There are levels of imagination, of course.
Higher primates and some other animals also exhibit learning processes that are passed between generations, but they don't amount to very much, usually things like washing food or simple tool use.
There's some tipping point in brainpower where serious abstraction and manipulation of the environment starts. Hasn't been very long--geologically speaking--since it happened in our own species.
An example of true intelligent behavior in whaling during the sailing era might be having the pod draw the whaleboats away from the ship, while another whale comes over and knocks the rudder off the main ship.