If the difference is of degree, could the degree be discrete rather than continuous? What I mean is that is that of the shared faculties between higher animals

If the difference is of degree, could the degree be discrete rather than continuous? What I mean is that is that of the shared faculties between higher animals and humans, such as language, it does not appear as if increasing animal capacity by some factor would yield near human capacity. Instead, it seems that animals and human operate in different, discrete, levels of using a faculty. Using language again, and I'm going to have to dig through my magazines to find the book reference, but recent research by Noam Chomsky into animal language reveals that it is fundamentally different than human language. Human language is non-linear and recursive, that is, words can have antecedents and self-referential clausal structures, whereas animal language is all linear; the current sound is always in direct relation to the previous sound. Moving from even highly developed animal language to human language, then, is not simply a continuous increase but a discrete one. Not disagreeing with you here, just trying to nuance the point that to suggest that rather than seeing humans as fundamentally similar to animals and on a higher continuum, that we are fundamentally similar to animals and yet at a discretely higher level not achievable by increasing any given factor of those animals' faculties.