Once imitation gets good enough (general and accurate) were capable of spreading behaviors (phenotypes) without having to wait for folks to be born and grow up.
We don't really know what the upper bound for non humans is, because we don't know exactly what's being communicated by, for example, whale song.
It feels like bipedalism, opposable thumbs and strong social behaviour and other factores were the perfect storm at the perfect time.
What other animals make fire? Cooked food was the game changer.
https://www.livescience.com/5946-chimps-master-step-controll...
If most animals are operating on a calorie deficit and fixing this can lead to larger brains then why haven’t domesticated animals evolved towards our level of intelligence?
From a calories-per-unit-of-labor standpoint, dogs and cats have now clearly eclipsed humanity, using their emotional intelligence to create a post-scarcity Marxian utopia where they can mostly do whatever they want all day while humans toil for them.