Why weren't dinosaurs more intelligent?

[FreeThinker]

The number of stars in the known universe is currently estimated to be somewhere on the order of:

1000000000000000000000 give or take a few zillion

That's why I think it's overwhelmingly likely (though nothing is certain) that there is "intelligent" life of some sort' date=' somewhere, if not somewhere in almost every direction we can look (at some distance ...).

[/quote']

 

 

 

With my , rough, calculations the the odds are 1:400 million that an intelligent species will evolve in an enviroment simmilar to earth. While we dont yet know if there are any worlds that sustain any form of life, it is obvious that there are many more ways of not being intelligent than being intelligent. But a figure such as 1:400 million can be missleading. Intelligence is one outcome out of a simingly infinte number of ways a species can evolve. We might have been extremly lucky and the real odds could be something like 1:100000000000000000000.

[swansont]

An organism with a large brain would benefit by having a body that could exploit the brains capabilities. If a large brain, relative to body size, did arise in some species of dinosaurs, it would have provided the pressure for the rest of the body to develop to suit increasing intelligence. I don't think this happened and see difficulty in assuming that intelligence only developed because evolution "progressed" towards greater complexity. It is safer to assume, I think, that intelligence is really rare in evolution and Homo sapiens are the rare species that acquired the characteristic. I don’t disagree that a greater complexity within the brain gave rise to higher intelligence but I do think that for the process to get started is a rare evolutionary event. If it was otherwise, shouldn’t we see other intelligent species in the present time?

 

Dolphins. They are intelligent, but are probably limited on how they can exploit that intelligence. Larger brains would likely be a burden. Why couldn't similar limitations have existed with dinosaurs?

[swansont]

Why do you need land animals for flight to exist? There are gliding fish and flying out of the sea is a rather effective way to escape a sea-going predator. It gives an advantage even if food is nonexistent above water. Flight could have happened earlier. and so could have intelligence.

 

But that's gliding, not powered flight, since all you need to do is move a relatively short distance. Unless the fish breathe air, and probably increase their metabolism, you have serious limitations to overcome to get to flight.

[FreeThinker]

Dolphins. They are intelligent, but are probably limited on how they can exploit that intelligence. Larger brains would likely be a burden. Why couldn't similar limitations have existed with dinosaurs?

 

I am referring to the combination of traits that contribute to intelligence, not a specific feature (like the brain). Wings on birds would be of little use when talking about flight if it wasnt for all the other body parts that make flight possible.

[swansont]

I am referring to the combination of traits that contribute to intelligence, not a specific feature (like the brain). Wings on birds would be of little use when talking about flight if it wasnt for all the other body parts that make flight possible.

 

That's been my argument. It's not that it's necessarily hard to evolve intelligence, but it won't evolve unless the other traits are present to make it an advantage.

[Sisyphus]

Man is hell bent on destruction so Sisyphus, this is why I am so certain that other species are smarter, They dont have the knowledge we do but that is different to being smart.

 

Any animal will destroy itself if given the chance. You really think deer intentionally conserve resources to preserve the environment? No, they eat and breed as much as they can. Humans are just better at it. Luckily, we are also the only animal smart enough to foresee the consequences of our expansion, and thus are the only animal capable of restraining ourselves. The very fact that you, as a human, see our growth as a problem proves that humans are far more intelligent than anything else.

[gcol]

 

So, because we know we are intelligent enough to know we are going to hell in a handcart, and too dumb and selfish to put the brake on, that makes us smart?

[Sisyphus]

 

So' date=' because we know we are intelligent enough to know we are going to hell in a handcart, and too dumb and selfish to put the brake on, that makes us smart?[/quote']

 

More or less. It takes a lot of intelligence to be able to destroy our environment so utterly, and that intelligence also allows us to foresee the consequences of said destruction. Our intelligence might destroy us, but it is also the only hope of us saving ourselves. No species that lacked our intelligence could possibly survive being this powerful.

[FreeThinker]

That's been my argument. It's not that it's necessarily hard to evolve intelligence, but it won't evolve unless the other traits are present to make it an advantage.

 

 

My argument is that all those traits evolving simultaneously appears to be a very rare event in evolution.

[sunspot]

Here is an interesting note, dolphins can learn human commands in many languages, but humans can't decifer the dolphins language. The dolphins must think humans are a little slow.

