Why no intelligent dinosaurs?

Gwynston

Most mammals we see today all evolved from rodent-like creatures 65 million years ago, including numerous highly intelligent species, with us being the pinnacle.

Dinosaurs were the dominant evolving species for a much longer period of natural history, but didn't evolve nearly as far. Why?

Are there predispositions in mammalian physiology which meant they were always likely to be more successful in this regard than dinosaurs? e.g. warm blooded, high metabolism, reproductive system, or something else?

Perhaps mammals' high metabolism and need for relatively more frequent feeding might only have ended up as a successful solution for increasing biodiversity as a result of the dinosaurs dying out? Without the opportunities that presented, the mammalian formula might not have had a chance?

But having got the chance, the formula has proven to be more successful insofar as where it's got us now?

Mickeroo

Moved from Zoology

Apologies I only noticed it now, would have moved it sooner.

Kess73

Would argue that we don't actually know how intelligent dinosaurs were or were not.


Many modern day reptiles are now acknowledged as being more intelligent than originally thought, with some having shown themselves to be capable of problem solving.


Also if we look at other modern species that evolved from dinosaurs, most notably birds, then we can find examples of intelligence that matches or comes close to matching that of many of the mammalian species usually regarded as being intelligent.


My own gut feeling is that many dinosaurs, especially some of the predatory species, would have been at least on the same level of intelligence as their modern day descendants.

Gwynston

Can't disagree with anything you've said there, but I guess I was wondering why dinosaur intelligence didn't evolve a lot more.

They were around a lot longer and should have done a lot more evolving during their 100s of millions of years, if you consider how far mammals have come in "just" 65 million years, and from fairly limited beginnings.

Which is why I was wondering if it is something about mammalian make up that has pushed evolution further in a shorter time, whilst obviously also having had less competition during that time.

Rubecula

It is surmised that if they had not died out they would have reached our level of intelligence. However they did die out before they could evolve that far.

Adam Khor

Gwynston wrote: »

Most mammals we see today all evolved from rodent-like creatures 65 million years ago, including numerous highly intelligent species, with us being the pinnacle.

Debatable. Take a look at the YouTube comment section. :pac:

Gwynston wrote: »

Dinosaurs were the dominant evolving species for a much longer period of natural history, but didn't evolve nearly as far.
Are there predispositions in mammalian physiology which meant they were always likely to be more successful in this regard than dinosaurs? e.g. warm blooded, high metabolism, reproductive system, or something else?
Perhaps mammals' high metabolism and need for relatively more frequent feeding might only have ended up as a successful solution for increasing biodiversity as a result of the dinosaurs dying out? Without the opportunities that presented, the mammalian formula might not have had a chance?

Much of what you call the "mammalian formula" is actually not so unique; dinosaurs themselves had high metabolism (there's pretty solid evidence on that), probably needed lots of food, and were "warm blooded"- to the point that they even conquered the Arctic and Antarctic regions. (There's recent evidence suggesting the Mesozoic world was probably not as warm as previously believed- dinosaurs apparently did see ice and snow during winter in places such as modern day China).

I also don´t agree that they "didn´t evolve nearly as far". What are your grounds to say this? Birds (the only living dinosaurs) are actually far more numerous and species-diverse than mammals, and they are all from one single dinosaur group (with adaptations to flight that somehow limited how far they could deviate from the basic body plan, sure, but still). As for non-avian dinosaurs, they did become amazingly diverse, just take a look at their family tree- an ankylosaur is as different from a Velociraptor as can be. Also, keep in mind two things; 1) we only know a very, very small fraction of the dinosaur species that actually existed, and 2) we have mostly fragments of most of them. The more we uncover of each dinosaur the more diverse they appear to be. Same goes for pterosaurs, btw.

Gwynston wrote: »

wondering why dinosaur intelligence didn't evolve a lot more.

We can´t say how intelligent they were or were not. We don´t even know much about the intelligence of modern day animals. Years ago, scientists would only recognize a handful of species- such as apes, dolphins and elephants- as "intelligent". The list now includes octopi, sharks, rats, hyenas, bears, you name it. The more species are studied, the more intelligent they appear to be; and keep in mind that we can´t expect all animals to respond the same to man-made intelligence tests because many of them live in completely different sensorial universes, or have very deeply ingrained behaviors that make them more or less apt for different tests.

