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Intelligent dinosaurs?
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25-07-2019 6:38am#1
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I can never resist listing the faults in these videos. :B
1. Tarchia did have a brain that was just a tiny little bit bigger than that of contemporary ankylosaur Saichania , despite the fact that the latter had a bigger skull. That doesn´t mean it had a large brain in absolute terms. In fact, it was diminutive compared to what you would see in a similarly-sized mammal. It is also important to note that Tarchia apparently had very developed senses of smell and hearing, which may account for the enlarged brain. In other words, there's really no solid reason to assume that Tarchia was any smarter than your average ankylosaurid.
2. In defense of ostriches (to which Ornithomimus is compared), there are some studies that do suggest they may be smarter (or at least have unexplored abilities) than usually given credit for. For example, they are able to tell their own eggs from those of other ostriches in a communal nest that may contain up to 50 eggs laid by different females. How they do it is a mystery, and it is worth noting that other birds usually considered to be smarter than the ostrich are unable to tell their eggs from other's, and even sometimes mistake fake eggs for the real thing. I suppose this could be argued not be a sign of intelligence- it may have to do with their incredible eyesight (each eye is bigger than the brain, so maybe they can spot tiny differences in the egg shell or something that are invisible to us? I don´t know). Still, shows how little we really understand about animals that are both familiar to us, and generally accepted to be pretty dumb.
3. The Velociraptor entry is particularly bad because a) it never shows an actual Velociraptor (the Jurassic Park creature is heavily inspired by Robert Bakker's illustration of a Deinonychus dating from 1967, a very influential, but by now very outdated reconstruction), and b) it doesn´t really give any reasons why we should consider Velociraptor to be particularly intelligent as dinosaurs go.
Usually, people assume that raptors were intelligent because they were pack-hunters, and pack-hunting animals are seen as particularly smart (able to coordinate attacks, needing complex social skills etc). However, the idea that Velociraptor itself was a pack hunter is nothing but an assumption itself; it stems again from its distant cousin Deinonychus, which was suggested to be a social hunter due to the fact that evidence of several individuals was found together along with their supposed prey, a Tenontosaurus. This inspired countless pictures of a pack of Deinonychus attacking the hapless plant-eater, when in reality, it is just as possible that the Tenontosaurus was already dead and fed on by several Deinonychus at separate times. Even if they fed on the Tenontosaurus together, it doesn´t mean they were a pack. Crocodiles, sharks and Komodo dragons, among many other predators and scavengers, will happily feast together on a large carcass even if they would normally live alone. So the evidence of Deinonychus being a pack-hunter is tenuous at best. As for Velociraptor itself, there is abundant evidence of it being an active hunter (the famous fossil of a Velociraptor locked in combat with a Protoceratops), and a very violent animal (tooth marks piercing the skull of other Velociraptors), but no evidence of pack hunting at all.
There IS at least one trackway that shows several large (about Jurassic Park raptor-sized) dromeosaurs walking together and in the same direction, which is perhaps the best piece of evidence for actual gregarious behavior, but these were likely not Velociraptor proper.
4. Oviraptor would technically be a genus, not a species.
5. The Oviraptor entry implies that nesting behavior is a sign of intelligence. Yet, scientists generally consider that this is an instinctive behavior- some male fish, for example, will build nests even if there are no females around to lay eggs, and many birds will try to build nests without anyone having taught them. Also, many animals that are not generally thought of as particularly smart- frogs, snakes, fish- build nests and guard their eggs and young. Even certain insects provide parental care.
The fossil evidence thus far strongly suggests that many dinosaurs provided some sort of parental care or nesting behavior. This includes some dinosaurs traditionally regarded as relatively smart (such as troodontids), and others that are seldom if ever mentioned among the brainy types (such as hadrosaurs and psittacosaurs).
6. Again, Allosaurus would be a genus, not a species.
7. Just as with Velociraptor, there is really no solid evidence of Allosaurus having been a social hunter. Great white sharks are solitary hunters, but they will gather around a whale carcass to feast on easy protein. There is every reason to believe that a 30-60 ton sauropod carcass would be just as attractive for whatever predator was around. The video does not mention that the remains of other carnivores such as Ceratosaurus and Torvosaurus have also been found around those death trap sites.
