This ability to create new, exact responses may be defined as human intelligence. It operates by comparing and contrasting new information with that already on file from past experiences and constructing a response based on similarities to past situations but modified to allow for the differences.
I would say that the response can also be identical if that is what is required. That is also intelligence – learning when a different response is not needed. Or it could be described as abstracting a common pattern, and being able to discern what is irrelevant "noise" (termed "making equivalence relations" in mathematics).
Another note is that responding to environmental pressures but with modification through descent (i.e. being flexible enough to change and survive in different ecological niches) is the primary factor in evolution - "a response based on similarities to past situations but modified to allow for the differences" is a good definition of how organisms evolve. Living creatures are not clay, passive moulded by changing environments, but interact and respond to those changing environments. Those that didn't manage to do so, are extinct.
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