With non-avian dinosaurs extinct, we can´t possibly know how smart they are, but if we consider they're descendants (birds) and closest kin (crocodilians), and how they are now believed to be as smart as many mammals (with some of them, like parrots and corvids, being rated as high as monkeys and apes), there's no reason to believe dinosaurs were any different.

Gwynston wrote: »

They were around a lot longer and should have done a lot more evolving during their 100s of millions of years, if you consider how far mammals have come in "just" 65 million years, and from fairly limited beginnings.

Dinosaurs too came from "fairly limited beginnings".
Also, mammals actually appeared in the Triassic which means they have been around for as long as dinosaurs themselves. It used to be believed that they couldn´t diversify because of dinosaurs, but now more and more strange and derived mammals from the Mesozoic are showing up, including gliding, burrowing and aquatic species.

If anything, there was something about dinosaurs that allowed them to conquer the world before mammals (probably their erect posture?). So dinosaurs were not inferior to mammals in any way- they were just different.

sawdoubters

are you sure animals evolve
I have never seen one evolve

Gwynston

Adam Khor wrote: »

I also don´t agree that they "didn´t evolve nearly as far". What are your grounds to say this? [...] they did become amazingly diverse

Huge diversity, yes. But my point is they didn't evolve to ape-level intelligence, despite more time to do it and despite that huge diversity.

(For the record, I'm only really counting mammalian evolution for the last 65 million years. I know they go back much farther, but in essence there was a 'reset' and their current diversity comes from a small family)

Adam Khor wrote: »

We can´t say how intelligent they were or were not. We don´t even know much about the intelligence of modern day animals.

I guess I'm talking about human intelligence. I concur with your points about intelligence observed across many modern day species, but that's not quite the 'final step' that was made to human levels of understanding, consciousness and the ability to manipulate the world around us.

You can argue for primate levels of intelligence in many diverse modern species and also potentially in dinosaurs, but not the next level up that humans have reached in just the last million years.

So why didn't that happen in the much longer period of evolution that dinosaurs had? Perhaps the mammalian form simply allowed for greater possibilities over a shorter time? Or perhaps it was the void they were left which which led to greater possibilites?

Adam Khor wrote: »

but now more and more strange and derived mammals from the Mesozoic are showing up, including gliding, burrowing and aquatic species.

Interesting. Do you have some links to info on that?

Rubecula

What makes you think dinosaurs had longer to develope intelligence than mammals? Yes dinosaurs were more predominant in the past but the mammalian lineage is very long too.

There are many factors that are thought to be responsible for intelligence to evolve, yet nobody is completely certain what actually drives this adaptation.

One thing that has been pointed out is that intelligence of higher levels seems to come about in 'pack' animals or those with strong family links. How high it gets seems (I say seems as yet again it is not certain) to be due to how it aids survivability of the species. In the same way that birds evolved fligfht, animals evolved eyes, claws or what ever.

It is unlikely that dinos got to our level of self awareness, but in all honesty we don't know for 100% certainty that they didn't. Obviously I am not referring to technology here. We will not be visited by dino's that made spaceships to escape the asteroid, but if you look up Troodon you will see a creature that is thought to be more advanced than it's contempories in the intelligence stakes.

Wibbs

Intelligence of our type is incredibly rare in the earths history. Like vanishingly rare. Only a tiny group of the great apes achieved it and of those that did only modern Homo Sapiens Sapiens got the whole package. IE the quantity of recognisable pre "us" cultural stuff of previous hominids would fit in the something the size of a Tesco bag. There's more cultural stuff we would recognise as modern behaviour in one square metre of inhabited cave in France or Africa 40,000 years ago than in the 2 million years of previous hominids combined. And even where we were concerned that didn't happen until the last 60-80,000 years at a push. Up until then as far as rarity in the landscape went we made pandas look as common as starlings.

It seems unlike flight and swimming and crawling etc as adaptive responses to the environment that many species took on board, intelligence is way down the list of go to survival adaptations. Our kind of cultural, abstract, off the wall intelligence is right down at the bottom of that list. We have dinos that flew like birds(and became same), dinos that walked around like cattle, dinos that swam and looked like dolphins/fish and so on, but so far no dinos that looked or acted like great apes.

The upshot is - though this is not such a popular opinion these days, unless you're a godbotherer - we are incredibly unique. We are incredibly unique among the great apes, we are even incredibly unique within the hominid sphere.

