It is more than just "cool". Furthermore, I would probe and inquiry what you actually mean by a positive definition of intelligence so we can get the claim better instead of a negative defintion.
If you have a trillion neurons, some doing basinc control stuff like the one before, with others forming systems that tweak or reroute the others depending on other, emergent potentials, then you have intelligence.
If the brain activity stops being only external information driven and starts being internal information driven (this is, it can change how it regulates stuff o even the stuff it regulates, at different levels of consciousness) then we start talking about something more than information processing.
Your eyes are just a series of mechanisms by which photons are converted into electric signals via proteins that react to the impact of a photon. "Seeing" is mechanical. "Feeling" is mechanical. Receiving and sending the messages is "mechanical". At what point is intelligence separate?
I can't control _how_ my intelligence works, and neither can e-coli.
My "intelligence" is the sum total emergent self-referential molecularly-mechanical signal-processing network that holds state. My DNA holds the state of all of my ancestors on top of which my own environmental changes are laid. My neurons hold the sum-total of my experiences, allowing me to introspect.
Here's my test: - I am intelligent. I have an internal representation of the world that shapes my behavior, and I react to my environment. I can choose to do "irrational" things.
- A mouse is "intelligent" but less than a human. It has a representation of the world that shapes its behavior, and it reacts to its environment. Mice can choose to do "irrational" things like care for their young, and form attachments with humans.
- A mosquito is "intelligent" but less than a mouse. It still has an internal experience of the world that shapes its behavior. It does not care for its young, nor does it form attachments (that we know of).
- Down, and down we go, one thing staying constant -- there is an internal representation of "the world" that guides an organism's behavior. It is an emergent quality of the interaction of mechanical sensory systems working at a molecular level where the goal is survival and reproduction if possible.
I think its intelligence. ymmv