Why is life more intelligent now than in the past?

[Gelatinous squid]

Why do we see so many examples of intelligent animals today, such as crows, elephants, whales and pigs, but none in previous biospheres? Why didn't the Cretaceous evolve such a level of intelligence? Or the Permian? 

[FranzBernhard]

16 minutes ago, Gelatinous squid said:

but none in previous biospheres?

Intelligence mostly escapes fossilization. For example, one of your examples, whales. These are not very rare fossils - but its difficult (impossible?) to decipher intelligence from that remains.

I have read here in the forum, that signs for brood care or pack hunting "exist" in the pre-Cenozoic fossil record.

Franz Bernhard

Edited October 6, 2021 by FranzBernhard

[Kane]

We lack the evidence to make that assumption. Behaviour — one of the key aspects which demonstrate cognitive ability — is largely absent from the fossil record apart from trackways. Moreover, there is debate over what may be construed as “intelligence” given it can be a fairly subjective term (if not all too often coded as anthropocentric).  

[Tidgy's Dad]

Who knows how comparatively intelligent some of the Palaeozoic or Mesozoic cephalopods were? 

It does seem that some dinosaurs, maybe troodontids and raptors had moderate intelligence.

Mammoths have the same brain to body ratio as modern elephants.  

 

And as for brachiopods. Hmmm, Yes, well, let's forget that. 

Edited October 6, 2021 by Tidgy's Dad

[Ludwigia]

27 minutes ago, Gelatinous squid said:

Why do we see so many examples of intelligent animals today, such as crows, elephants, whales and pigs, but none in previous biospheres?

 

What leads you to this conclusion? Obviously we have the aforementioned animals before us, so we can study them. But what evidence can you present to the contrary for the previous biospheres?

[Gelatinous squid]

Mainly brain to body ratio. 

[Troodon]

Came across this article..

EQ ..Encephalization Quotient, measures the size of a creature's brain against the size of the rest of its body and compares this ratio to that of other species of roughly the same size.  So its a measure that MIGHT reflect intelligence.

Humans: 5

Dolphins: 3.6

Monkeys: 1.5 to 2.5

Wildebeests: .68

Elephants: .63

Triceratops  .11

Dromaeosaurids/Troodontids: less than Wildebeests  .68

 

Interesting comment made "One of the trickiest aspects of animal intelligence is that, as a rule, a creature only has to be smart enough to prosper in its given ecosystem and avoid being eaten."

 

https://www.thoughtco.com/how-smart-were-dinosaurs-1091933

 

 

 

[JimB88]

Brain size doesn't equate to intelligence directly (Neanderthals after all had a larger brain than we do, but did not leave behind evidence of behavior that was "more intelligent" than our own.) 

Also, many animals have larger areas of the brain devoted to specific senses (olfactory, optic, etc.) which increases the overall brain size.

[snolly50]

51 minutes ago, JimB88 said:

Neanderthals after all had a larger brain than we do, but did not leave behind evidence of behavior that was "more intelligent" than our own.) 

 

I don't know about that. Perhaps those crafty hominids saw the foolish path "modern" Homo sapiens was taking and wisely "noped out."

[Misha]

1 hour ago, Gelatinous squid said:

Mainly brain to body ratio. 

This seems like a metric with a strong bias towards humans and not necessarily telling of actual intelligence. 

Plus what do you mean by intelligence? 

Capacity to perceive the world around them? The capacity to relate and or communicate with others? Ability to use tools?

[Kane]

1 hour ago, Misha said:

This seems like a metric with a strong bias towards humans and not necessarily telling of actual intelligence. 

Plus what do you mean by intelligence? 

Capacity to perceive the world around them? The capacity to relate and or communicate with others? Ability to use tools?

You are asking along the same lines of inquiry I have.  

Is there an operational definition for intelligence, and one that is not mired in either comparison to sapience, epistemology, or semantics? What of plants that can exhibit various "behaviours" through chemical signalling, etc.? By what criteria can intelligence be observed and measured to function definitionally as a necessary and sufficient condition? Without consensus on what is meant by this seemingly nebulous term, it seems like semantic quicksand.  

[Ludwigia]

I agree. The debate on the definition of intelligence will probably continue on into eternity.

