I was wondering about alien life, and it got me thinking that on earth have 5-10 creatures that show signs of intelligence that at least seem likely to “progress” as a civilization if they just had better organs for tool use. Theyve been with us for long time but only we progressed, and while we share a lot with apes, they havent even if they have same organs for tool use. Are Apes dumber than crows, orcas, octopi etc.? Or was human intelligence (before we got to civilization levell) really unique and that different than other animals?
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I’m not an evolutionary biologist by any means, but I always figured complex language is the biggest difference between humans and other intelligent species. Some dolphin genius could figure out the secret to life and it wouldn’t matter if they got eaten by a shark before they could find a way to tell other dolphins.
That said, we do know other intelligent animals do have language, maybe it’s suitably complex and we just don’t understand it. But none of them have a written language, which seems like would be a big factor in making sure any innovations are carried on into the next generations.
That is one of the reasons why there have been many studies trying to teach apes language, to see if they are perhaps as intelligent as us but just need to be taught. But while there has been success in teaching apes sign language, and spoken language to parrots, they never seem to progress much past the skills of human toddler, and that’s with a lot of effort.
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