Let me elaborate, how likely is that there’s an animal on earth that’s smarter than us? By smarter, I understand intelligence is a nuanced topic unique to different animals, so for the sake of argument, let’s talk about, mathematics, critical thinking about where and how to apply those mathematical concepts, and creativity in any form.
Mathematics is a terrible baseline for intelligence since it has so many prerequisites for it to exist at the most basic level.
We very often misunderstand the reason of our success as a species to be exclusively because of our unique intelligence alone, when it’s really the special combination we have that has allowed that intelligence to be useful.
Being really good at communicating and creating languages for example, being a land based species, having fingers that we can use with a lot of ease into creating tools, being worse predators physically which gives a material reason for us to create those tools initially, intelligence alone would be a small thing without them.
As others have said, scientists believe that several species are even more intelligent than humans, but maybe they never needed our way of life and natural selection never led them to it because they were just fine as they were.
AFAIK some scientists have argued that some porpoises (dolphins, orcas, etc) are more intelligent than us period. They’re just severely limited in what technology they can develop because of their bodies and where they live.
So you’re saying if dolphins develop fingers/a thumb on their prehensile penis, we’re hosed?
If HiddenLayer is not saying that, then I will.
Bottlenoses, I’ve read somewhere, are as smart as 7-year olds.
Orcas are either the only one or one of the few species of dolphin with a larger amount of cerebrum neurons than us, so they should be smarter.I’m not sure if that counts for the males though, because females are bigger and it’s a matriarchal society.
Sounds like a skill issue to me
I mean sure, but that’s irrelevant to the discussion of intelligence and cognitive faculties.
A paralytic also can’t build anything, does it make Steven Hawking less intelligent than the average redneck?
Intelligence is nuanced so let’s test everyone on mathematics
It’s like testing if a fish is faster at climbing tree than a monkey.
Almost all the animals I’ve seen 1thing or other that they can do which is impossible for me.
Bees and birds navigating. Even with GPS I sometimes get lost.
Dogs being able to identity people. Sometimes I’m like have seen this person before whose talking to me
Birds creating intricate nests, etc
This doesn’t mean I’m dumber than these animals I can write code these animals won’t even be able to dream about. This just means every species specialized in something for the sake of survival of the shittiest.
I think it’s gorillas or some kind of other primate that is on average better at a specific memory or logic puzzel. I can’t remember it that well though.
All animals are smarter than humans in multiple ways.
A cat is better at catching a rat than a human.
A fish is better at swimming.
A bear is better at catching salmon.
As my professor always likes to point out.
A cat is really good at being a cat. A human is really good at being a human.
Just because dolphins don’t want to do capitalism or build bombs doesn’t mean they aren’t as smart as us.
Just because racoons don’t have complex vocal language doesn’t mean they don’t have have complex language.
We can’t evaluate animals based on human abilities.
Most of those do not fit “smarter” by my understanding of the word. Someone that can run or swim faster than me is not smarter than me. Someone more skilled in shooting a gun is not smarter, either. Most of these abilities are separate from intelligence
How do you define intelligence?
“The ability to acquire, understand, and use knowledge.”
Someone having faster reflexes giving them the ability to catch fast moving objects is not a matter of knowledge, but muscle strength and agility.
The same would go for running, or swimming, or catching a fish with giant claws.
When doing things, it’s whether the limiting factor is physical or if it’s information they have or don’t have.
I suppose with running, for example, there will be a lot of knowledge for running technique. But no amount of technique or breathing exercise would make up for lack of muscle.
Most functions are learned. Even by animals.
It sounds like your definition is “learning”.
All animals possess this ability.
Acquisition of learning relies on sensory and motor systems of an animal.
For instance. If I trained a rat to push a lever with its paw. It would learn it much faster than if I trained a rat to peck (like a chicken) with it’s nose at a lever.
Likewise. I could train a pigeon to peck at a lever to push it much faster than training it to use its wing to push a lever.
A rat doesn’t use its nose to peck and a pigeon doesn’t use its wing to grab or push things.
The animal wouldn’t be stupid for not learning to use an appendage in an abnormal way.
There is an enormous amount of research on animal intelligence. Many people are not aware of this.
You might be surprised by what it shows.
When you evaluate animals based on their systems they show remarkable ability to problem solve and learn.
Many animals also learn quickly by watching another animal of the same species do the action. Sometimes requiring only one viewing.
Sounds like human level learning, huh?
The brains and neuro processes for learning are basically identical in vertebrae animals. We all have the same basic structures and the same types of neurons and organization. It’s not surprising we are more similar than different.
People often think animals and humans are much more different than what they really are.
They tend to focus on superficial factors like speech.
Or say animals don’t create art (many do). Dont morn over deaths (many do) . Don’t play (almost all do). Don’t learn (the all do). Don’t feel pain (they all do).Well. I dont know how to speak bird talk either. Does that make me dumber than them ?
Also a neat study on pigeons (who happen to have a pretty small brain ) found they could learn to distinguish painting styles from different artist.
A bird can learn to tell who painted an art piece that they have never seen before based on previous experiences with the same artists works.
https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/c12401/
Also even Wikipedia has a decent section on animal intelligence research.
Not really, it requires intelligence to calculate the trajectory of a bullet, or angle to move to cut off a fleeing animal, etc. The op is just describing situations where animals use their intelligence for things humans generally don’t do, therefore are more intelligent in those areas.
Specialisation vs generalisation, a perigrin falcon does one thing amazingly, where humans have a wider range of skills.
All sorts of animals have superior application-specific circuitry. Like bearded vultures that, while in flight, can drop bones precisely onto rocks to break them open and get at the marrow. But they lack the general-purpose processing power needed to abstract such skills into mathematical representations. Same abstraction likely needed to apply one skill creatively to other uses or apply logic to analyze something.
I’m no neuroscientist/biologist, but I could see an ideal scenario and measurement setup where dolphins and orcas maybe rival our general-purpose intelligence. But whatever it is, it still isn’t enough for them to build any recognizable society yet.
Many. Our idea of intelligence is inherently flawed.
I’d say there’s around 50% that either multiple large dolphin species, or more likely, just one dolphin species, being truly smarter than us and that’s the Orca. Orca’s are the only known species known to have more cerebrum neurons than human beings. They just don’t have any fingers, let alone opposable thumbs, and live in the ocean.
There is a possibility however that Orca’s are still less smart than the average human for they could be using much of their brains to manage sleep as they can’t fall asleep like humans do or they’d drown.If we were be able to communicate with them, I would imagine them arguing for humans to turn their society into a more permanent matriarchy instead of the current human feminist ideal, through genetic engineering, specifically making human females a little bit taller, while arguing that the human males are fine in length, but should prefer giant women like a Greg Universe. And for the average desired human female length, seven or eight meters tall should be enough.
Also, chimps are smarter than humans in one key area, which is short-term-memory.
They can easily beat you in a game of memory without fail.I think humans are not really more intelligent than most beings; we have a unique ability to manipulate physical things, but most animals are not crazy enough to follow and do that because our species pays a very high price for that in happiness.
It’s that sacrifice we all individually made to be like most other humans, as babies, that make us think our way is superior and look down on other animals.