[FranzBernhard]

 

4 hours ago, Gelatinous squid said:

Why do we see so many examples of intelligent animals today, such as crows, elephants, whales and pigs, but none in previous biospheres? Why didn't the Cretaceous evolve such a level of intelligence? Or the Permian? 

"Intelligence", irrespective of its definition, needs some level of biological organization and complexity. From the fossil record, we can see an ever increasing complexity of life, with some hiatuses, of course. So it seems logical, that the amount of "intelligence" generally also increases with time. This process is called evolution .

Franz Bernhard

[Coco]

intelligence is often defined as the ability to overcome a problem, whether through inventiveness, creation or simply adaptation. But today in the human race several kinds of intelligences are recorded (intelligence "of the heart" -relationship with the other- for example).

 

So yes, the debate will remain open for a long time on the human species, so for fossils...

 

Coco

Edited October 6, 2021 by Coco

[ChristineR]

3 hours ago, Troodon said:

Interesting comment made "One of the trickiest aspects of animal intelligence is that, as a rule, a creature only has to be smart enough to prosper in its given ecosystem and avoid being eaten."

As we consider ourselves the most intelligent species, was sentience an evolutionary mistake? Humans seem determined to ensure our own extinction  ,driven by prosperity.  … 

[Crusty_Crab]

I agree with everything being said about the difficulty of defining what intelligence really means and navigating that through our very anthropomorphic lens. However, that doesn't stop scientists from trying! Its a fascinating topic that behaviorists have attempted to address. The challenge is to devise an impartial test that approximates an aspect of what we define intelligence is. For example, one of the most cited is the mirror test, which is designed to test for self awareness using a mirror. This is a popular test because there are very few animals that are self aware and humans are a good example (typically we pass the test at 2 years). There is also the marshmallow test, which is designed to test the ability for delayed gratification and which I remember there was a recent paper that indicated cuttlefish passed the test. This implies an ability to anticipate and then plan for the future. My paltry summary does not do the field any justice, but I encourage everyone to learn more about it. If you can devise a clever test for a key aspect of what humans perceive as intelligence, and which you can apply to a wide variety of animals, I think that would become a career maker.   

Edited October 7, 2021 by Crusty_Crab

[erose]

On 10/6/2021 at 11:49 AM, Ludwigia said:

I agree. The debate on the definition of intelligence will probably continue on into eternity.

I doubt that as most mammal species only exist for some limited period of time.  Thinking humans are actually different would be silly. If Homo sapiens lasts another 100k, let alone a million, years seems ludicrous considering the way we are going now.

[Ludwigia]

37 minutes ago, erose said:

I doubt that as most mammal species only exist for some limited period of time.  Thinking humans are actually different would be silly. If Homo sapiens lasts another 100k, let alone a million, years seems ludicrous considering the way we are going now.

I didn't necessarily mean that only humans would continue the debate

[Tidgy's Dad]

2 hours ago, Crusty_Crab said:

a recent paper that indicated cuttlefish passed the test. 

Trouble is cuttlefish only live one to two years. It's not going to get it's PhD. in astrophysics in that time, unfortunately. 

The octopus is the same; quite smart but a very short life expectancy. 

Edited October 7, 2021 by Tidgy's Dad

[Crusty_Crab]

26 minutes ago, Tidgy's Dad said:

Trouble is cuttlefish only live one to two years. It's not going to get it's PhD. in astrophysics in that time, unfortunately. 

The octopus is the same; quite smart but a very short life expectancy. 

Yes, you've hit on a key question that scientists have tried to reconcile! The prevailing thought is that intelligence tends to favor K-selected species. That is, species that have evolved to invest resources in limited number of young, invest time and resources to raise their young, and who live a long time. Intelligence is expensive and why devote the resources to a long term investment if it doesn't live long enough to reap the rewards? The cephalopods turn that argument on the head. Cuttlefish, squid and octopi are r-selected. They produce lots of young, leave them to their own devices, and don't live that long. Yet, they have profound problem solving skills and have passed the marshmallow test. We all have adult relatives that would STILL fail the marshmallow test. My thought is that our measure of intelligence is a deeply anthropomorphic one. Cephalopods have evolved their abilities as a response to their evolutionary environment. It has nothing to do with intelligence. We regard the most intelligent of us as having the ability to get PhDs, to come up with ideas that we regard as profound, but does that make them more successful biologically? Mozart's children died without children. How many people do you know have the last name of Einstein, or Newton?  

