I tend to think people short-change snakes' intelligence as well. Not talking about anthropomorphizing them, but assuming that everything in their brains must be analogous to ours. For example, in that article you linked to, lizards are talked about as only slightly more intelligent than snakes when they've shown complex learning behavior that has only before been seen in primates. I'd link to the study but I'm not sure it'd be available for everyone (university library thing) so here's an article talking about the study.
http://www.livescience.com/48165-bea...imitation.html
My point is, it's probably a bit narrow to assume that just because a reptile is missing X part of the brain, that those functions are absent. If a human is missing a part of the brain, it can go a ridiculously long time without being treated because other regions (once thought to be specific to their functions) can take on the function of the missing piece. Last conference I was at, I talked to a group of herpetologists who were studying social relationships between litter-mates in the Agkistrodon genus and finding that there was recognition and interaction there that no one has ever actually analyzed before.
I don't expect a valentine's card from any of my reptiles, but I don't think we really know very much about exactly what different bits of the reptile brain might do.
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