How did intelligent life got so advanced on land (humans) than in the oceans considering how the ocean is the greater part of the world and has much more diversity in it?
In: Biology
There’s life in the ocean that’s at least as intelligent as the other intelligent non-human life on land. Dolphins and whales in particular are very intelligent, as are many species of octopi. As far as humans, we’re kind of an anomaly, and our vast social and technological achievements are largely possible because of 3 unique traits – 1) dexterity: by walking upright we free up our hands with opposable thumbs to fashion a myriad of tools and carry them with us when hunting and traveling; 2) language, enabling us to communicate arbitrary abstract concepts and allowing for the most flexible and adaptable collaboration in the animal kingdom, and 3) writing, allowing us to use text as a kind of “artificial memory”, enabling us to accumulate more knowledge than we can remember in our brains, and to communicate that knowledge from generation to generation without relying on it being orally passed down like a game of telephone.
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