Sentient Animals

Factual Questions
1

We’ve all read or heard of stories wherein man is somehow wiped out, leaving only the animals to “be fruitful and multiply”. My question is, are there any animals with the potential to become sentient in the same way that man is, or was it a once-in-a-million series of conditions that caused man to come about? (If you don’t buy evolution, that’s ok, I’m not trying to offend :)).

If this is too subjective, I’d be satisfied with a comparative list of animal intelligence. For example, which are smarter: dogs or octopi?

2

Well, I buy evolution. I don’t think sentience results from a unique series of conditions because I don’t know of any unique series of conditions that Homo Sapiens faced during evolution. The only thing that might prevent other animals from developing it is that humans are using more and more of the planet’s resources. Humans developed intelligence first and it might get to the point where the only habitat left is what humans can’t use, or willingly set aside as wildlife preserves.

You might need to define sentience. Personally, I think that our thought processes differ from other primates only by having more levels of abstraction. I think it’s more a matter of degree (of consciousness) than any quality that only humans have.

I’m not sure this question can be answered objectively. It might be more of a debate than a general question.

3

Well, conceivably, any animal species has the capability to become sentient…or at least, their descendants would. By that time evolution might have crafted them into something completely unrecognizable. There isn’t anything “Special” about humans developing sentience, nor is sentience the set end product of evolution. Just whatever adaptations an animal species develops to survive and prosper in it’s environment. Just as the most successful adaptations near an undersea vent are “tube worms” and assorted creatures (Each in their own ecological niches-Predator, Prey, Scavenger, etc.), it seems on land that the most successful form of life in our particular niche is an intelligent omnivorous biped. “We” could just as easily “ended up” as slow-witted quadrupeds, if environmental conditions had been different enough.

That being said, I’ll get back to the question you actually asked. :wink: As for which one of the non-human species currently living on this planet has the best chance of evolving sentience (Or, more accurately, a species evolving FROM an animal species currently living on this planet) without humanity around, it’s hard to say. It would depend on conditions. Apes are closer in intelligence to humans than, say, bees. But that wouldn’t mean that apes WOULD evolve intelligence before bees. If the apes doing pretty well as a species, they might not change much for an indefinite period of time. For example, look at Sharks and Alligators…They’ve been around since the time of the dinosaurs, but they haven’t really changed much. They just don’t need to.

So in your hypothetical post-apocalyptic world, there’s no telling when sentient life might evolve again. It might be 10,000 years, it might be 10,000,000 years. Or it might never evolve again. There’s no way to tell.

So, how’d I do?

Ranchoth
P.S. According to my “Handy Science Answer Book,” they most intelligent animals after humans are (In order):

  1. Chimpanzee (Two species)
  2. Gorilla
  3. Orangutan
  4. Baboon (Seven species, including drill and mandrill)
  5. Gibbon (Seven species)
  6. Monkey (Many species, especially macaques, the patas, and the Celebes black ape)
  7. Smaller toothed whale (Several species, especially killer whales)
  8. Dolphin (Many of the approx. 80 species)
  9. Elephant (Two species)
  10. Pig

And, as I remember, Octopi would probably be at around 11 or 12. Followed by dogs. (And intelligence varies within dog breeds, as well. Compare a Golden Retreiver with an Afgan hound, and see for yourself)

4

Nice post, Ranchoth. I’m wondering whether you agree with the citation from “Handy Science Answer Book”?

I have personal favorites, but it occurs that the animals most likely to succeed are those which have been making the most rapid evolutionary progress. I’ve no idea which this is.

But animals who can learn from higher animals are particularly important if the OP is interpreted as meaning “who’s next in evolutionary line behind humans?” If the subject is which animal will become intelligent next, given mankind’s influence, it’s a different ball game. I’d vote for parrots or chimps.

5

Didn’t the “Planet of the Apes” series definitively conclude the answer to this question? :slight_smile:

6

Rancloth. I think you need to move Toothed Whales and Dolphins up right behind Orangutan. Humans (duh!) and positions 1 through 3 and dolphins have all passed the so called ‘spot test’ proving not only sentience but self awareness, while as all other animals have failed. Toothed whales haven’t passed the test, but it is pretty much agreed that they would if we bothered to take our time and let them.

The test, for those interested, is to paint a spot on the face of an animal and show them a mirror. In most cases nothing happens. Monkeys, dogs elephants, or animals on same such level try to take away the spot on the face of the mirrored image. The next step is to understand that it is ‘me’ that I see and proceed to eliminate the spot on oneself. It took a while to get dolphins to do it, because the test was somewhat skewed to animals with limbs, they changed the test a little without altering the premises and presto.

Cogito ergo sum.

Sparc

7

Forgot my cite, sorry.

Here’s the research note on the dolphin test, at the end there is a comparisson to how the dolphins performed in comparisson to primates.

Sparc

8

Er . . . all of them. Or, conversely, none of them. There is no such thing as “evolutionary progress.” Evolution doesn’t have a goal, as such, towards which organisms aspire, with “human-like intelligence” being the end they need to achieve. All evolution “asks” of any organism is that it is fit enough, in its environment, to survive long enough to reproduce.

