sense of self-sacrifice, nurturing, decision making and making “moral” choices is a higher brain function shared by (a portion of) humanity and it's seen in comparably lesser degrees in lesser animals. A measure of language, nurturing, survival, industry, and even environmental control, all can be attributed to animals lesser on the sentience strat than man.
Why would the gods create mankind out of dust 6,000 years ago, give him sentience, a special place in the universe, and then give animals such similar abilities—just at a lower “wattage”?
Why did the gods try and fool you by making it seem as though we evolved our characteristics from animals similar to us, who share 99.9% of our DNA, instead of designing humans being qualitatively different. Why would the gods do this, particularly when the bible says man will have dominion over all beasts?