Intelligent life.

Castiel said:
I'm pretty sure that we are the only species to have sex. We may be the only one that made an industry out of it though....
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I think it's the way we have sex. If you look at how animals have sex, for some it's just procreation, for some it's to pass time or bond. For us, it's different. We have to woo etc. How many species accept the "not tonight honey I've got a headache" line?
 
We got there first.

We're adaptable & a jack of all trades, we have all the physical assets to allow us to master a wide variety of skills which in turn allows thought to expand beyond basic hunt/kill to more varied methods to hunt/kill, to communicating how to hunt/kill etc etc. We're non specialised, we demand advancement & variation of method.
 
I thought there were other branches of intelligent life, like neanderthals, but humans were better, so we became the dominant species. Once we became dominant, there was no room for another animal to become intelligent enough to match us. Good question though, my answer is probably wrong!
 
meghatronic said:
I think it's the way we have sex. If you look at how animals have sex, for some it's just procreation, for some it's to pass time or bond. For us, it's different. We have to woo etc. How many species accept the "not tonight honey I've got a headache" line?
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How many of us do!

I'm not sure that what we do in regard to courtship etc is really any different to many other species of mammal, especially the "higher" mammals such as Apes and Dolphins.

Is the complexity of our relationships because of or the reason for our sapience?
 
Craig1981 said:
What about dolphins? Their meant to be one of the most intelligent animals on the planet.
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Maybe dolphins are very good at certain things, but they will never understand the concept of sudoku. Why dolphins are regarded by some people as more intelligent than humans is quite beyond me when they have existed as a species for maybe four times as long as humans without doing anything that we could consider intelligent (unless you saw the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy in the '80s).
If swimming, conversing in a very undeveloped way, and performing tricks taught by a less intelligent being is a sign of intelligence then the dolphins may win out.
Maybe our lack of specialised senses is due to our lack of need for them due to our intelligence.
 
Castiel said:
I was sitting about the office today and thinking about the usual weird stuff when I began to wonder why, when the Earth has this abundance of life, counted in the billions of different species current and extinct, are we the only ones that has ever shown sapience or intelligent thought as we define it.
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Perhaps the definition leads to the answer or vice versa i.e. we've defined intelligent life as being us and then asked why the only intelligent life is us...

Why we are as we are and there doesn't appear to be another species on Earth to compare with (not meaning this to sound as if humans are superior necessarily - in many ways we're rubbish at having any sympathy for our environment) is an interesting question. If I had to hazard a guess it would be that we've "won" the cosmic game of chance and been the result of a series of astronomically unlikely events coinciding with an end product of us - whether that's a good thing I'm less willing to commit to.

It's also possible that there are other forms of intelligent life beyond Earth. As Calvin (probably amongst others) said "Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." - I like it for the cynicism.

Wynthorpe said:
I watched "Jurasic Park 3" the other day and according to that, Raptors would have ruled the world if not for the "Cataclysmic" event, I beleive all **** films so this is indeed FACT.
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Dinosaurs were pretty well adapted to their environment and by the time they were wiped out had been around for a long enough period of time to make humans look like the metaphorical cosmic blink of an eye that we are thus far.
 
Pinkribbonscars said:
I thought there were other branches of intelligent life, like neanderthals, but humans were better, so we became the dominant species. Once we became dominant, there was no room for another animal to become intelligent enough to match us. Good question though, my answer is probably wrong!
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They are Humans. Not modern Humans, but Humans nonetheless.
 
Its really only evolution to kick start the process, but then the macro and micro environment comes into play.
Lets say in 10,000 years we are all wiped out and only scorpions are left, who can say that in 20,000 years they may have evolved into a larger more intellectual species.

Someone said and its really pretty key, we have now basically got control over the complete world.
Thats not to say however that say dolphins arent more intelligent than they were 1000 years ago and are not suddenly about to evolve into Dolphin stage 2 and suddenly sprout a hand instead of one flipper.
 
