Personally, I am just interested in learning what cognitive abilities various types of animals are capable of. Farm animal cognitive research, specifically, is an area that is largely understudied, there simply isn’t much money going into understanding the cognition of the types of animals that are the most preferred sources of food. You are absolutely correct that these studies have not revealed any new or previously unheard of abilities in non-human animals. There are other types of animals that have been found to do much more impressive cognitive feats.

I’m curious, what do you feel is being unjustly assigned to them? Humans are especially susceptible to a range of mistakes when trying to measure the inner worlds and abilities of animals, and any insight into these mistakes being made is very helpful in uncovering how things actually are. In fact, there is even something known as the Clever Hans Effect which is when scientists are giving cues to the animals as to which behavior they would prefer to have exist, even the scientist themself is unaware of the cues.