• Light/Dark

*Hits blunt* "Isn't it kind of weird no animals come close to homo sapiens with regards to intelligence?"

Gaf Zombie

Gaf Zombie

The Fallen
Dec 13, 2017
2,240
Like the chasm between human intellect and even the other great apes is simply mind blowing when you think about it. No other animal has a 'stat' so superior to other animals. Cheetahs are the fastest land animals, sure, but obviously there are ground sprinters not far behind. Blue whales are massive but the others are pretty large as well. So how the hell did we get so OP on intellect? Discuss.
 
Anustart

Anustart

9 Million Scovilles
Avenger
Nov 12, 2017
9,160
Id say developing intellect is a much tougher obstacle than physical evolution.
 
Kyuuji

Kyuuji

The Favonius Fox
Member
Nov 8, 2017
32,918
Once it started for Sapiens it snowballed, in terms of dominance. Look at the advancement of technology over the span of mankind. The ability to imagine fiction, to create, and to tell others and galvanise around that really strapped a rocket to us and propelled us at a rate that the world, genuinely, wasn't prepared for.

This propulsion up the food chain has had devastating effects on, well, a lot of shit and even now we're still testing the waters of just how high a ceiling there is on our ability to destroy as the apex, coming from once being hunted and far from the top.
 
Last edited:
Bluebot

Bluebot

Member
Oct 25, 2017
646
Japan
I think about how we killed the other species of human. It would be wild if some other species had survived.
 
digitalrelic

digitalrelic

Weight Loss Champion 2018: Biggest Change
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
13,124
I mean... looking at a chimp vs the average human, the difference isn't huge.
 
KillLaCam

KillLaCam

Prophet of Truth
Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,416
Seoul
I thought they said dolphins did but they can't really use it. They probably aren't actually close though
 

introspective squid

Member
Jun 3, 2018
100
Cheesecakebobby

Cheesecakebobby

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,872
ascii42 said:
By killing off the rest of the Homo genus.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Probably not so simple, also out-competing them for resources etc. And some absorption as Europeans have some Neanderthal DNA and I think Denisovan DNA is found in some Asian populations?

I think its weirder to think that there was a time, not so long ago, that our species could bang those of another species and produce fertile offspring
 
Kinsei

Kinsei

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
20,724
We kinda made them extinct. Honestly we'd likely do the same today if another species started developing enough intelligence to be considered a threat to human society.
 
Titik

Titik

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,490
Yeah. It's also the most likely reason why we don't have any evidence of other alien life within a few million light years all round us.

We could likely be the only intelligent life capable of interstellar travel within that bubble.
 
Bronx-Man

Bronx-Man

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
15,351
It's so weird how dolphins are *just* intelligent enough to commit sexual assault and nothing else.
 
Powdered Egg

Powdered Egg

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
17,070
I bet if we could communicate with animals we would be surprised. There are white octopi in America's oceans, making less than five figure salaries, that wouldn't be dumb enough to vote for Trump once we informed them.
 
Shy

Shy

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
18,520
cb1237de3a070f1e6efd13aa90f59d35.jpg
 
Biske

Biske

Member
Nov 11, 2017
8,305
A lot of animals are a hell of a lot more intelligent than people realize or are willing to acknowledge.

Probably has most to do with the fact that we reached a point where we are indiscriminately killing other animals and fucking up their environment constantly, so any further leaps they could make are stopped by us driving them to extinction as we drive ourselves to the same.

Let these animals grow without humans fucking with them for a few hundred million years, who knows what they'd end up as.
 
Bobcat Fancy

Bobcat Fancy

Member
Jul 21, 2019
192
Animal intelligence is pretty impressive and it's interesting how many things animals can actually do, often better than humans. I recommend Frans de Waal's Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? to anyone curious.
 
Xeno

Xeno

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,891
Weren't there other competing species which had developed similar intelligence and our ancestors either killed them or cross bred with them eventually creating what we are now?
 

capitalCORN

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
10,436
Intelligence is hardly a linear measure. There's birds with spacial 'memories' that would shame us to pieces.
We happen to be a good mix of long forehead, touchy fingers, and oral geniuses.
 
zoku88

zoku88

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,025
It's not that weird when you consider all of the sacrifices humans make to in order to have this intelligence (and in order to be bipedal.) The brain is very power hungry, for one.
 
Arkanim94

Arkanim94

Member
Oct 27, 2017
14,348
We are the product of an incredible unlikely sequence of events, the fact that life as thrived on a rock in the universe is already a "beating the odds" moment.
 
Siggy-P

Siggy-P

Avenger
Mar 18, 2018
11,882
There is one actual main reason or theory of o why that humans got so smart.


Basically the idea is that larger social groups demanded and rewarded social intelligence which encouraged the evolution of smarter human ancestors. Links are found with larger brains evolving as the size of social groups and tribes increased.

This also leads a faster evolution as smarter human groups dominate over the less intelligent human groups, such as Neanderthals and all competing mates. The smarter humans killed more, ate more, built better shelter, worked together more and looked after babies more.

The downside to our intelligence is that human babies heads are so big and require so much energy consumption that they're essentially helpless at birth, but again, intelligence is so good that we can accommodate for our species that's a non-issue.
 
ascii42

ascii42

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,823
Cheesecakebobby said:
Probably not so simple, also out-competing them for resources etc. And some absorption as Europeans have some Neanderthal DNA and I think Denisovan DNA is found in some Asian populations?

I think its weirder to think that there was a time, not so long ago, that our species could bang those of another species and produce fertile offspring
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Right, killing off is a simplification. Not just directly killing, but indirectly as well: competing for resources like you said and possibly by spreading diseases.
Per this article, humans may have interbred with Denisovans as recently as 15,000 years ago: https://www.newscientist.com/articl...enisovans-much-more-recently-than-we-thought/
 
RedHeat

RedHeat

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,757
Nature prefers to keep things as "it just works", which often means raw brain power is sacrificed for other things like musculature or sharper teeth. It was by pure chance that Humanity found a way to cook their food to provide large sums of calories while being easier to digest.
 
Rand a. Thor

Rand a. Thor

Banned
Oct 31, 2017
10,213
Greece
Like said, we inadvertently made sure the other homo genus' stopped evolving by killing em, and after millions of years of interspecies breeding with the remainders of those species the Homo Sapien became the only of its kind. However while we are the only one, I kinda disagree that it took 4 billion years for sentient life to appear on Earth, there has to have been at some point some form of sentient life while the continents where still Pangaea that eventually died due to the extreme living conditions and other natural occurences. No way in hell that everything as is now and the last half million years or so is the result of 4 billion years of evolution, some sort of evolutionary reset button must have occured at some point.
 
Percival Sparkletrout

Percival Sparkletrout

Member
Oct 30, 2017
2,368
Pigs can play video games, dogs, apes, and elephants are capable of painting, and crows and octopus can use tools. Other animals are plenty smart, we just refuse to identify it as intelligence.
 
830920

830920

Member
Oct 29, 2017
773
A lot of it comes down to us developing advanced communication skills, allowing us to truly amass knowledge over generations.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.