Evolution is not a ladder; it is a bush. All of the creatures on Ranchoth’s list have existed for as long as humans, and in most cases longer. They are already fit for their environments. There is no biological need for them to “evolve more” or “become more advanced,” or any such nonsense. (This kind of stuff is really Star Trek’s fault.)

Nothing that humans can do to any of these animals will cause them to “become intelligent next” in any reasonable sense. For one thing, they are already intelligent, as intelligent as nature requires for them to survive in their environment. For another, evolution works on individuals, not on populations.

9

The OP is asking for extrapolations off a base of one. You really can’t do in any meaningful way. With just one example to study you have no way of knowing whether it was inevitable or a fluke, whether it would reproduce under similar conditions or whether the original conditions were unique.

If we ever found another sentient species then at least we could study the commonalities and project from there. But as long as humans are the only intelligent life form we’re aware of, any prediction is as meaningful as any other. Which is the same thing as saying that none of them are meaningful.

Of course, that’s what makes it fun for science ficiton writers.

10

Terence McKenna argues (contentiously), in his book “Food of the Gods” that human consciousness ‘happened’ due to the consumption of psychedelic foodstuffs like magic mushrooms and other naturally occurring plants. If correct, this jump to consciousness could also ‘happen’ to any creature who could find access to such plants and be clever / stupid enough to consume them continually for a long period of time.

11

Besides any and all other comments that could be made on this, isn’t it a bit Lamarckian to say that even if one person gained consciousness this way, it could be passed to his or her children?

12

McKenna’s book seems to be - and probably is - a LaMarckian truffle.

One roundabout defense: the effect of tool use on evolution. Take a population of critters. Any critters will do, but for best results include opposable thumbs. When tools are introduced into the population, a new selective pressure is also introduced.

Some of the critters figure out how to use tools. A few other critters are able to learn by watching. Most can’t. They’re $0.02 short on the brain power. Or the needed dexterity. Or the ability to stand, as if bipedal, for a long enough time.

The critters who can use tools more effectively will reproduce more than those critters who use tools less effectively. Maybe in a revenge-of-the-nerds type scenario, they will tend to kill the ones who don’t use tools as well.
A little extra smarts, a little less clumsiness, and standing up straight become more important - not because of any “natural” conditions, but because of technology.

Can this be applied to psiloycibin as well? McKenna proposes that shroom juice facilitates communication. I think I recall him saying that psilocybin promoted brain growth at an individual level, and that this brain growth is passed on (like I said, paging Dr. LaMarck).

But what if psilocybin did facilitate certain kinds of learning in some - but not all - members of a population? If it helped all the critters develop language and other “magics,” without any discrimination, there’d be no great pressure to communicate well. No survival advantage if all critters are created equal. But shroom use - or anything else, for that matter - put a wedge between critters that could communicate better and critters that didn’t communicate so well… If we accept the hypothesis that language is closely related to sentience, we can cobble together a shoestring, untestable theory.

I for one think that mushroom use is at very best a byproduct. Some communities were in situations where there were a lot of “useful” plants, including good old p. cubensis. The more purely intellectual faculties that would allow good use of mother nature’s medicine cabinet would be a distinct advantage, methinks. Possibly a distinction where sentience-related skills are an advantage. But the difference between pre-civs that used shrooms, specifically, and pre-civs that didn’t? Zero, I’d think.

13

quote:

. . . it occurs that the animals most likely to succeed are those which have been making the most rapid evolutionary progress. I’ve no idea which this is.

I’m following the lines of the OP, which is to ask which animal would get to human sentience first. I read the OP as “Which animal, assuming the standard evolutionary process, would end up being human first?”

Equally, I agree becoming human isn’t the “goal” of evolution. Evolution is just a series of permutations, each of which is well-suited to survive in a certain situation.

Animals have done very well without us, and for the moment, they’ve as much intelligence as they need to stay alife.

But at least three new factors have been introduced:

  1. Any animal that can make use of the physical resources provided humans has a huge advantage over other animals in a similar niche. Humans are changing what’s viable. Various bears are endangered because they don’t make good house pets, because they don’t play by our rules. No free “bear yummies” for them.

  2. Humans have created a world that’s so complex intelligence is more of a survival skill than it was 300 years ago. Birds that can’t figure how to avoid glass windows are dead birds. Cats who can’t predict the behavior of moving cars soon become dead cats.

  3. Humans have a great need to “help” their animal friends. Intelligent behavior is highly rewarded. Parrot owners invest considerable energy getting their birds to speak. Dogs that can do many tricks are the pride of their owners. Chimps who appear to use language are well-fed and protected. Stupid animals are more likely to get sent to the pound.

