Sure, but capacity for self-awareness? I'd guess that hamsters dream, and that their subconscious processes (eg, desires for food and sleep and sex), and maybe even emotions, run much like ours. It's just that humans, with more complex neural networks, have more layers added on top. It's similar to how the brain-stems of everything from lizards on "up" function similarly, but humans have more-developed pre-frontal cortexes and so forth. (Don't hold me to those details, please, I'm not a neuro-anatomist! You can see where I'm going with that, though, right?)
replyWell in that case I'm not sure where you're going. I agree that hamsters probably have a similar consciousness to ours, which is kind of the point I was trying to make.
replyI think that consciousness comes before self-awareness, even though self-awareness is kind of a vague term. Self-awareness can either be an abstract knowledge that you are an organism and a discrete entity in the world (world knowledge/self knowledge), or it can be more basic and be a form of conscious experience, but as my point was, I think conscious experience is broader and does not necessarily need to be about self-awareness.