Could dinos have become like us? Oh I think it possible alright. I'd be looking for bipedal, social dinos with forward pointing eyes as the basic building blocks and though this period is not nearly an area of expertise of mine IIRC there were a couple of species that would kinda fit that bill. If the giant rock hadn't fcuked them up it is possible that that small band may have become their version of Homo Erectus and over time and with luck may have become like us. And they would have needed luck and lots of it. We did. In a big way. At one point the ancestors of every one of us alive today(minus the shagging with Neandertals and others) were down to ten thousand odd people.

Adam Khor

Rubecula wrote: »

We will not be visited by dino's that made spaceships to escape the asteroid, but if you look up Troodon you will see a creature that is thought to be more advanced than it's contempories in the intelligence stakes.

There really is no evidence to suggest Troodon was smarter than any other dinosaur. The whole "big brains equals intelligence" thing is an outdated concept, and even if it wasn´t, turns out most of Troodon's big brain is actually dedicated to enhanced senses (night vision and hearing), which tells us it had very keen eyesight and a sense of hearing akin to that of modern day owls- evidence, perhaps, that Troodon was a nocturnal or crepuscular hunter of small prey, but nothing to do with intelligence.

Sadly, Troodon being "the smartest dino" has become a sort of "dinosaur brain myth", just like Stegosaurus having a brain the size of a walnut, or sauropods having more than one...

Kess73

Wibbs wrote: »

Intelligence of our type is incredibly rare in the earths history. Like vanishingly rare. Only a tiny group of the great apes achieved it and of those that did only modern Homo Sapiens Sapiens got the whole package. IE the quantity of recognisable pre "us" cultural stuff of previous hominids would fit in the something the size of a Tesco bag. There's more cultural stuff we would recognise as modern behaviour in one square metre of inhabited cave in France or Africa 40,000 years ago than in the 2 million years of previous hominids combined. And even where we were concerned that didn't happen until the last 60-80,000 years at a push. Up until then as far as rarity in the landscape went we made pandas look as common as starlings.

It seems unlike flight and swimming and crawling etc as adaptive responses to the environment that many species took on board, intelligence is way down the list of go to survival adaptations. Our kind of cultural, abstract, off the wall intelligence is right down at the bottom of that list. We have dinos that flew like birds(and became same), dinos that walked around like cattle, dinos that swam and looked like dolphins/fish and so on, but so far no dinos that looked or acted like great apes.

The upshot is - though this is not such a popular opinion these days, unless you're a godbotherer - we are incredibly unique. We are incredibly unique among the great apes, we are even incredibly unique within the hominid sphere.

Could dinos have become like us? Oh I think it possible alright. I'd be looking for bipedal, social dinos with forward pointing eyes as the basic building blocks and though this period is not nearly an area of expertise of mine IIRC there were a couple of species that would kinda fit that bill. If the giant rock hadn't fcuked them up it is possible that that small band may have become their version of Homo Erectus and over time and with luck may have become like us. And they would have needed luck and lots of it. We did. In a big way. At one point the ancestors of every one of us alive today(minus the shagging with Neandertals and others) were down to ten thousand odd people.

Russell's Dinosauroid theory is pretty much all that.



Some musings on Russell's idea.


http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/10/troodon-sapiens-thoughts-on-the-dinosauroid/

Kess73

Adam Khor wrote: »

There really is no evidence to suggest Troodon was smarter than any other dinosaur. The whole "big brains equals intelligence" thing is an outdated concept, and even if it wasn´t, turns out most of Troodon's big brain is actually dedicated to enhanced senses (night vision and hearing), which tells us it had very keen eyesight and a sense of hearing akin to that of modern day owls- evidence, perhaps, that Troodon was a nocturnal or crepuscular hunter of small prey, but nothing to do with intelligence.

Sadly, Troodon being "the smartest dino" has become a sort of "dinosaur brain myth", just like Stegosaurus having a brain the size of a walnut, or sauropods having more than one...

I think we do have enough though to suggest that Troodon, along with other Troodontids, had enough physical adaptations to suggest that they were a group that were adaptable and possible with good problem solving capabilities. Physically they have a lot of similarities with modern day avians, specifically those regarded as being amongst the most intelligents of the modern day birds.

Many of them also had interesting fingers and arms, in that they appear to be multi purpose and theoretically would have been able to grip and manipulate ites using their fingers as physically their fingers would allow for it.


I do agree with you with regards to the similarities with modern day strigiformes, but when we look at the modern day examples of such (and you chose the best example in owls), we get a group that does have enhanced senses but that are also very adaptive and intelligent in their own right.

