What separates us from the animals is that qualia lands in their bodies but it lands in our minds. That is, the stuff the senses may reach all the way to their brains, but it effects are instinctual – they merely react, or not. They are spellbound, while we are delusional.
When qualia gets to human brains it bounces around like crashing waves or exploding fireworks and we have no choice but to make sense of it – to make understandable patterns out of it.
For some reason, fifty-thousand years or so ago we started paying attention to the qualia in our heads and ever since it has been an itch we can’t stop scratching. Animals (and plants too I suspect) merely experience the “bigger picture” of things at times either oceanic or hyper focused.
In any case, once people began to delude themselves about making sense of it all, there was no end to it. But it hasn’t been without its virtues: the itching has given us a taste for the sublime and the beautiful. For instance, distinguishing between a god who, more than likely, is a creation of our own imaginations (sublime), or simply living in harmony with ecosystems (beautiful), which may or may not extend beyond our sacred planet into the universe.