I think Laika was the first creature in space a Russian dog from memory
Manny before Darwin and guys like Sarte it was always thought that animals had a soul or conscience.
This is the Christian view that all living beings contain such attributes but depending on how sophisticated the creature to exactly how many faculties a creature would have eg, earth worm compared to chimpanzee.
The creation of a soul from the process of evolution ie fortuitous arrangements of matter and energy posed some problems hence why they denied the existence
Darwin then ran into this problem of if the mind originates from the irrational should we believe in anything. The basis of knowledge in an absolute sense was gone because if the human mind is just a big monkey brain is real knowledge actually possible. It cannot be verified from an external source.
