Evolutionary Response and Animal Intelligence in the 21st Century (this is long)

Great Debates
1

OK everyone, think back to 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arther C.Clark…For those of you who have never seen it picture this little scenerio:

There is a world, our world, Earth. And there are a bunch of Apes in a small band living in what we would call the badlands. Deserted and barren. This group of Apes does have the ability to stand fairly upright for brief periods of time. However, they seem to be quite opportunistic organisms and they live what appears to be a gathering lifestyle.

One day, they wake up to find a monolith, a huge pillar standing right next to their little dwelling when they awake in the morning. The pillar is perfectly rectangular, jet black and standing verticle in the sand next to their little dwelling.

The apes have never seen anything like this EVER… They have never seen straight lines, right angles, completely smooth surfaces. Nothing like this has ever been seen by these beasts. They show an initial fear to the object, but more and more they approach it and look at it, study it, yell at it, and communicate to each other in their primitive talk. Finally, one grows the courage to touch it. This beast extends its hairy arm and touches the smoooth surface of the pillar. Immediately the energy of the group changes, they all begin to vocalize and all of them begin posturing and ranting, creating quite a din.

The pillar may have produced some sort of evolutionary response in the group, because they start to wander around their desolate plain. They come across some bones. One of the beasts picks up one of the bones and inspects it. ‘He’ looks at the bone as if he had never seen one before. He soon takes the bone and holds it like an ax and smashes it down on a pile of other bones. As he watches the resulting impact and destruction of what he has hit, it dawns on him…That this is one of the first tools. This is a utensil, a weapon, an aide etc…etc…

I won’t go into to much more detail, your imagination can take over from there…But my question comes in right now.

Now in the 21st century, animals have ‘seen’ structures like this, tall buildings, straight lines, smooth surfaces, geometry…Animals have seen these since humans have been building. Is it possible that animals are smarter now in the 21st century than say 5 thousand years ago. Or have animals on a whole remained the same. Have primates got smarter?? Has adaptation really just wandered around human existence, or has it merged with it in some sense. Could animals really be more intelligent now as a direct result of humans and our technologies??

What do the teeming millions think??

2

I think you missed the point of the monolith. It was big black rectangular slab that was clearly artificial, but just that alone did not make the proto-humans more intelligent. Rather it did - something - to those apes that made them smarter. (If you read the book, you’ll see that the monolith actually performs experiments on the apes.) This also occurs at the end of the film, where David Bowman travels inside another monolith and is transformed into the Starchild.

3

I kind of doubt that effect has happened …

In the book “2001”, it’s clear that the monolith does not produce “some sort of evolutionary response in the group”. It is, instead, a teaching machine that acts directly on the brains of the group. The form of the artifact isn’t significant except insofar as it makes great theater. The apes learned, but only because they had evolved to a point where they were ready to learn. This is strongly suggested in the movie by the last few scenes when Dave encounters another monolith in the outer Solar system, although the very last scene could go either way.

I surmise that Kubrick and Clark did it that way because there’s some possibility that such direct brain interaction might be possible, whereas our current knowledge of evolution (much more complete than our knowledge of how the brain works!) strongly suggests that there is no such thing as an “evolutionary response” in particular organisms. If the environment changes in some way that favors some particular variation that exists (or comes to exist through random processes) in a group of organisms, then that variation will tend to propagate to the descendants so the overall group (population) changes over generations. Basically, individuals don’t evolve.

So it’s possible that various animals have evolved to a point where they’re ready to learn but, if they have, they’re only going to learn by long-term trial and error or if someone tries to teach them. The presence or absence of manufactured structures might aid trail and error learning. I’m not aware of any evidence for it.

4

Interesting. For starters, animals are not necessarily smarter. While some amount of time is required to reach a level of complexity that allows advanced thought, adaptation does not always mean bigger, faster, smarter. Rather organisms will adapt to their environment in any number of ways, increased intelligence being one viable strategy that is made available given enough time to develop the brain capacity necessary.

As to whether man’s effect on the environment will alter the course of evolution of other animals: of course. We change the environment, and everyone must adapt accordingly (in due time). Does this mean that animals will look upon our technology and make some Lamarkian effort to increase intelligence? No, they will each adapt in their own way.

5

I second Waverly’s post, but I want to add something.

High intelligence is not necesarily selected for in evolution. Brains require massive amounts of energy. In most species, nature has selected their brains to give them the minimum amount of thought power required for their niche in the environment. Anything more would require excess energy, greater need for food, etc. Hence, there is no need to fear superintelligent rats taking over New York City in 2057. Their little rodent brains are doing just fine as it is.

6

This makes me thing of Starship Troopers, the book or the movie, though I think the movie makes this particular point better than the book. Intelligence is not necessarily an evolutionary advantage.

7

I would agree with this. Inteligence is an advantage if it actually helps an organism survive. However, “braininess” in, say, leeches wouldn’t really benefit them; their existence is largely “latch and suck”, and having a big brain doesn’t exactly improve their odds of survival.
Many animals may have learned a few things as a result of man (the two most likely prospects being “man is bad, so stay away,” or “man is good and will provide food.”), but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that indicates an increase in intelligence; the capacity to learn was likely there all along.