It appears to always have been the focus in the literature to approximate components of the human mind, assuming it to be the most advanced. If other animals came into the AI landscape, it was only to study primates in ways that are not practical to study humans or to simulate the neural activity of a slug because its nervous system is simple.
Perhaps there is a more forward thinking reason to consider using lower life forms as the model for desired artificial intelligence. I've been reading what E. O. Wilson and others had to say about the collaborative abilities of other species. There are remarkable qualities in organisms as simple and adaptive as bacteria. Certainly, ants are the model species for collaboration. Honey bees are arguably the most construction savvy, carrying sustainability of lifestyle and interrelationships with other species to an art form far above the capability of human intelligence.
Using sports analogies to characterize the options, human intelligence is more like pre-enlightenment gladiator sports or at least ice hockey, where injuring the opponent is considered the smart strategy. What bees do is more like mountain climbing, constructing with precision and care.
What ants do is much like relay racing, where there is little interest in the opposing team because each colony, just like each lane in the track is independent and the lanes are marked. Ants similarly mark their territory, and the territorial claims are respected as in the best of Westphalian geopolitical statesmanship. There are neither petty jealousies nor competitions solely for the sake of prideful primacy. With ants, just as with the smart track and field coach, the objective is that each leg of the race perform well against the relay racer's previous best.
Bacteria are the long distance runners. They swap DNA with one another, and ignore all the rules of pain and fear. They behave in a sustainable way that takes nothing for granted and uses everything for survival. And they have survived for nearly the entire duration of the earth's existence. They will likely be around for a hundred billion years after humanity is gone, if the sun doesn't go supernova first.
Why would we want to program computers to endlessly behave as competitors? Do people download smart chess programs so they can repeatedly lose? No, they download Android OS because it collaborates and it costs nothing. Can't we find nonzero-sum games to play where win-win scenarios are possible?
Don't we already have enough back-biting, gossipy, hyper-critical agents around from within our own species already? Why not send AI in the direction of collaborative intelligence, like ants? Wouldn't it be better to have new artificial friends that would like to share the burden of our daily tasks?
Don't we want our robots of the future to build like a honey bee builds, in hexagons? Or do we want our robots to follow our example, wasting 70% of materials in vertical construction because of an irrational insistence on ninety degree angles, like only humans would do?