Similar things have been observed, theres a ird called a blue tit, in Scotland it figured out how to peck open a milk bottle top and around the same time at the other end of the country the birds worked it out at the same time. I think it has less to do with something as esoteric as collective conciousness and more to do with the fact that the species has a similar size brain, similar size group and faced with the same problem so it's likely they will figure out the problem at the same rate. Like having two 1 ghz computers work out the same mathematical problem within roughly the same time if all parameters are identical.