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kpccrysler
New Member
3 Posts |
 Posted - 07/07/2009 : 17:33:29
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...intelligent than the rest of the animal kingdom? Sure apes are using tools to crack nuts and even some can smoke cigarettes, some dolphins use sea sponges to protect their snounts from rocks while looking for fish and can even pass this skill down to their offspring....but I really don't see any animals building semi-conductors, time-binding, writing symphonies, etc. So what is your best guess as to what happened in nature that gave us this intelligent above all other known animals?
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 07/07/2009 : 18:04:48 [Permalink]
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Whoo, that's a big one!
Ok, without going into a lot of genetics, which I am not qualified to do anyway, I think that our first tentative steps toward sapience came when our ancestors became bipedal, savanna dwellers. As bipeds with a quadruped spine, they were not fast nor very agile runners and potentially easy targets for predators.
Thus, they most likely lived in family groups, rather like baboon troups and had much the same habits -- lookouts always posted and a place close by to flee into or failing that, methods of fighting, and so forth. I have a feeling that an adult male Australopithecus was a bad scene.
So why aren't baboons "smarter?" Largely because they are quadrupeds, and fast and agile.
Mind you, this is a vast over-simplification. Evolution tailors species to their environments, sometimes in some pretty odd ways.
Welcome to SFN, kpccrysler!
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Randy
SFN Regular
USA
1990 Posts |
Posted - 07/07/2009 : 18:28:12 [Permalink]
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Talk about a timely question! PBS Nova of last week had a fabulous show called Ape Genius.
The one hour video stream shows recent breakthrough tests that deals specifically with your very interesting question.
I'd highly recommend readers here to view it if they didn't catch it on the tube last week.
edited to fix HTML, but it looks like it was fixed right as I came to edit... --Cune |
"We are all connected; to each other biologically, to the earth chemically, to the rest of the universe atomically."
"So you're made of detritus [from exploded stars]. Get over it. Or better yet, celebrate it. After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?"
-Neil DeGrasse Tyson |
| Edited by - Cuneiformist on 07/07/2009 18:32:53 |
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 07/07/2009 : 18:29:33 [Permalink]
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| Bigger brains? |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 07/07/2009 : 18:45:08 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by kpccrysler
...intelligent than the rest of the animal kingdom? Sure apes are using tools to crack nuts and even some can smoke cigarettes, some dolphins use sea sponges to protect their snounts from rocks while looking for fish and can even pass this skill down to their offspring....but I really don't see any animals building semi-conductors, time-binding, writing symphonies, etc. So what is your best guess as to what happened in nature that gave us this intelligent above all other known animals?
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Welcome to SFN, kpccrysler!
Most of the answers to these questions are on the cutting edge of the scientific knowledge of our species. The fact is, guesses are really the best answers available, even from those with expert knowledge and very good guesses.
Having said that, I think it's important to understand that evolution didn't have a goal to produce an intelligent, language-using, tool-wielding critter like ourselves. Evolution is only driven by survival of the species.
My best layman's guess is that at some point in our ancestry, something happened that made a big brain vital to survival. Somehow once the brain began to grow, further brain growth and development became a relatively easy evolutionary path for species survival.
Maybe our ancestors were largely chased out of the forests by stronger and tougher chimp-like hominoids better adapted for that niche. (It could be that these apes were at that time smarter or better organized than our ancestors, as well.)
Once out on the savannas, factors like bipedalism, loss of body hair, sweating, and hands freed to carry tools and food developed along with a bigger brain. We had to compete with, and try to avoid predation by, lions, hyenas, and leopards.
It became near impossible to go back to the forests to compete with the specialized chimps, so in our direct lineage, evolution was pretty much restricted to refining a naked, bipedal, brainy tool-user.
From then on, survival was a matter of out-competing, and winning fights with, various other branches of hominids. Again, a bigger brain, communication and culture were routes that evolution could use for that purpose.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 07/07/2009 23:01:30 |
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Randy
SFN Regular
USA
1990 Posts |
Posted - 07/07/2009 : 18:51:42 [Permalink]
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Ape Genius.
Check it out, report back.
(thnx Cune, I flubbed the link on first post, then guess we crossed roads on the fix!) |
"We are all connected; to each other biologically, to the earth chemically, to the rest of the universe atomically."
"So you're made of detritus [from exploded stars]. Get over it. Or better yet, celebrate it. After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?"
-Neil DeGrasse Tyson |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 07/07/2009 : 19:55:10 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Randy
Talk about a timely question! PBS Nova of last week had a fabulous show called Ape Genius.
The one hour video stream shows recent breakthrough tests that deals specifically with your very interesting question.
I'd highly recommend readers here to view it if they didn't catch it on the tube last week.
edited to fix HTML, but it looks like it was fixed right as I came to edit... --Cune
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That was wonderful. A lot of new knowledge about both great apes and humans.
I was especially fascinated to learn that chimps would "cut to the chase" and simply grab the gummi bear from the transparent puzzle box, while human children would instead go through all the irrelevant steps that they'd been taught. The apes seemed more "intelligent," but doubtless the children's reliance on adult authority has greater advantages in the long run, even if it sometimes backfires in useless activity. (My guess is that there are no chimp priests.)
