It's the past perfect tense, usually used to refer to a past event that occurred prior to another past event. I missed your call because I had already gone to bed. http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/rules/pastperf.htm

The "to" is necessary simply because the [somebody] is so long! "The more intelligent animals on the farm." In most cases you don't add "to" in this pattern, but in these same cases the [somebody] isn't a long phrase. We need a preposition to guide our brain, otherwise we truly become lost around the part which reads "...on the farm a completely new outlook..."

It has the same meaning as "giving something to somebody". It's just a different sentence structure :) However, I have the impression that "giving something to somebody" places emphasis on the "something", and "giving to somebody something" places more emphasis on the "somebody".