Now it might not be quantifiable, but I do find it telling that the modern day species with similar traits to what we think Troodontids had are for the most part pretty intelligent animals.

cruizer101

Gwynston wrote: »

with us being the pinnacle.

Dinosaurs were the dominant evolving species for a much longer period of natural history, but didn't evolve nearly as far. Why?

Are we the pinnacle of evolution though, yes we have evolved to be the most intelligent animal but I wouldn't see that as putting us more evolved than others.

In their own niches other creatures are far more evolved. True that our intelligence has allowed us to adapt to many environments through the use of various equipment shall we say but I still wouldn't say intelligence is necessarily the best form of evolution, we have come to be very dependant on our society, which in many ways is a huge advantage, however leaves us weak in many ways.

I'd also argue that intelligence is somewhat subjective. For example experiments (I can't fully remember the details bu will do my best) trying to compare the intelligence of dogs was based around them identifying visual cues such as themselves in a mirror or pictures of other dogs. Chimpanzes when tested were able to identify certain things the dogs weren't.
However this would be like getting a human to identify themselves and others by smells which would we obviously struggle with. So our definition of intelligence was based of being able to identify visual cues because that is what we associate with, however for a dog it would be based of smells, what is to say for other animals there aren't other alternatives which we havn't even considered.

Is the use of tools really more evolved than animals that don't need to use them.

Gwynston

Kess73 wrote: »

Some musings on Russell's idea.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/10/troodon-sapiens-thoughts-on-the-dinosauroid/

Thanks for that. A very interesting read, which discusses many of the questions that had led me to starting this thread.

Wibbs

cruizer101 wrote: »

Is the use of tools really more evolved than animals that don't need to use them.

Yes. Why? Because we're the only animal that has externalised our evolution(and the evolution of other species through domestication). We don't need to wait for evolution to catch up as we can "grow" adaptive responses to new environments through technology and do so rapidly. Now we've begun to climb around in the foothills of the mechanisms of evolution and life it's quite likely we will even end up engineering our own replacements. No other animal comes close to this. So yea we kinda are the pinnacle of evolution. We have been externalising it for over a million years, when science came along we started to examine and explain it's mechanism, finally naming it as a provable process and now we're playing around with it.

Mickeroo

Wibbs wrote: »

Yes. Why? Because we're the only animal that has externalised our evolution(and the evolution of other species through domestication). We don't need to wait for evolution to catch up as we can "grow" adaptive responses to new environments through technology and do so rapidly. Now we've begun to climb around in the foothills of the mechanisms of evolution and life it's quite likely we will even end up engineering our own replacements. No other animal comes close to this. So yea we kinda are the pinnacle of evolution. We have been externalising it for over a million years, when science came along we started to examine and explain it's mechanism, finally naming it as a provable process and now we're playing around with it.

“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 :P

I agree with what you're saying, but I can't pass up an opportunity to throw in a Douglas Adams quote.

cruizer101

@ Wibbs I guess the point I was trying to make was more that I would see that there is no pinnacle to evolution, no one solution. By its very definiton evolution is the divergence of creatures to fit their situation or niche as best as they can.

The fact we have evolved to be able to populate the majority of earth, and quite possibly in the future other planets, does put us up there. I'd agree with you that our ability to adapt is an amazing product of our evolution but I still have trouble with the idea of their being a pinnacle to evolution.

That would link to the OP question of why didn't dinosaurs evolve to be intelligent, I think I would say that despite the vast time they had that they didn't because intelligence is not necessarily the pinnacle but rather one branch on the evolutionary tree.

Another animal which I think could potentially be considered to be a pinnacle of sorts of evolution would be the crocodile, it evolved to be what it currently is millions of years ago, has it reached a pinnacle?

Just to say I don't necessarily disagree with you, just some of my musings.

Adam Khor

Kess73 wrote: »

I think we do have enough though to suggest that Troodon, along with other Troodontids, had enough physical adaptations to suggest that they were a group that were adaptable and possible with good problem solving capabilities. Physically they have a lot of similarities with modern day avians, specifically those regarded as being amongst the most intelligents of the modern day birds.

Such as? The most intelligent birds, oficially according to scientists, are corvids and parrots. Troodontids have more in common with owls than with any of those two.

Kess73 wrote: »

Many of them also had interesting fingers and arms, in that they appear to be multi purpose and theoretically would have been able to grip and manipulate ites using their fingers as physically their fingers would allow for it.

