Evolution has occurred over the past 3.5 billion years, and, relatively speaking, our common ancestor isn't all that distant. There could also be some convergen

Evolution has occurred over the past 3.5 billion years, and, relatively speaking, our common ancestor isn't all that distant. There could also be some convergent evolution. We're very different from elephants, but our brains are also similar in a lot of ways. There's "something it's like to be an elephant" that we can never know, but which might not be so drastically different from our own experiences that we couldn't ever envision it. That feeling we experience when we socialize with each other might very well be close to the feeling they experience, too. It may generate the same neurotransmitter activity, the same subjective emotions, maybe the same feeling of empathy. Perhaps not, but it's certainly very plausible, especially if you observe them for a long period of time. Who knows, maybe it's even near-identical in some regards.