Is human intelligence an aberration?

[raccoon]

(Yall, please be serious.)

When you think of how many millions of years there has been life on the earth, and as far as we know, there has been no species with intelligence approaching that of human beings (for example,no dinosaurs writing essays) it seems to me that intelligence is a pretty rare thing.

Any biologists or non-biologists out there who know something about this?

[derby378]

1. Intelligence can be considered an adaptation mechanism

And we're not the only ones with anything that humans would consider sentience. Chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, parrots, and dolphins have all demonstrated high degrees of intelligence. I don't know about the level among Campbell's monkeys, but some researchers have put forth a compelling argument that these monkeys have formed their own rudimentary language complete with evidence of syntax.

[HopeHoops]

2. No, but perhaps an oxymoron.

And yes, that was serious.

[ixion]

3. well, in the grand collective scheme of things, we're not that smart

there are certain individuals among the masses who stand out and make humans look gifted, but on the whole, we're really not all that intelligent.

"Just because we can read and write and do some math, that doesn't make us the Masters of the Universe"

-- Kurt Vonnegut.


As another poster indicated earlier: there are many other mammal species that can be considered intelligent.

And the phrase in your premise is "as far as we know." "What we know" is very little, again collectively speaking.

[Warpy]

7. We're certainly not smart enough to communicate

with other intelligent species on the planet, especially the cetaceans.

Since by brain to body size and size of the cerebral cortex they're likely to be far more intelligent than we are, it shows serious limitation on both sides.

What humans have that no other species has developed is technology.

[Boojatta]

4. "no species with intelligence approaching that of human beings"

If we agree that chimpanzees are biologically similar to human beings, but that their intelligence doesn't approach human intelligence, then we arrive at some questions.

For example, aren't chimps able to sit and use their hands? What's special about locomotion that makes it very important for a species to have locomotion without reliance upon the hands? I suspect that the answer is that locomotion is an essential part of hunting.

Is it just a coincidence that among the most popular pets are cats and dogs, and that before domestication they were hunters? Perhaps their intelligence is as important as their cuteness in making them popular with human beings. Of course, wild cats and dogs don't fabricate tools to use when hunting, but they do have strategies and tactics.

[baldguy]

9. The Great Apes are in the same lineage as Homo sapiens.

And the division between "ape" and "human" is really arbitrary. Evolutionarily, humans are a type of ape.

It's interesting to look at it the other way around: not "What does intelligence allow us to do?", but "What sort of adapt ions allow intelligence to occur?" There are several occurrences of flight being developed for locomotion; several types of animals that hibernate, several that migrate seasonally, herding behaviors are common, but we really only have one line of descent to be able to study for intelligence: hominids and related species, so the answer is difficult to determine.

What would cause, say dolphins or octopuses to develop complex tools or learn how to farm? What would their civilization look like?

[NOW tense]

5. Maybe we should ask ourselves

What is more intelligent, An animal that lives within it's ecosystem or the animal that destroys ecosystems? We don't even have the largest brains on Earth. We are just the ones that are self important enough to think we are the most intelligent ones on Earth.

[sui generis]

6. not really. It's an emergent set of properties

for interacting successfully with feedback and getting our individual gene lines to propagate successfully.

Here's an example: if you use these three rules to paint objects on a screen you'll get something that looks like "intelligence" that is an emergent property of executing the rule set.

Populate a screen with a random set of "birds"

Rules for each individual bird:

1. fly in the general direction (vector) that your nearest neighbors are taking
2. try to match the general speed (velocity) of your nearest neighbors
3. avoid hitting any other birds

You'll see your "flock" of birds suddenly turn into something that looks eerily like life, forming a v-shaped flock with stragglers, flock members and loners and flapping happily across your screen.

Normally we'd attribute genetic hard wiring and some fairly complex "rationale" to doing it, but it's the result of a few very simple rules executing in tandem.

They all rely on feedback from the environment - also the assumption that flying has a goal - presumably to find shelter, food and mates.

Similarly we have rules that govern how we interact with the process of standing on two legs, binocular vision, sensory input, and the basic needs of our own animal biology, which can be classified into the "Four F's":

Feeding
Fleeing
Fighting
Fuc. . .Fornicating.

[lazer47]

8. First of all, who said we were Intelligent??

Whales have been here a lot longer and their intelligence may mean we are just so stupid WE don't understand them.

[qazplm]

10. I'll disagree with the folks

on here who seem to feel we either aren't intelligent or that other animals are more intelligent than us.

We are intelligent. We may not be wise, but we are intelligent.

We are to a fairly high degree of likelihood the most intelligent creatures on this planet. Now is there a slight chance that Whales or other Cetaceans are actually more intelligent? I'd concede a very slight chance, but I find it unlikely.

Now having said all of that, do I think the difference between our intelligence and say a Dolphin or a Chimp or even a Dog is anywhere near the difference between a Dog and say a Frog? Not even close.

So when you think of it in those kind of relative terms, I'm not sure our intelligence is enough orders of magnitude greater than several other animals to be in the grand scheme of things especially aberrant.

The only caveat to that is we may be the only or rare animal who has evolved an intelligence beyond that necessary to survive. There is no need to compose music to survive or create art or in most parts of the world crate vast shelters. And while we know that psychiatric maladies can affect all sorts of creatures, I don't think it approaches nearly the variety that it does humans and that to me is a sign of the kind of "excess" intelligence humans may have.

But I'm not sure that caveat is enough to say, humans are aberrantly intelligent.

[semillama]

11. It's a good question

One thing that strikes me with my anthropology background is that it's not just that we are intelligent animals. We're intelligent animals who have also evolved physiological characteristics that allow for the deft manipulation of our environment. Without bipedalism and opposable thumbs, our big brains wouldn't amount for as much.

Or to put it another way, what if crows could manipulate the environment in a way similar to hominids? what would we see? (keeping in mind that crows have been shown to be terrific problem solvers, tool users, and demonstrate the ability to plan for the future)

[pokerfan]

12. Did you watch the recent Nova series, Becoming Human?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/beta/evolution/becoming-human-part-1.html">Part 1: First Steps

Part 1, "First Steps," examines the factors that caused us to split from the other great apes. The program explores the fossil of "Selam," also known as "Lucy's Child." Paleoanthropologist Zeray Alemseged spent five years carefully excavating the sandstone-embedded fossil. NOVA's cameras are there to capture the unveiling of the face, spine, and shoulder blades of this 3.3 million-year-old fossil child. And NOVA takes viewers "inside the skull" to show how our ancestors' brains had begun to change from those of the apes.

Why did leaps in human evolution take place? "First Steps" explores a provocative "big idea" that sharp swings of climate were a key factor.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/beta/evolution/becoming-human-part-2.html">Part 2: Birth of Humanity

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/beta/evolution/becoming-human-part-3.html">Part 3: Last Human Standing

[cowcommander]

13. That's assuming we were the first intelligent species on the planet

4 billion years is a LONG time, chances are there were other intelligent critters before us, but got wiped out. We might be next soon, unfortunately...