Man's Intelligence, Unique?

Man was considered intelligent because he alone used tools to build complex systems, like dams, yet a beaver was considered not intelligent, even though it was from him that man learned to build a dam.   Man was considered intelligent because he could build an apparatus for breathing underwater, yet a salamander's ability to have offspring that breath above or under water ... was not.  

To make such determinations seem less arbitrary, man's use of mechanical tools and his ability to create machine technology was defined as a key differentiator between him and other "non-intelligent" entities.  This was so even when animals were found able to achieve similar goals with more efficiency using non-mechanical technologies.  Even as man would sometimes seem the least intelligent creature in nature, standing alone in a forest vacated by animals minutes before it was ravaged by fire and smoke or swimming aimlessly in the Indian Ocean minutes before a Tsunami, wondering why all the fish have gone away, he has still held to a belief that dolphin sonar, bat radar, bird magneto-sensors, eel electro sensors, and fish hydro sensors are all "non-technologies" of "intelligence-free" "auto-responsive" "instinct-driven" animals while his ability to yield a knife proves his exclusive unique intelligence.  Man has held steadfastly to this belief even as it became increasingly evident that bio and mechanical technologies may be created12 and that advances in biotechnology may ultimately as important than mechanical technology in the long term success of our species. 

Subjective definitions continued even after the supposed ultimate proof of homo sapiens superiority, DNA complexity, was found non-existent.  The decoding of human and other animal genomes showed not that human DNA possessed more information or was more complex than other life forms on earth, but that the salamander's DNA held an order of magnitude more information, and that human DNA barely exceeded the complexity of a rice grass.