The real separation (and is something that comes long after 2 years of age in humans) is the ability to observe one's thoughts. I totally get that dolphins and elephants and many "big brain" mammals can have social structures, long memories, and the ability to pass down behaviors directly (e.g. "here's how you hunt fish effectively" may not be in dolphin genes, but they do a damn good job of it, or also the "fads" of orcas like the "salmon hat" or, more recently, attacking sailboats).
The absolutely blistering pace a child can learn at, though, is indeed quite a sight to behold.
One interesting aside in this article was that the crows don't teach each other how to make tools. But a child might steal a tool from a parent and work it out. This demonstrates the problem solving type of intelligence, working out how to reshape a wire to a useful shape for instance. But not a 'higher' intelligence teaching or demonstrating to others. Which is kind of odd, as I see young birds following their parents and imitating and learning. So I guess this shows parent birds don't teach, but young birds instinctively follow around and learn?
In the time it took me to learn a new programming language, my kid learned how to be a whole entire human being. Including free thought and autocorrect mode. I don’t know what makes us special in the animal kingdom, but watching that happen certainly feels special. Do whales feel the same way about their young?
Whales almost certainly do not feel the same way. They feel like whales about their young. That's not to discount whales: that feeling may be profound and emotional for them. But it's probably alien to the human experience.
I’m sure their sensory experience is different from ours, but is the feeling truly alien? We share enough genetics to share the same brain chemicals, for one
For starters, whales aren't tool users. So it'd be something of a surprise if evolution had programmed them to feel joy when their offspring use tools. Humans, on the other hand, seem to get a bit of a kick out of teaching other people (especially kids) to do things which makes a lot of evolutionary sense given how strategically central tools are to our species.
I feel that people who study animal intelligence started with the dictum "don't assume similarity to humans" and immediately interpreted it as "assume dissimilarity to humans".
The absolutely blistering pace a child can learn at, though, is indeed quite a sight to behold.