So did some dromaeosaurids, such as (if I'm not mistaken), Bambiraptor, and possibly others, but are we sure this means anything other than a simple prey-grasping ability comparable to that of modern day birds of prey? Now if they found solid evidence of them using these "hands" to manipulate tools or something, that would be somehting... I don´t know much about theropod "hands" so I'm just wondering here.

(Iguanodontids also had multipurpose "hands", and grasping ability, yet no one ever pays much attention to them )

Kess73 wrote: »

I do agree with you with regards to the similarities with modern day strigiformes, but when we look at the modern day examples of such (and you chose the best example in owls

Aren´t all strigiformes owls?

Kess73 wrote: »

when we look at the modern day examples of such (and you chose the best example in owls), we get a group that does have enhanced senses but that are also very ada ptive and intelligent in their own right.

Yet owls were often said, until recently, to be rather stupid as birds go. Of course this wasn´t the case; they simply live in a much more sound-oriented world than we thought, and this is why they would respond poorly to intelligence tests designed for other birds, which are a lot more visual and not as easily distracted by every little sound in the vicinity. (That is, at least, what I have read).

My point being that even tho we know owls are smart, there's nothing in Troodon that really suggests a higher degree of intelligence than what we see in any other theropod- all the traits that Russell and the like saw as convergency with primates are easily (and more logically) explained as adaptations to a predatory lifestyle, from the forward-facing eyes to the grasping claws and the enlarged portions of the brain.
So I agree with you that Troodon was probably a smart animal, just not necessarily "the smartest dino" as everyone keeps calling it.

Rubecula

The problem we have is that brain size does not give any accurate way of deciding intelligence apparently. It is more the ratio of size between brain and body, and even that is debatable. We simply do not know how intelligent dino's actually became. Although we are pretty sure they were not self aware as we are.

Adam Khor

Rubecula wrote: »

The problem we have is that brain size does not give any accurate way of deciding intelligence apparently. It is more the ratio of size between brain and body, and even that is debatable. We simply do not know how intelligent dino's actually became. Although we are pretty sure they were not self aware as we are.

Exactly, I mean, there's some animals like hummingbirds that have huge brains relative to their body size, and are never thought of as particularly intelligent, whereas whales have very small brains compared to their body size and yet we all know how smart they are.
One could argue that its more about brain complexity but then parrots and crows have very simple brains compared to primates or whales, and yet they aren´t far behind them when it comes to intelligence.

I honestly don´t think we can judge an animal's intelligence with our current knowledge, and particularly not that of animals that have been extinct for millions of years. For all we know, Stegosaurus could be just as smart as Troodon, even if it didn´t have forward facing eyes and dexterous hands; dolphins lack these too and no one would think they're dumb.

Gwynston

Interesting discussion, and I think we agree that we're not really in a position to determine how intelligent dinosaurs actually were. So I guess my original question is hypothetical really.

As has been mentioned, there's no clear reason why different branches of evolution have to arrive at a conscious intelligence like ourselves. cruizer101 gave the example of the crocodile, which seems to have reached the evolutionary pinnacle on its branch. There are many other examples, like sharks, which have changed little over millions of years.

The success of evolution is in the changes necessary for the successful continuation of the species. Crocodiles and sharks have reached a point where mutations don't result in a better solution, so they aren't evolving any more. So there doesn't seem to be a possibility of them evolving into highly intelligent species.

Maybe it was the same case for dinosaurs? Despite the long time they had to evolve, their basic template might not have been predisposed to evolve to the level of intelligence that mammals managed? But evolutionarily, the were a success.

It makes you think about the possibilities for intelligent life on other planets. Just because life begins, there are such a mind-bogglingly high number of solutions for success (even just the ones we know of), that there is no guarantee that intelligent life will evolve.

Wibbs

Gwynston wrote: »

It makes you think about the possibilities for intelligent life on other planets. Just because life begins, there are such a mind-bogglingly high number of solutions for success (even just the ones we know of), that there is no guarantee that intelligent life will evolve.

+1. We do seem to suppose that intelligent life like ours is a given out there. I don't. I'd go even further and suggest that complex life out there may not be a given either. For most of this planets history life was simple and single celled and when the sun does it's work and the planet starts to die off, the ones that will turn out the lights will be the same single celled life. As far as life goes even today the biomass is majority simple life. We're the planet of the goo with some odd freaks wandering about on it.

