Neville Goddard once had an example that if you're hit on the head and wake up with amnesia, you will ask, "Who am I?" The awareness that "I am" is your consciousness, even if you don't know who you are. I'm guessing that imost life forms, if they wake up with amnesia, might be thinking "where is a safe place" or where "where is food?" It's possible that humans might be like that as well, if language wasn't so embedded in us.