Quantum consciousness...

[The Grand Nudger]

Guys. Just throwing it out there.
Could we say that any animal life which has the proactive ability to survive needs to be conscious of its surroundings?

That would exclude non-animal life that has the proactive ability to survive.  You're not going to find much in the way of survival that -requires- consciousness, nor are you going to find much in the way of effects that consciousness purportedly aids or assists in that isn't present in some species taken to be non-conscious.

Your examples...for example, show a bias for motility and animals.  However, sessile organisms find themselves presented with all the same problems.  They have predators, in some cases they -are- predatory.  Their survival strategies are strangely elaborate.  Some plants release VOCs that signal..specifically, to a predatory organism specific to whatever is gnawing on them.  This suggests that they have a way of recognizing what is gnawing on them, and, supplied with that information, slecting the appropriate "call" between a list a chemical signals they're capable of broadcasting.  There's a species of parasitic vine that spends a few days as a mobile predator, looking for a host to root in.  It will die within 48-72 hours, on average, if it doesn't root..but it will also pass up suitable hoists if it detects a preferred host.  Is this qualitatively different from a hungry human hunter passing up bugs on the forest floor while he searches for a boar?  

I don;t mean to suggest that either of these reps are conscious, only that they appear to be meaningfully cognizent.  If consciousness is, rather than it's own binary "thing", just one of many form (and means) of cognizance......then these similarities between behavioral responses make a tad bit more sense.  Evolutionarily speaking, if we did "become conscious" at some definite point, we'd have had to employ strategies along the way to keep us alive until that eureka moment, and our consciousness would likely be built out of those. Th voc signalers are not only aware, but they're self aware, and not only that, they're aware of "others" and they can categorize others, and they can categorize their relationship to that other. They're capable of mounting an indirect defense of themselves that exploits other species. The vines stalk solanums...and will risk their own lives for a taste of the good shit.

No less than Darwin himself proposed something called the "root-brain" hypothesis. He used a neural metaphor then (amusingl;y, as we often employ computer metaphors now, in discussing our minds), wondering whether or not some part of a plant was a brain analog.