In the surprisingly recent past, "science" has declared the lack of sentience, consciousness, or ability to feel pain in any number of groups, from fish to human infants (no, really, they did open heart surgery on newborn humans without anaesthesia. http://www.nytimes.com/1987/12/17/opinion/l-why-infant-surge...). Often there seems to be no evidence behind these declarations beyond the convenience of the conclusions.

In 2012, a large group of scientists recognized a number of animals as having consciousness comparable to humans'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_consciousness#Cambridge...

The declaration: http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConscious...

I was taught that too. Never bought it then, nor now.

Can you point to any evidence even in the fringe sciences that would attempt to prove that monkeys have self awareness?

> to assume that no other animal has self awareness or even emotions.

No other animal other than monkey? I don't think monkeys have self awareness either.

It's because animals don't communicate anything about themself, their signals are mostly based on pattern matching and direct response to events. They never communicate anything showing any evidence of an internal state.

They only communicate in response to external events, and maybe sensations from their bodies.

Even the chimps that did sign language never communicated anything showing any kind of internal state. (For example they never asked questions - events and things simply were.)

Emotions though, I agree animals have emotions. For example that sign-language chimp expressed sadness.

For animals to have self awareness they would have to show they are "thinking about something" - and I don't mean thinking about a solution to a direct goal for a problem in front of them.