Weird question, but how does intelligence increase as a species? How did homo sapiens get so far ahead. and what would it take for another species to come anywhere close to what humans have done, simian or otherwise?
Natural selection. Intelligence is adaptive, at least for us. More specifically, it’s thought that increased intelligence allowed our ancestors to get really good at working as a group. However, I think the whole “why are we soooo much smarter than everyone else” thing is at least partially due to a lack of perspective. We only have ourselves to judge everything else by. If some alien species dropped by that was vastly more intelligent than ourselves, we may suddenly realize that we’re not as far from our mammalian cousins as we thought. That’s just my opinion, of course.
To get started, these are a few but not all of the things that worked with us:
More efficient metabolism. Your brain is hungry for oxygen and glucose.
Folding of the brain into gyri and sulci to fit more surface area into a smaller volume skull.
Increased neoteny - self sufficient only starting in the early teens, no dropping out of the womb and instantly fending for yourself. This is to keep the brain small initially.
Brain starts small because the mother needs to give birth to you without being harmed herself. Change in hip size, perhaps relating to upright posture.
Of course take every evolutionary theory with a grain of salt.
I meant relative to other species on Earth. Not what it is about humans specifically, but what environmental conditions facilitated it. So basically, humans needed to be smarter than other species in order to survive with whatever resources we had available?
We have always had what it takes to survive, otherwise we wouldn’t.
Well, more accurately, humans who were smarter survived long enough to reproduce more, thus their children tended to be smarter, … repeat for generations.
I’ve wondered the same thing before. I mean, OK we are by far the dominant species on the planet, but loads of other mammals have been doing just fine for aeons without evolving anything like our levels of intelligence. In fact, from a slightly pessimistic/realistic viewpoint, less intelligent animals may do considerably better in the long run, as humans are now “intelligent” enough to pretty comprehensively wipe themselves out.
Leaving the trees to walk the savannah with little in the way of tooth, claw, or fleetness. Wits and inventiveness became required. The smarter homonids fared better. So I’d say a move into a hostile environment in which the animal is physically outmatched, too big to hole up, and possesses some cleverness. That plus a supply of meat (scavenged) and thumbs.
Evolving greater intelligence has been going on ever since multi-celled organisms came along. The dinosaurs were evolving bigger and bigger brains before they got wiped out. Mammals have been doing this as well, for as long as we’ve been dominant.
The reasons that tropical creatures, generically-speaking, got there first is that
-
mutations happen faster in warm climates
-
Reproduction is not as demanding in warm climates, because the body doesn’t need as much extra energy to heat itself.
-
Warm climates (perhaps, not an ecologist, just bullshitting) are often more forgiving of odd/extreme mutations, because the pressures of lack of food and cold weather are not as severe.
The reason that primates, specifically, got there first is due to the fact that hands with opposable thumbs and agile, strong fingers require a lot of brainpower, relatively, to use well. Primates needed big brains to use their hands well, and therefore got out ahead of the rest of the mammals in the “race to bigger brains”.
I’m not an ecologist or evolutionary biologist, but I believe all this is more or less sound.
Sometimes I wonder what the success rate is for intelligent species, broadly-speaking, across the universe. How many kill themselves off with weapons of mass destruction when they are in the in-between phase between developing nukes and developing world peace?
20%? 30%? I just wonder sometimes.
Absolutely zero percent.
Based on evidence from the only citeable example we have so far.
Right, but that information is largely useless without the fact that we have come pretty goddamn close more than once.
And that’s probably not even as close as we got during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
All it would have taken was an unfortunate misunderstanding at a time like that to end us all.
We’re not out of the woods, yet, either. Terrorism still looms as a possibility, both nuclear and bioterrorism.
Not sure human beings would have been completed wiped out even in that scenario…
Agreed, even if blasts, fallout, radiation sickness, and nuclear winter killed 99% of the world population in 1962 – which is not AT ALL assured – you’d still have thirty-one million three hundred thousand people left. That’s not even close to a population bottleneck. It’s four million more people than Earth likely had in 2000 BC, and we were in no risk of extinction then.
As far as human brain development goes, the answer is better fuel, that is, protein. Meat. Fat.
Simple tools allowed for the harvesting of protein, at first from scavenged carcasses and marrow from bones that the new tools gave access to. Later from hunting.
How do other big-brained critters fit into this? I’m thinking specifically about dolphins, as their brains are not just big, but big proportional to their body (elephants have big brains too, but that’s because they’re frickin’ big animals).
Well, it could be echo-location and the elaborate social structures they have.
But this is all speculation.
As far as dolphins, there are a number of theories about their brain size, including their need for echolocation, their complex social structures, and the fact their their brains have a large amount of glial cells, which produce heat, and don’t necessarily add much to intelligence. The jury’s still out, though, as far as I know.
I don’t buy it. Brains have been getting steadily bigger for hundreds of millions of years. Primates were already getting large brains prior to large-scale hunting/scavenging.
True nuclear winter would kill everybody, hard. Unless you had an underground bunker that could filter out all radiation and provide you with food and fuel for years to come, you’d be screwed.