14

I would strenuously argue point 2, and I have some reservations about point 3. I would argue that the vast majority of birds in the world, individuals and species, never have enough contact with glass windows, or lit up cities during night migrations, for such things to ever have much of an affect on their numbers. Keep in mind most vertebrate species are found in such places as rain forests. Humans exert much more influence on bird numbers through such things as habitat destruction, and in general no amount of “bird brains” is going to allow a species that evolved to live in the Amazon learn how to beg crumbs from little old ladies in the park. I would guess the same is true for most other vertebrate species (mammals, reptiles) as well. To the extent that the human race influences them at all, intelligence as such is not a big help to them.

As for point 3, I would argue that would only be true of species that are more common in captivity than in the wild. At the moment, that would be dogs and cats, but not chimps or parrots. And even many chimps in captivity are not required to do tricks. And I would think we are not so much selecting for smarter dogs as more obedient, compliant ones.

15

Rats and mice.

16

One word: Catnip. We’re not the only species which uses mind-altering substances.

17

The hypertrophied intelligence of humans is in all probability not an adaptation to dealing with the physical environment. After all, animals with vastly lower intelligence do just fine surviving and prospering while dealing with harsh weather, finding food, migrating over vast distances, etc.

Instead, human intelligence most likely developed due to the demands of dealing with other humans in social situations. Kin selection, and above all reciprocal altruism with unrelated individuals, may have played a big part. Humans that were able to detect the motivations of other humans; that were able to conceal their own motivations; and that were able to detect attempts to lie or cheat and not reciprocate were at a vast advantage in early human social groups. The evolution of human intelligence can be seen as a run-away “arms race” in competition with other humans. Human intelligence is a character like the enormous antlers of the Irish Elk or the elaborate tail of a Bird-of-Paradise, that evolved in response to intraspecies competion. Unlike the latter, however, human intelligence has other benefits as well: although not necessary for survivial with respect to the environment, once evolved it permitted humans to dominate.

With respect to this, I would expect that sentience is most likely to develop in highly social species where reciprocal altruism can be very important: dolphins, wild dogs, chimps.

18

Personally, I would put parrots and ravens somewhere on that list (above octopi and dogs), but intelligence is such a vague concept that any orderings are basically opinions anyway.

If humans were wiped out, I think that another species would reach a level of intelligence equivalent to that of humans (if they haven’t already), but I doubt they would be intelligent in the same way that humans are (they might not use language, be social, use tools, or any other of the ways we consider ourselves intelligent).

19

Laughing Lagomorph, the impact of habitat destruction is mostly negative: there’s little an animal can learn from coming home to discover his nest is destroyed, but animals that can learn to eat out of trash cans without pissing off people have a big advantage: birds and cats do well, dogs and racoons less so, and bears make a total mess of it.

I agree we aren’t affecting animals in the wild to any great degree, but that’s a matter of 100-200 years passing more than anything. Once mankind’s devices are everywhere (say nano-bots, robots, and biologically altered species) intelligence will be very important for any animal that otherwise would “be in our way”.

Going back to the OP, it’s isn’t only one-in-a-million chances that produce genetic progress. It’s true that some changes are due (as far as we know) to one, small alteration in a specific gene, but that only affects certain kinds of things (eye color, hair color), others, such as intelligence, are controlled by any number of genes in any number of combinations. One can have a great memory without being able to reason well; one can be able to calculate like a machine without being able to write a great novel. Qualities of intelligence are attained by quite different combinations of genes.

Exposure to drugs such as psilocybin and catnip would not play any part in fostering intelligence in animals (as, I would argue, it does not in humans). There are three problems: most drugs hamper intelligence in some way, effects of drugs are usually limited to a brief period, and the very few “lessons” learned while taking drugs don’t transfer well to the non-drugged state. LSD might let you smell sounds, but afterwards you can’t do it at will.

Among higher-order animals who are most likely to advance with humans around it’s probably a combination of those with good social skills and altruism, along with those who want to become more intelligent. Anyone who’s watched a dog avidly trying to understand words knows this feeling that dogs are sometimes really frustrated with not being able to “get it”. The key is wanting to learn, whether that’s driven by a person, others of the same species, or competing species.

20

It seems like you are saying that different species can be ranked by intelligence based on the amount of mess they make eating out of trash cans: birds and cats are smarter than dogs and racoons, which are in turn smarter than bears. This is obviously not true. You’ve really just ranked them by size…birds being smaller than bears naturally make less mess, and so are tolerated more. I don’t think any birds out there think “Gee, I better not make a mess here, or the humans are going to wipe out my species”. Have you ever seen a full plastic trash bag after a bunch of crows get through with it?

Or, to look at it another way, would you say coyotes, which are hugely succesful living around humans these days, are smarter than wolves, a closely related animal that has been exterminated from much of its former range? I submit the coyotes are more succesful not because they are smarter, but because they happen to posses several adaptations that allow them to persist around humans…they are smaller and less conspicuous, they are more likely to hunt alone than in packs, and apparently are able to subsist on a wider variety of food, including trash. You can do a similar comparison with crows (succesful) and ravens (less so).

As for nanobots and artificial life forms taking over the world, well, I like science fiction too, but I am not holding my breath waiting for such things. I’ll believe it when I see it.