What’s stopping other animals from reaching our level of intelligence where we have the ability to create technology?
In: Biology
One major factor is that other animals don’t cook their food. Cooking food provides access to much more nutrients. Cooking breaks down fibers and chemically changes the food so that we can better break it down. Of course, our bodies have also gone through some changes to better process cooked food but I won’t talk about that. Having a better access to nutrients allows for our brains to develop. Brains are very costly in terms of energy and resources. Our brains weigh ~2% of our entire body mass but they use ~20% of our energy.
Intelligence is one of many factors that are selected for not just in us but in other animals. We just happened to have the right circumstances and pressure to develop our intelligence so greatly. There are of course more philosophical or neuroethological questions of intelligence but I think those go outside the scope of this question.
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