I wouldn’t be surprised if many animals are smarter on average than humans are on average. I think that the only thing we really have on all other animals we know about is a developed system of writing.
This doesn't really make any sense. I realize it's fun to have opposite opinions of the majority on the internet but animals don't make complex tools, they don't have the ability for substantial transfer of information from generation to generation, and the complexity of communication in even the cleverest animals is very low compared to human language.
I'd be really surprised to learn there was a single lifeform on earth with anything approaching human level intelligence.
> they don't have the ability for substantial transfer of information from generation to generation
They have to do so vocally. Technology development doesn't necessarily correlate, positively or negatively, with intelligence. Orcas and whales at large are highly limited by their appendages and environments in terms of technology development.
> complexity of communication in even the cleverest animals is very low compared to human language
Are you able to understand orca what orcas "say"? That seems to be a very strong statement when we know quite little about what they're able to communicate. Furthermore, whales having echolocation have built-in transmitters and receivers that are in addition to their normal vocalizations and hearing. It seems weird to make claims about how they experience the world given no one really knows. But we can surmise the possibility based upon scientific facts.
> I'd be really surprised to learn there was a single lifeform on earth with anything approaching human level intelligence.
If you put a human brain in an orca body (accepting the hypothetical), what could that brain do in that body and environment? Very little with regards to technology development (writing, tool use, etc.).
>Dolphins, which obviously include orcas, actually have more complex brains than ours
And this:
>>complexity of communication in even the cleverest animals is very low compared to human language
>Are you able to understand orca what orcas "say"? That seems to be a very strong statement when we know quite little about what they're able to communicate.
Are you able to understand what orcas "think"?
This is a good book to take a look at: https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Thinkers-Inside-Dolphins-Porpois...
> Are you able to understand what orcas "think"?
No I do not, but one can surmise from the scientific study of them and behavioral observations. My point about them making a strong statement is that it isn't backed up by anything except a human-centric bias of intelligence.
And the person I replied to make an incredibly strong claim:
> complexity of communication in even the cleverest animals is very low compared to human language
That needs backing up. In the event that there is no backup, which I don't believe there is, then we have to leave possibility open, possibility that's informed by scientific and behavioral studies.
Right, we have writing. They do pass information on in the form of habits, hunting or otherwise. It took humans a long time (many many generations) to collectively have the concept of the number 0. The things we have figured out and spend years passing on in school are hard-won and written down. The few humans who do figure out fundamentally new concepts often interact through written collections.
How about math? There are other species that understand addition and subtraction, I think, but none that can do multiplication or division.
Our species also knows how to make glass and refined metals and styrofoam and various concrete/mortar/brick formations. I doubt that anyone is an expert in all of the above and that most people in the developed world can only hope to obtain these things by going out and purchasing it from a store.
Furthermore, putting a bunch of intelligent but completely uneducated humans on an island is unlikely to result in a colony that understands multiplication and division in the next 100 or maybe even 1000 years.
Once humans are put into that setting (zero education), we are no longer comfortably at the top of the food-chain.
The ability to store information is a big technological leap. Even then, it's taken us as a species 5,000 years to get here once we had writing.
Also, humans were comfortably at the top for the food chain even before we needed arithmetic or writing.
(Arguably, we started to need arithmetic and writing because we ate all the animals.)
Definitely, except for lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, cougars, anacondas, pythons, sharks, crocodiles, alligators, bears, wolves, hyenas, coyotes, boars and ants, all of which have hunted humans and have maneaters among their ranks.
Humans were never apex predators... there was always something else that ate them, and though it is less often nowadays, it still happens.
Whatever virtue humans have as a species, it has nothing to do with being able to kill everything. I would call that an indulgence, not a virtue. Today, being able to kill something contributes nothing to survival. Compare effective hunting skills to skills that generate significant income. Money has far more to contribute to survival and procreation than having lethal hunting skills, an entirely worthless skill to have in nearly all modern societies. There are so few societies left where hunting is necessary, and we're talking about a few thousands or tens of thousands of people at most among 7B.
> Once humans are put into that setting (zero education), we are no longer comfortably at the top of the food-chain.
Which isn't true. Humans used to hunt mammoths way back when we had zero education. (Some even claim that we hunted them to extinction.)
It doesn't get really get more 'top of the food chain' than that.
Sure it does. Aside from giant birds, crocodiles, and leopards, early humans likely had to contend with bears, sabertooth cats, snakes, hyenas, Komodo dragons, and even other hominins. As prey, the past was not a pleasant place for humans and our ancestors, because they were prey, not apex predators. You know, apex means nothing eats it. Just last year an alligator ate a man in Louisiana and they will again. That sort of disqualifies our species as "apex." The alligator is an apex predator because nothing predates them. Making sense yet?
Human inventions and discoveries can definitely be lost/forgotten (the bow and arrow was forgotten at some point on the way to Australia, hence boomerangs and atlatls). People from cultures that don't have multiplication and division have the capability to learn it.