Also, the fact that both human toddlers and dogs will go to a reward that's pointed at, while apes don't understand and can't learn pointing was interesting.
The "triangle" of concentration used in of learning, teaching, and cooperation seems to point to the key difference between apes and people. Apes have culture, but because they don't consciously and effectively teach it, they lose it at a rapid rate.
Apes are so close to humans, but no cigar.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 07/08/2009 : 11:00:50 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by kpccrysler
...intelligent than the rest of the animal kingdom? Sure apes are using tools to crack nuts and even some can smoke cigarettes, some dolphins use sea sponges to protect their snounts from rocks while looking for fish and can even pass this skill down to their offspring....but I really don't see any animals building semi-conductors, time-binding, writing symphonies, etc. So what is your best guess as to what happened in nature that gave us this intelligent above all other known animals?
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We have no real definition for intelligence, no set of objective standards to measure by. All we have is comparison.
The human ability to think abstractly, to imagine how things might be, is a powerful survival trait. In a harsh physical environment where humans are physically inferior to many other animals and vulnerable to other natural hazards this trait would be highly selected along with memory and learning. That is why we appear more intelligent than other animals, because we can ask "why".
If you are looking for some deep metaphysical exdplanation... there isn't one.
The mechanisms for human intelligence, empathy, creativity, and abstract thinking are not well understood.
They are also not unique in the animal kingdom. Some avians are very adept problem solvers, same for chephalopods and several others. Humans just happen to express the trait to a high degree.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Randy
SFN Regular
USA
1990 Posts |
Posted - 07/08/2009 : 19:31:26 [Permalink]
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That was wonderful. A lot of new knowledge about both great apes and humans.
I was especially fascinated to learn that chimps would "cut to the chase" and simply grab the gummi bear from the transparent puzzle box, while human children would instead go through all the irrelevant steps that they'd been taught. The apes seemed more "intelligent," but doubtless the children's reliance on adult authority has greater advantages in the long run, even if it sometimes backfires in useless activity. (My guess is that there are no chimp priests.)
Also, the fact that both human toddlers and dogs will go to a reward that's pointed at, while apes don't understand and can't learn pointing was interesting.
The "triangle" of concentration used in of learning, teaching, and cooperation seems to point to the key difference between apes and people. Apes have culture, but because they don't consciously and effectively teach it, they lose it at a rapid rate.
Apes are so close to humans, but no cigar.
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At the beginning of the program, that was quite a dramatic moment with the 'peanut in the plastic tube' test. The chimp came up with a surprising solution to the problem.."like we could, on a good day."
Good clips of the tool making chimpanzees have mastered, from termites to spearing bush babies.
A great line near the beginning of the program....
"Chimps are at the launching pad, why can't they blast off like us?"
The program then follows with the fascinating new research.
Who knows...maybe someday the bonobos will give rise to a 'super chimp' that will then ignite their own 'rocket' at the launching pad.
Image just for grins.....
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"We are all connected; to each other biologically, to the earth chemically, to the rest of the universe atomically."
"So you're made of detritus [from exploded stars]. Get over it. Or better yet, celebrate it. After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?"
-Neil DeGrasse Tyson |
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astropin
SFN Regular
USA
970 Posts |
Posted - 07/09/2009 : 08:41:55 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Randy
Who knows...maybe someday the bonobos will give rise to a 'super chimp' that will then ignite their own 'rocket' at the launching pad.
Image just for grins.....
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My own theory is that as long as we occupy the top spot no other species will ever get even close.
The only thing that will probably supplant us is A.I. Then hang on to your hats people, it's going to get interesting. |
I would rather face a cold reality than delude myself with comforting fantasies.
You are free to believe what you want to believe and I am free to ridicule you for it.
Atheism:
The result of an unbiased and rational search for the truth.
Infinitus est numerus stultorum |
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The Rat
SFN Regular
Canada
1370 Posts |
Posted - 07/09/2009 : 14:47:13 [Permalink]
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The corollary is - how do other organisms survive without our level of intelligence? Very well, thank you very much. It is just the way WE managed to not get gobbled up, others have different ways. Every species on Earth has something unique to it, that's why it's a different species. It's like a hummingbird asking "How do other species survive without the ability to hover and dip a long beak into a flower for nectar?", or an electric eel asking "How can they catch food without being able to send its nervous system crazy?"
Cats are a different story. Their Lord and Master Satan protects them. |
Bailey's second law; There is no relationship between the three virtues of intelligence, education, and wisdom.
You fiend! Never have I encountered such corrupt and foul-minded perversity! Have you ever considered a career in the Church? - The Bishop of Bath and Wells, Blackadder II
Baculum's page: http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=3947338590 |
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 07/09/2009 : 15:11:11 [Permalink]
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| I am pretty sure none of my cats would recognize anybody has their Lord of Master, not even Satan. More likely, the dark one would be be treated as the pet of his feline masters... |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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