Reports in The Ecologist and National Geographic report that crows are carrying walnuts in their beaks to intersections, waiting for the traffic light to turn red, dropping the walnuts, and after the cars run over the nuts, flying down and picking out the walnut meat.
The National Geographic continues, stating that crows can make tools—and not just by accident. Depending on the situation, they develop two distinct tools. Apparently, crows are as smart as chimpanzees, and studies seem to show that crows are actually better at making tools than chimpanzees.
In addition, studies show dogs can map languages. Great apes have been taught to communicate using sign language. We know that some animals can lie (recall, for instance, the article “Lemurs can be liars if they think you want their food” in the May 2006 issue of Monitor on Psychology).
So, if planets are a natural result of the laws of physics (particularly gravity) given a debris field, and life is a natural result of the laws of physics and chemistry given liquid water, common basic organic molecules (found everywhere in space, from nebulae to comets), and an energy source, is sentient life a result of the laws of biology given a “boring” enough environment (see “Universal Biologies – Order from Chaos” and “Sen
This is not to say that the universe is teeming with sentient life. While life is probably fairly common, most of it will be of the microbial type. Even with Earth’s history, microbes account for most of the timeline for life. While catastrophic events can (and have, on Earth) wipe out larger life forms, microbial forms are the most likely to survive.
Microbes can even survive being blasted into space; for example, if a large meteor hits a planet, large chunks of the planet can be launched into space. If one of those chunks hits another planet, life may be seeded there. Some believe that may have occurred between Mars and Earth: some believe that life began on Mars first, then spread to Earth (making Mars the Garden of Eden, and it did have a much wetter and warmer past), while others believe the opposite.
In addition, some environments are probably too harsh for large, complex life forms to evolve or greatly slow down the evolutionary process (increasing the chances for a large enough catastrophe to set the evolutionary clock back).
But life will find a way, and where there is life, there is hope. Thus, I believe sentient life is a natural potential that will result if given a chance. But it won’t be as common as, well, “common,” or lower, life forms.