Intelligent life.

Castiel said:
They are Humans. Not modern Humans, but Humans nonetheless.
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It appears you are correct, although there is debate over whether they, and other relations to humans can be classed as seperate species.

I think semi-pro waster has the right idea: if we had never developed to be intelligent, we wouldn't be able to think about this. Also, our development as a species from simple creatures to technological masters has been much more rapid than evolution normally is - I think one of the main contributors to this must have been our ability to communicate far more better than other animals. Once we had that golden bullet, our fate must have been certain.

In short I think the answer is - we got there first.

Edit: sounds like Nitefly has a much better idea than my ramblings!
 
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Nitefly said:
... 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! :)
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So basically then, if you are a vegetarian you are on an evolutionary one way street to extinction, or at least losing what sapience they have left after eating lentils for several thousand generations.;)
 
Castiel said:
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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I think the point, rather, is what are the odds that it happened at all!

The likelihood of you being here is infinitesimal, relatedly for each of your millions of ancestors....

"Humans are not proud of their ancestors, and rarely invite them round to dinner."
 
A lot of luck, and a lot of sex.

Also, for a species that likes to say that we're intelligent, we seem to be very good at doing the opposite.
 
somebody told the shrew a few million years ago ''you have real potential, i see big things for you''. all went from there really with a bit of luck and habitual surroundings favouring it to succeed.

people seem to forget that dinosaurs were here for a lot,lot longer than us and if the meaning of life is to simply procreate and live, they did a better job than us. if the purpose of life is to continually strive towards making things smaller, faster and more efficient at the sacrifice of the things that were here a long, long time before us, i think we've got that one in the bag!

i was thinking the other day of whether things will ever get developed to a point where they simply cannot be developed anymore. i also wondered whether a baby has always taken 9 months to develop in the womb or whether it used to be longer and may get shorter but that's a whole other thing...
 
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meghatronic said:
I think the point, rather, is what are the odds that it happened at all!

The likelihood of you being here is infinitesimal, relatedly for each of your millions of ancestors....

"Humans are not proud of their ancestors, and rarely invite them round to dinner."
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OK, but if the conditions for it exist, as they obviously do, why after it became apparent are sapient lifeforms not springing up all over the place.

Amazing stuff about those Chimps.

I remember reading once that a tribe in Africa who used to eat chimps suddenly stopped doing so and when it was investigated it turned out that the chimps has started bring food, in the form of fruit and other small animals to the village outskirts.

I can't find the article and it was a long time ago I read it so I may be getting it wrong mind.
 
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Castiel said:
OK, but if the conditions for it exist, as they obviously do, why after it became apparent are sapient lifeforms not springing up all over the place.
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Perhaps our uniqueness isn't totally tied in with our intelligence. Perhaps the real reason is that we're able to adapt our environment to us rather we adapt to our environment.
 
Castiel said:
OK, but if the conditions for it exist, as they obviously do, why after it became apparent are sapient lifeforms not springing up all over the place.
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If you win the lottery Saturday - does that mean you're more likely to win the following Saturday? Or that I'm more likely to win?

Perhaps, after the human age, something will rise. I'm personally hoping it's the ants.
 
Castiel said:
It just doesn't seem plausible that in the millions of years that evolution has been ongoing that the Human Being is the only form of life on this planet that can think and reason, show judgement and so on.
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This is where your query falls down. The assumption that other animals don't think and reason or show judgement is misguided arrogance. Of course they do. Sure, they aren't AS intelligent as human beings but to completely discount the notion that they have some form of intelligence is just wrong IMHO.
 
meghatronic said:
If you win the lottery Saturday - does that mean you're more likely to win the following Saturday? Or that I'm more likely to win?

Perhaps, after the human age, something will rise. I'm personally hoping it's the ants.
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Given the seemingly highly organised and planned counter-assaults that the ants in my backyard keep coming up with, I'm not so sure that they are not rising already!
 
there was an experiment last week where (i think they were cows) showed progressive learning by helping one another push something
 
Castiel said:
Given the seemingly highly organised and planned counter-assaults that the ants in my backyard keep coming up with, I'm not so sure that they are not rising already!
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ants etc are awesome the termite mounds have ventilation shafts powered by arm air from decomposing waste in certain chambers.

Some ants live in bushes that have adapted to accommodate them in return for protection from animals by the ants.

Some herd and protect aphids to farm their sugary secretions, and some farm fungui.

ants/termites are absolutely awesome :D
 
Castiel said:
why after it became apparent are sapient lifeforms not springing up all over the place.
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because animals/lifeforms do not choose how they change/evolve, you're talking about it as if it is designed and controlled by some sort of conciousness.
 
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