 

All kidding aside, the dinosaur brains were more functional within the interior parts of the brain below the cerebral, i.e., brain stem, thalamus. It was mostly reflex action and basic instincts. The warm blooded mammals evolved the limbic system which is associated with feelings and with the creation cerebral memory. This progression allowed the wiring within the cerebral to evolve much quicker with the mammals. The humans evolved a secondary center of consciousness, i.e., ego. The ego helps focus our attention better allowing a quantum increase in learning potential.

[Steph]

But that's gliding, not powered flight, since all you need to do is move a relatively short distance. Unless the fish breathe air, and probably increase their metabolism, you have serious limitations to overcome to get to flight.

 

really? birds first started by gliding too. Whales breathe air but seem to be able to survive for extended periods of time without it. Some fish have lungs. so you can have it two ways. Gliding won't necessary evolve to flight, but its halfway there. you don't need land animals for powered flight to appear.

 

about intelligence. what does the 1 in 400 million mean? is in years? planets? years per planet? At any rate, I doubt its accurate but, I also doubt intelligence is such a rare event that there would be only one species per galaxy. the thing is, it seems that brain has followed more or less a straigt line towards complexity. What I mean by that is that if you take a point in time and check the species with the most complex brain, its higher than a point before (more or less... extinctions kind of mess that up). life also seems to have appeared quickly after Earth has been formed. Sooo, it is safe to say that the probability of the appearance of life on a suitable planet would be close to 1 (give or take a few orders of magnitude). out of this, it also seems that the appearance of intelligence would be close to one (again, give or take a few orders of magnitude).

 

Just to clarify... whether its 1/10 or 1/1000 odds its close enough to one at this point because of the sheer size of the universe.

[pretender]

Sisyphus

I agee we are more intelligent but this isnt the same as being smart...

[pretender]

Sisyphus.

Being smart is being able to use your intelligence in the right way to help your species evolve and grow.Not just being intelligent and using in a destructive way

[Steph]

Sisyphus.

Being smart is being able to use your intelligence in the right way to help your species evolve and grow.Not just being intelligent and using in a destructive way

 

well... in this regard, we are also smarter.

the example would be something like. Imagine a father that decides to kill all of his family but because his son is physically stronger and keeps him in check, can't follow with his plan. Or a father who has the same idea but nothing to keep him in check, and then realizes that what he is doing is wrong.

 

The only reason the other animals are not destroying the earth is because they are kept in check. An example is the one of the mooses in Prince-Edward Island. They first came to island in the 1700s I think. now they are the largest population of mooses in the world and are literally grazing the island flat. why because they have no predators there except the small human population.

one thing for humans. we have come to realize that we must protect the Earth, although we haven't taken the next step yet.

[swansont]

really? birds first started by gliding too. Whales breathe air but seem to be able to survive for extended periods of time without it. Some fish have lungs. so you can have it two ways. Gliding won't necessary evolve to flight' date=' but its halfway there. you don't need land animals for powered flight to appear.

[/quote']

 

 

Not a whole lot of vertical advantage for gliders that always start at sea level, unlike for land animals. I wouldn't say that gliding is halfway there.

[Steph]

Not a whole lot of vertical advantage for gliders that always start at sea level, unlike for land animals. I wouldn't say that gliding is halfway there.

 

At the point where we are now, there is advantage for predators as well as prey.

provided none of this existed, there would be advantages for prey first. the point is not getting very high but simply high enough to be out of reach of predators.

I'm saying that gliding is half-way there since, from that point on, the evolutionary steps are clearer.

I think the BBC had a documentary talking about this, where they were looking at how evolution might continue after we are gone.

[jwu]

Now' date=' they had 165 million years to walk the Earth and evolve into smarter creatures but they didn't. As far as we can tell, all they did was eat, sleep and breed. Not a bad life - except having to run for it every now and again - but why didn't they gain intelligence? The only knowledge of fire they had was that lightning and lava made it (and that it was hot).

 

Humans (Homo Sapiens) have only really been around for 200,000 years and within 100 years, look how far we have advanced. Within 60 years we went from first flight to outer space. Look in that tiny space of time, how we went from primate intelligence to that of today. [/quote']There seems to be a major misconception! You imply that whenever there is a new species, that species' intellectual development begins from scratch, but that is not so. Each species builds upon its predecessor, and there isn't even a clear line of what constitutes a species. Species depend on an arbitrarily set frame of reference.