8. As mentioned above, there are several kinds of dinosaurs from diverse families that are known to have displayed parental care and nesting behavior. Maiasaura was indeed the first dinosaur for which good evidence of it was found- in the form of a fossilized nest colony. However, more nesting grounds of other types of dinosaurs have been found since. It seems pretty obvious now that all hadrosaurs (duck-billed dinosaurs) built nests and cared for their young, as did smaller ornithopods. Evidence is lacking for advanced ceratopsids, but early ceratopsians such as Psittacosaurs apparently cared for their youngs in burrows they excavated themselves. Some theropods such as oviraptorosaurs and therizinosaurs also appear to show colonial nesting behavior. So Maiasaura, despite its important place in dinosaur paleontology history, was really nothing extraordinary in this regard.
9. That T. rex would choose its prey based on the level of difficulty involved in bringing it down is to be expected, as it is the norm with many predators- but there is no fossil evidence of it. We know it went after small, harmless prey (juvenile hadrosaur remains have been found in its fossilized feces, for example), but we also know it went after perhaps the most dangerous prey in its environment (adult Triceratops), and that sometimes Triceratops survived these attacks (as evidenced by healed bite marks on their bones, even their heads), which speaks of the high level of difficulty involved. Because Triceratops was apparently the most abundant prey species at the time, the truth is T. rex probably didn´t have much of a choice. I don´t know where this youtuber got the idea that we have evidence of its being very picky.
The T. rex IS known to have the biggest brain of any known dinosaur, but again, this has less to do with superior intelligence, and more to do with enlarged olfactory lobes, as it apparently had an incredible sense of smell (and also pretty keen eyesight and hearing).
To put things in perspective, T. rex's brain would've been the size of a milk carton, enlarged olfactory lobes included. That's still pretty small for an animal larger than a bus.
10. The Compsognathus entry is pretty egregious. It was smart because it was aware of its surroundings, really? That makes any such list pretty pointless. Animals that are not aware of their surroundings do not survive, plain as that. Even the most primitive animals need SOME sort of awareness.
Also interesting is that they mention Compsognathus as potentially choosing swimming as an escape mechanism- an idea that was put forward in 1972, when a second species of Compsognathus, C. corallestris, was proposed, and described as having forelimbs modified into flippers, like a penguin, so it could escape its predators by swimming.
It was not long before it was shown that the "flippers" were just plant material around the fossil dinosaur's forelegs, and that it was actually the same species as the original (C. longipes). It must also be mentioned that Compsognathus apparently lived in an isolated, rather arid archipielago, and there is no evidence of larger predatory dinosaurs living alongside it, so, who was it supposed to run or swim away from? From what we know to this moment, Compsognathus, small as it was, was the top predator of its environment.
11. Ah, Deinonychus. See the above on Velociraptor. :B Also, "a way to communicate with each other" is not enough. Practically all living things, even plants and bacteria, communicate with each other. As for it being able to "talk" like in Jurassic Park III... that is actually plausible considering the levels of vocal communication we're finding among modern day animals, but of course there's no fossilized proof of it.
12. Of course Troodon would be number 1. But again, Troodon as most intelligent dinosaur is just a myth, an assumption based on its large brain, which is now known to be enlarged due to its extremely developed senses of hearing and eyesight, in a way very similar to what you see in modern owls. The video mentions "good vision and memory" as signs of its intelligence. Memory I can understand but, how does having "good vision" = intelligence? In that case mantis shrimp and trilobites must be geniuses, too.
Absolutely no paleontologist has suggested that Troodon could've survived the KT extinction. They HAVE put forward ideas about what an intelligent creature evolved from a dinosaur like Troodon would look like, in the hypothetical case that they HAD survived. This is how Dale Russell's infamous dinosauroid came to be:
But of course, this dinosauroid stinks of anthropocentrism. Troodon was extremely bird-like (very likely feathered), and chances are a more intelligent version of one would still be bird-like- maybe unlike any other bird, but still, no reason for it to go human-like other than to please our ego.
All in all, I think we know far too little about the intelligence of living animals (we even have trouble understanding the human mind); to pretend that we know anything about the intelligence of prehistoric animals known only from million year old fragments of petrified bone is probably a bit too arrogant.
I do believe we underestimate animal intelligence in general, though. If non avian dinosaurs still existed I'm sure we would underestimate them too.0 -
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