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
Whales may actually be more intelligent than us.
The real game changer is to have arms.
Even if a whale is super intelligent it gonna have a hard time building an A-bomb.
I think a problem with your statement is the use of the word “advanced” when linked to intelligent life. To quote Douglas Adams:
“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much — the wheel, New York, wars and so on — whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man — for precisely the same reasons.”
Timebinding – the ability to record species history over many species lifetimes, accumulating data on what previous species lives had learned. Most species on Earth now are in fight/flight mode based on pre-programmed trust/distrust logic from when they’re young. If you take away the pressure to survive, they may grow past the basic survival logic gates like us.
I feel like many are going to point to our thumbs or ability to run or walk upright, but we are the sum of our information. Imagine if the internet was suddenly up and gone tomorrow, along with all the information it contained. We would still survive, but not in the comfort we’ve grown into today. GPS might become paper maps again, people would revert back to store and local markets, Blockbuster might be a thing again, no more music on your phone, you get the idea. On top of that I can learn pretty much ANYTHING I wanna learn nowadays online. Physics, chemistry, computer science, mathematics, it’s all online now. Anything you want to do you can learn with a computer and an internet connection.
If this was the 1900’s for example, and you showed an average 1900’s man the internet and how you can type in any question and have it answered, it would be straight up mysticism to them. It wasn’t that long ago you needed actual books on topics you wanted to learn.
A big one would be agriculture allowing beings to stay in one spot and not spend energy hunting food, regardless of whether it’s cooked or not, was a game changer for humanity. If pods of dolphins could stay in one spot and spend energy on developing technologies, I’d be afraid lol.
I think the 2 biggest factors are:
a) having hands. Underwater creatures never got hands because they evolved to adapt to underwater environment. Without hands, tools become a luxury.
b) fire.
Maybe dolphins have a way of communicating so much more advanced than us, we cannot even perceive it.
The whole non-human animal intelligence debate falls on the premise that what we call intelligence is a human characteristic, based on humans doing human stuff. We cannot understand what other animals are doing, besides comparing to what we know we do. We measure success, being intelligent, being advanced… by how much non-human animals are like us.
Every single living species now is an “advanced” life form. Imagine a galapagos tortoise: it lives longer than us with no medicine technology, carries an armour to protect itself from predation, eats, reproduces… we don’t know what it thinks, because we cannot communicate with it. It lives, as well as we do.
The purpose of life, as we humans are just an iteration of it, is to reproduce. We managed that quite well, getting to 7 billion. But life really does not care about “advancement” like we do. Which is why humans slowly descend into death a little bit after their peak reproductive age. We managed to stall that, but far from perfectly. How is that “so advanced”?
Life on land can make fire which allows for the cooking of proteins which in turn contribute to the development of higher brain function. Fire also allows for the smelting of metals which contributes to the advancement of technology.
On the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.
– Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”
Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide…
Maybe it did. We haven’t been down there much. They may have fish people, cities and tech. Maybe that’s what ufos are.
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