Since all the forms of intelligence we know arise from nature, they are implicitly bound to the structures and forces that nature places on them from birth. The fact that there is such a thing as the ego or the self, for example, is surely because organisms in nature must be obsessed about self-preservation. I wonder if there are possibly other forms of intelligence, that perhaps we would not immediately recognize as such.
I think this is a central reason why artificial intelligence has been so difficult to create. Since the machines we create are not explicitly programmed or directed to be self-preserving (since there is no need to), there are no forces to create what would be a recognizable ego to us.