Indeed, intelligence may be an evolutionary dead end. One possible explanation for the surprising lack of intelligent aliens in the galaxy is that all species that have evolved sufficient intelligence to develop advanced technology have destroyed themselves.
We are obviously much smarter than we need to be to find food, defend ourselves from predators, etc. Personally, I think it’s to be able to compete with other humans. Human intelligence is an example of runaway selection due to intra-species selection (or perhaps with other hominin lineages). Just like the tail of the peacock or the antlers of Irish Elk, it’s due to having to be better than other members of our own species, not to deal with external factors.
Cats are actually not terribly intelligent as compared to dogs.
They give what people see as a visible illusion of being more intelligent, but that is simply their nature, it is how cats act.
Dogs on the other hand are perfectly happy to appear outwardly retarded at times.
But again, it’s an outward appearance and not a true indication of their intelligence.
Dogs are pretty damn smart as compared to most animals. Sure, humans are smarter, but I can think of a thousand species that have far less going on upstairs. It doesn’t take a lot of smarts to be a beetle or an earthworm.
You named a dog, Fisher? That could be the problem right there.
My impression is that the smartest dogs are pretty impressively smart; but not all dogs are as smart as the smartest ones.
Given that there’s noticeable variation among human beings in how smart/dumb they are, why wouldn’t the same be true for dogs or other species?
A large element of that may be the management of relationships in a complex cooperative society. One of the best descriptions of our evolutionary niche is that we are by far the most effective cooperators for mutual benefit that the world has ever seen. From hunting in groups to defeat much larger prey, to organized agriculture, to complex societies in which the productive output of communal activity is vastly greater that the sum of its parts. But most of our cooperation (outside the family group) is not dictated by the hardwired genetic imperative of Hymenoptera societies. Most of the people that we cooperate with are not close kin. Effective cooperation for mutual benefit therefore requires constant social vigilance, careful monitoring of others to assess theie behavior and sincerity, to judge if they are pulling their weight and contributing to the group effort, to police for freeloaders and cheats; and to convince others that we ourselves are actively contributing to the societal group effort. It may be that management of these social interactions has required sophisticated intelligence just as much as tasks like technological problem-solving.
Well, I guess we do have smart animals. 
Not necessarily.
Heh. How about if we all tried the plate thing, and all of our dogs found ways to stop the plate slide problem. Maybe Fisher is not representative of all dog intelligence. Somebody has to be way out on the tail of the curve.
Maybe the OP’s dog IS very smart. He’s allowing the plate to move to give him a sense of the satisfaction that his wild brethren feel when they chase down and kill their own prey. Perhaps a form of canine masturbation similar to how humans shoot birds that can’t fly at close range.
When I unscrew the lid of the catnip container and put it down, Tikva starts licking it. And when it slides away, she puts her paw on it.
Though in all fairness, I should probably mention that she doesn’t paw it preemptively. So if she’s high up somewhere and the lid is right near the edge, she’ll knock it off and then wonder where it went.
My dog literally jumps over a very short fence on my front yard all the time and 50% of the time he’ll accidentally scratch his back legs or stomach jumping over it and will welp, but still constantly jumps over the fence to get across the yard faster. Quickly we just stopped letting him in the front yard because he kept injuring himself.
My sister’s dog is a dickhead. She routinely sends him over by my mothers for a “time out” when he misbehaves. This one performed a mystery the other day. There is a cable router sitting on a small stool in a back room (best wi-fi coverage from the spot) and he somehow took a dump on top of the router. This dog is a terrier mutt, so their acrobatic tendency being a given, I understand, but why a router? I think it’s just because he’s a moron and an a**hole. There is no other reason, the door for the dog is always open. Some animals are just stupider than the rest, or vindictive. I don’t know of any other dog to do something so pointless and stupid. Some just cannot be helped.
Some can adapt to new things, my sisters other dog gladly puts a paw on plates to stop them from moving, some are just unwilling to learn, hence “can’t teach an old dog new tricks”.
Dogs, like wolves, mark their territories not just with urine but also with their droppings. The dog was neither stupid nor vindictive. He was simply staking out the router as being part of his domain. This illustrates the pitfalls of trying to interpret animal behavior in terms of what makes sense to humans.
Perhaps he was making a statement about the potential consequences if Net Neutrality is lost.
Very fair! I anthropomorphize a lot with animals.
Net Neutrality lost = shitting on the internet.
Perfect!
LOL
re: OP’s question-
Hmm…I wonder what higher lifeforms are saying this about us?
Your dog was smart enough to get you to put your plate on the floor for him! My dogs will use their paw to hold the plate still . Dogs are a lot smarter than you think , they have gotten people to feed them , keep them in their homes and sometime even sleep in bed with them . Now that is pretty smart to me ! My hearing dog was very smart , when I would lose my balance my dog would stop walking and look down at my feet when he saw I was ok and regained my balance he would start walking again. He was not trained to do this he did this on his own.
One thing true about my little guy, he slept with me for the past 12 years.