In The Descent of Man from 1871, Charles Darwin described mental differences between man and animal as a difference in degree rather than in kind. As support for this observation he used the theory of evolution and several anecdotes on clever and moral animals. Darwin's friend George Romanes followed the same method and came to the same conclusion in his works on Animal Intelligence. Around 1900 new experimental methods and behaviouristic ideas and scientific ideals challenged the older sympathetic view on the animal mind, and theories of stimuli-response and the lack of animal consciousness or associations became common among researchers. The paper describes this development with a historical perspective to modern ideas of animal consciousness and a discussion on the connection between the animal protection movement and the theory of evolution in the 19^th century