[Harry Pristis]

Shrimp cocktails and fish sticks.  Really!

 

mankind supplied itself with a plentiful supply of omega fatty acids, chemicals that are crucial to brain development and which are found in significant amounts in fish and shellfish but are scarce in other foods, even meat.

 In particular, two fatty acids - docosahexaenic acid (DHA) and arachidonic acid (AA) - make up almost 60 per cent of the brain's structural material, the former being vital for the development of neuron membranes, the latter for the construction of blood vessels in the brain.

 'We may think we are clever,' declared Professor Michael Crawford, of the Institute of Brain Chemistry at North London University. 'However, we are really just a bunch of fatheads, literally. More importantly, the only place we could have got all the fat that filled our heads was from the shore, from shellfish and fish.'

 Both DHA and AA - which are found primarily in fish - are passed through placentas and breast milk, so that offspring of the first primitive men and women who opted for a life on the shore were provided with the essential components that ensured brain growth.

 In effect, our access to seafood created a biological loop. We ate more and more seafood, got smarter, and thought up ever more cunning ways to obtain seafood. However, as Leigh Broadhurst, of the US Department of Agriculture, said: 'It was the diet that came first.'

 It is not clear, however, when mankind first took to the shore to bolster its brainpower with the odd winkle or crab. Some researchers argue that the process began five or six million years ago when the human lineage first split from that of the apes.

 Others believe that the process was much more recent. Anthropologist Alison Brooks, of George Washington University, told the journal Science that the best direct evidence for the emergence of our fish preferences are recent: middens of shellfish and fishbones left by Homo sapiens 100,000 years ago, and elaborately carved fishing spears dated at around 90,000 years old.

 It could have been the adoption of a seashore life at this time that propelled Homo sapiens to intellectual greatness, while our rivals the Neanderthals - an inland species who may have been starved of the brain food they needed to compete with us - became extinct.

[Crusty_Crab]

On the other hand, you may argue that on a species level, intelligence has helped us. Mozart's, Einstein's or Newton's descendants may not be particularly numerous, but their discoveries have helped the human species as a whole. Perhaps intelligence is a species-wide adaptation. In order to benefit from someone of the same species that is not related, there would have to be a high degree of sociality. Ants seem to have taken sociality to an extreme, whereby individual workers are sterile, but their efforts benefit the colony as a whole. The entire colony is better described as a biological unit. An individual worker ant is pretty dumb, but a colony as a whole is capable of more complex decisions, just like a neuron is pretty dumb but a brain composed of many neurons is intelligent. Again, human intelligence is deeply anthropomorphic. Are there other forms of intelligence out there that we as humans are too dumb to recognize such as communal or ecosystem wide intelligence?

[FossilDAWG]

This thread reminds me of an old Monty Python sketch about brain size and intelligence in penguins:

 

Don

[Haravex]

On 10/6/2021 at 2:59 PM, Troodon said:

Came across this article..

EQ ..Encephalization Quotient, measures the size of a creature's brain against the size of the rest of its body and compares this ratio to that of other species of roughly the same size.  So its a measure that MIGHT reflect intelligence.

Humans: 5

Dolphins: 3.6

Monkeys: 1.5 to 2.5

Wildebeests: .68

Elephants: .63

Triceratops  .11

Dromaeosaurids/Troodontids: less than Wildebeests  .68

 

Interesting comment made "One of the trickiest aspects of animal intelligence is that, as a rule, a creature only has to be smart enough to prosper in its given ecosystem and avoid being eaten."

 

https://www.thoughtco.com/how-smart-were-dinosaurs-1091933

 

 

 

Just to throw in a little information here brain size is actually not an accurate measure of intelligence (also the later is abstract and ignores other forms of intelligence such as emotional) the main defining theory is the surface area and therefore  folds in the brain.

[Titan]

I needed that laugh today, thank you Don!

5 hours ago, FossilDAWG said:

This thread reminds me of an old Monty Python sketch about brain size and intelligence in penguins