A handful of science fiction and even some fantasy settings include animal uplifts. However, there's often a problem with roleplaying members of such species: excessive1 anthropomorphism.
This is a problem, because even though uplifts are quantitatively either approaching or on the level of human intelligence (depending on setting), qualitatively their minds are not the same, not having undergone the same psych-evolutionary paths, and/or having undergone some artificial neurological workarounds that humans lack.
This seems to happen (though to a lesser extent) even with players and GMs who have done some research on the subject species (e.g. someone whose knowledge of dolphins doesn't all come from Hollywood). And sure, Most Players Are Human, just like most writers. But surely just as some writers seem more skilled at avoiding the stereotype of human-like intelligence, so can roleplayers improve their technique at depicting such characters.
Thus the question:
How can one improve one's ability to roleplay uplifts, and to portray them as 'aliens from the same planet', as dolphins and octopodes gifted with increased intelligence, rather than as humans in animal suits? What roleplaying techniques can aid in achieving this goal? How can one become better at extrapolating theoretical knowledge about real animals (and their differences from humans) to practical skill at roleplaying their derivative uplifts?
1 There are some phenomena that have been dismissed as anthropomorphism in the past, such as signs of linguistic capabilities or the level of complexity of social interactions, but that current observations seem to indicate are real at least to some extent, and thus either no longer classed as unambiguously anthropomorphic, or deemed to be 'reasonable' anthropomorphism. I'm not talking about those.