 

Us humans have gone through 65 million years more evolution than dinosaurs have - just not all of that in form of humans.

 

 

Moreover, there is always a "first time", there always has to be a species that is the first to aquire a certain characteristic. And naturally that species then will ask itself, "why are we the only one?" (if it's capable of this kind of self reflection).

 

So if the evolution of intelligence is a given, then there had to be a species to be the first to evolve it - and that happened to be us humans. Well...or dolphins, possibly.

[The Spith]

Because they had realy tiny hands.

 

Organisms that require more complicated movements from their appendages will have to develop larger brains to increase co-ordination. Big dinosaurs only realy had to worry about eating things. Little dinosaurs didn't have large enough brains.

 

That's my take on the matter anyway

[Steph]

Because they had realy tiny hands.

 

Organisms that require more complicated movements from their appendages will have to develop larger brains to increase co-ordination. Big dinosaurs only realy had to worry about eating things. Little dinosaurs didn't have large enough brains.

 

That's my take on the matter anyway

 

 

Tiny hands? uhm... short of the larger carnosaurs and tyrannosaurids' date=' I think you are WAY off... point in case "Google" [i']Therizinosaurus[/i], or watch Jurassic Park's velociraptors (which have the right proportions at least). All the dromaesaurids had rather large hands.

 

See... they are smaller than birds, but bigger than most mammals, and arguably bigger than ours (ratio-wise). [note, this picture shows them in the wrong orientation though... they looked more like this]

 

 

 

The human hand is more complicated, but it makes no sense that such an appendage would appear and THEN the brain would have to follow. if you had 7 fingers on one hand, and you couldn't use them properly, they would become a liability. the opposite had to happen.

[Sisyphus]

But our ancestors were climbers, meaning they could make good use of prehensile hands without ever having the intelligence necessary for, say, tool use.

[sunspot]

Culture makes us smarter than we would be without culture. It stores a collective memory capactiance. In culture it is half learning and half illusion caused by the other doing things for us. One can drive a car but few could build one from scratch, yet most people will take partial credit for sending a man to the moon.

 

One can't teach a wolf to do math, but go in the wolf's backyard and see who is better at survival.

[herpguy]

Organisms that require more complicated movements from their appendages will have to develop larger brains to increase co-ordination. Big dinosaurs only realy had to worry about eating things. Little dinosaurs didn't have large enough brains.

 

You don't need to have a large brain to be intelligent, it just needs to be wired correctly. I saw a video on Animal Planet's "Amazing Animal Videos" where a bird found a way to catch fish easier. It would wait for a human to come and feed the fish, then it would fly over to where the fish were and catch one. My point is that this bird has a very small brain, but can solve the problem of lack of food.

[Dark Photon]

they neednt be, the mere fact that they survived show sthat they had sufficent intelegance to survive. too much intelegance will currupt us and everythign around us. i mean look how the homo sapiens ended. pfft.

[john5746]

Some other species may wonder this in the future as well.

[scrumruggin]

You don't need to have a large brain to be intelligent, it just needs to be wired correctly. I saw a video on Animal Planet's "Amazing Animal Videos" where a bird found a way to catch fish easier. It would wait for a human to come and feed the fish, then it would fly over to where the fish were and catch one. My point is that this bird has a very small brain, but can solve the problem of lack of food.

 

It's good example of problem solving thru observation but it begs the question of just what do we mean by intelligence. Personally I think self-awareness or conciousness is part of the answer. The most "intelligent" animals also seem to be the one's with the greatest self awareness. Come to think of it that seems to apply within a species as well, at least with humans!

 

Another way to think about the question isn't why dino's didn't develop "human like" intelligence and there is no evidence they did but why for example are chimpanzees so dumb compared to humans. We're 99% genetically the same an yet we're an order of magnitude more "intelligent". One theory is something akin to "neural density". Brain size alone isn't enough, the number of possible connections is and we have 4X as much as chimps although personally i find that idea a little too simplistic. Of course chimps have minimal self awareness too.

 

But to answer the original question re: dinos

 

1) They didn't get the mutation (whatever it is) that allowed human like intelligence/awareness to develop

2) They did get the mutation but it didn't confer the same advantages in that place and time.

3) Environmental pressure was lacking. Hard to prove since we know far too little about dinos but if you can become the dominant species WITHOUT intelligence why waste energy on it?

4) We don't know because we don't really understand intelligence very well.

 

take your pick