Intelligent life? An even bigger rarity. Go back to the time of dinos and before and after and the basic swimming thing, walking thing, flying thing designs were in place. Ichthyosaurs in place of dolphins etc and every time there was an extinction, mass or local the same basic designs kicked off. Intelligence like ours? Nope. Even when we started to evolve, we were a teeny tiny band of creatures that you wouldn't have laid big bets on to win and that went on for millions of years. It's only in the last 60-100,000 years, not even a blink in the eye of life on earth, that full human intelligence has blossomed. Homo Erectus or Neandertals amazing though they were would never have landed a man on the moon, or painted a Chagall, or built cities.

So going on the evidence of our world and its life story, intelligence is about the very last thing evolution throws up as a solution and it's delicate and needs a lot of luck to get to the point of our type of intelligence. IMHO if we were to die out tomorrow, I'd bet that it wouldn't happen again in the few hundred million years the earth has left to try. TBH on a universal scale I'd not be too shocked to find out that modern human like intelligence only happens once maybe twice in every galaxy and that in many galaxies it never happens and that when it happens it is aeons apart in time. It may explain why we've not seen any indicators of such life yet. After all if a probe passed by here any time in the last 4 billion years of earth, there would be a minuscule window so far of only 100 years where they'd pick up anything obvious from any distance out and a few 1000 years where they'd see things if they looked closer.

Kess73

Adam Khor wrote: »

Such as? The most intelligent birds, oficially according to scientists, are corvids and parrots. Troodontids have more in common with owls than with any of those two.




My point being that even tho we know owls are smart, there's nothing in Troodon that really suggests a higher degree of intelligence than what we see in any other theropod- all the traits that Russell and the like saw as convergency with primates are easily (and more logically) explained as adaptations to a predatory lifestyle, from the forward-facing eyes to the grasping claws and the enlarged portions of the brain.
So I agree with you that Troodon was probably a smart animal, just not necessarily "the smartest dino" as everyone keeps calling it.

Am not suggesting that Troodon was the most intelligent dinosaur, but what I am saying is that many Troodontids, including Troodoon, share physical traits with many modern animals including some species of owl and also with some modern day raptors.

As for the intelligence of owls, well a lot of what was assumed about them (that they were to birds what ****zus are to dogs when it comes to intelligence) has been challenged, and it is now looking like some species of owl may be up there with the high end raptors. Now that is not quite at the same level as some of the higher rated corvids, but it puts some at the level of being able to cooperate when hunting and the like ( something I am very loathe to dismiss as a possibility as I once did so regarding a species of hawk and had my mind blown years later when I got to watch a pair of wild birds set an ambush more than once)

Frank Lee Midere

Intelligent life is so rare, unlike convergent evolution (eyes, wings etc which appear more than once in different evolutionary paths). The Earth took time to get to any large fauna at all and mostly it seemed to trend towards arachnosaurs and other large cold blooded or feathered animals. Of little intellect. None were selected for intelligence even though they were dominant far longer than mammals. And mammals wouldn't have ever become dominant were the last major extinction event - which depended on an improbable rock hurtling through space, missing the outer planets and hitting the earth at such an angle it killed all non avian dinosaurs but mammals survived - had not happened. And of course there had also to be no more extinction events or mammals wouldn't have time to evolve or would have been wiped out.

Even starting with the mammals intelligent life came about once, depended on a series of lucky accidents, is clearly not a common evolution path and human evolution could have been thwarted by Ice Ages. It was touch and go.

My guess is most earth type planets have little or no fauna and where they do it's dinosaurs, birds or lizard type animals - mammals are anomalous on the earth.

Capt'n Midnight

Kess73 wrote: »

Would argue that we don't actually know how intelligent dinosaurs were or were not.

Besides all the brain size/shape research on fossils and birds ?
I remember hearing/seeing somewhere that the brightest dinosaurs would be about the same level as a dumb bird today.

Also re convergent evolution octupus aren't exactly stupid.


In the kingdom of the blind the one eyed man is king.
You don't have to be the most intelligent creature ever to survive you just need to outsmart the opposition or prey. It's an arms race.

Yes an F35 can outperform a Hurricane or Spitfire. And, although the Spitfires performed better, they cost £7,000 more than the humble Hurricane, which could be built for as little as £5,000. An F35 starts at $150,000,000 and go up to $199,400,000 , not counting R&D costs and overruns.



If this is the best they've got around here, in six months we'll be running this planet.
George Taylor , AD 3978


Intelligence is expensive, our brain uses up a lot of calories and needs lots of special oils in our diet so presumably it's useful. Lots of parasites have dumbed down.