To me consciousness is an awareness of self as an independent being. Human beings typically have the ability to see, touch, smell, hear, and remember. Those senses enhance our consciousness. Awareness of self is the most basic consciousness, the senses are auxiliary functions to the self. Thought is a higher function of consciousness. Animals have consciousness because they can feel pain, fear, warmth, and cold. Animals also act to find food, shelter, escape, care for offspring, etc.

Consciousness is bullshit.

When I was 6, I woke up from a coma. Essentially, my doctors were trying to kill me, but my body shut down and started rejecting the fact that those doctors were keeping my body from a much needed fever for a long period of time. After I came to, I had no memory of my parents and brother, the place I lived, the kids I went to school with, the god my mother loved or even myself. However, my so-called conscious held a lot of knowledge. My teacher considered my education level to be at the top of the class before and after being hospitalized. If I truly lost all memory, I don't think I would have known my times tables. A lot of Christians, my 1st grade teacher included, told me that was god while I see consciousness as nothing more than just another type of memory.