SlugForAButt said:
Maybe our lack of specialised senses is due to our lack of need for them due to our intelligence.
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I think it's the other way round - our intelligence was born from the lack of specialised senses. In comparison to other animals. Our claws are shorter, our eyesight and hearing worse, we have a poor sense of smell etc. etc.
 
Castiel said:
Is the complexity of our relationships because of or the reason for our sapience?
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I'd like to think it's a part. I think it's a combination of things, brain size, being bipedal, opposable thumbs, larynx. There's also some evidence the 'internal' ovulation (i.e., no obvious sign when a woman's in heat, encourage bonding. Plus the relatively large investment needed into children... etc.
 
Castiel said:
However, surely sapience is not so specialised a trait that only one species amongst the millions, if not billion of species that have inhabited the Earth could have evolved with it.
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Probably not, but if they were in existance here before on earth they are dead now, and from the most recent wipe out we are the dominant species - and the only ones in this position now. It just so happens we have the fallculties that we do - The dinosaurs for example did not, while being at the top of the species list for global domination. There might have been a point here or somewhere else where two species have evolved high level consciousness. Etc etc. I'm sure you know how this would draw out.

We are 'alone' through circumstance.
 
This is all based on how you class 'intelligence'. For, supposedly, the most intelligent species on the planet, the human race is very adept at being remarkably stupid.

Think of all the bad things that happen in the world; war, famine, racism, murder, rape etc etc a large amount of these actions can be attributed to human stupidity or ignorance. So far our intelligence has got us very far in the world, but equally our stupidity has set us back as far!

And there are a lot of animals with intelligence close to our own (if not better). They have discovered that dolphins have the ability to recognise their own reflection, meaning that they are self aware, one of the signs of true intelligence and sentience.
 
robskinner said:
If we had not had the potential to be at the top of the food chain we would probably not have had the oportunity for evolution to increase the gap between us and our nearest rivals.

Its quite possible that with a different set of circumstaances say Lions could have evolved differently and become the dominant species
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... errrr :p

I would speculate that it has a lot to do with infanticide and the structure of the primitive primate brain. Our ancestral primates were presumed to be isolated, as in they walked around individually. So one female would be more succesful if she travelled alone with her young.

A frequent tactic observed across the animal kingdom is infantice. In most mammals, including lions, females cannot get pregnant whilst lactating. As lactation to young can go on for many months, this massively reduces the rate of sexual success for males. Males can stop this by killing young and as males are generally much bigger, there isn't much that females can do about it except to hide.

Somewhere in the timeline, it is speculated that females joined into coalitions i.e. teams to protect their young. In response, males could improve their reproductive success by mating with many females and helping to protect the young, or by sharing the female group, or by forming male coalitions. This would be the starting point for massive social evolution, enhanced further by the new found ability to hunt meat. Very few primates eat meat and virtually the only way to successfully hunt is in a pack.

This would mean the socially the circumstances are correct for complex sexual and intellectual evolution only possible by the already sophisticated primate brain, fuelled further with the excess energy gained from hunting meat that can be used to fuel the enourmous energy needed to grow a larger brain.

Well, I hope that's some food for thought anyway! :)
 
We are by far the most intelligent creatures and we have the natural form of being able to put our intelligence into practice, such as opposable thumbs and hands that allow us to craft things other creatures could not with hooves and fins and the like.

Just try and imagine a whale trying to knit.

Its just one of those things that we'll never know the answer to, unless of course you believe in a deity of some sort.
 
meghatronic said:
I'd like to think it's a part. I think it's a combination of things, brain size, being bipedal, opposable thumbs, larynx. There's also some evidence the 'internal' ovulation (i.e., no obvious sign when a woman's in heat, encourage bonding. Plus the relatively large investment needed into children... etc.
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I can see that the combination of things combined with circumstances led to our species being as it is, but what are the odds of us being the only one.
 
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