Requirements for intelligent aliens

[zeroth]

This is discussed in other threads, but never as the topic. Assumming there is a planet with near-Earth properties and carbon/DNA/photo- or chemo-synthesis based happened the same way as it did here. What possible evolutionary tracts could ultimately end in intelligient life? And how might slightly increased or decreased gravity or temperture affect the possible tracts? What conditions encourage intelligence as an advantage?

 

Does an animal need to benefit from the use of tools, so that it will evolve a brain capable of using tools? And if that is the case than does it need a previous evolutionary force to give hands capable of grasping (like the combination of safety in trees and dangerous ground creatures gave us our hands)?

 

I know some ren's use sticks to get ants like apes do. Does this mean there is a chance for birds to gain intelligence someday too? Will we see birds dropping rocks on prey in the next million years?

 

Would we have stopped getting smarter if we were cold blooded, because there was no evolutionary advantage to a brain that could discover fire?

 

What evolutionary force could drive a water creature to intelligence, even just to the level that dolphins have now? What benefit would thought have to survival in the sea?

 

Looking at every type of creature known from insects to shell-fish what advantagous could intelligence give them?

 

Are insects like ants already on their way to intelligence to excel in ant colony battles. Will ants with bigger brains begin to gain military command skills and kill the dumber ants?

 

What other causes are there both for our own intelligence and that might lead to intelligence for other species in a different enviroment?

[ecoli]

The evolutionary answers to the situation you propose are infinite.

[Martin]

What conditions encourage intelligence as an advantage?

..

 

this impresses me as a really interesting question.

 

as Coli said, there could be many different conditions, there might not be just one that you need-----to drive evolution of intelligence

 

 

Let me just suggest this: RAPIDLY CHANGING conditions that require a species to change its strategy within one or a few generations

(faster than evolution could develop new genetic programming)

 

many species have genetically programmed behavior that looks intelligent or at least intricate but they are all directed towards one particular life-style

 

suppose the circumstances changed----to survive you needed to find new sources of food, maybe switch to a different kind, and new ways of shelter and protection, maybe you had to adapt to drought, or cold

 

 

another thing, a different way to ask the question maybe, is what kind of conditions favors a species developing LANGUAGE?

 

I think dolphins may have that big brain because there is a survival advantage to SONAR. they can construct the world from hearing echos.

also they can conduct social life where visibility is not so good

but that is not what you mean by intelligence, I think.

 

I dont know any species besides humans that has developed what I'd accept as a complex language

I cant answr your question except to make a guess that the key thing is to have the conditions of life change constantly for several generations and to have new situations coming where you really needed the ability to communicate complicated information in order to survive

[Sorcerer]

I like Ravens, they are so intelligent.

 

Social interaction drives intelligence, I think Humans are very baised in their definitions of intelligence. Theres probably some Ravens out there smarter than republicans.

[5614]

And how might slightly increased or decreased gravity or temperture affect the possible tracts?

slight increases in temp or gravity would not effect greatly, compare people who live in a desert to those who live in cold places.... and then there's places which have super hot summers and super cold winters (for an earth climate)

 

however if you greatly change temp or gravity in either positive or negative direction then you are going to have to change a lot.

+ temp: body made out of a new 'material' as the human skin would melt

- temp: either wrap up warm or layers of fat/blubber like wales

+ gravity: stronger internal bone structure to keep bodies up right, maybe shorter 'people'

- gravity: well, we could survive in less gravity... although if allowed to evolve in less gravity our muscles might become weaker as they are not needed as much.

[Mokele]

Social interaction drives intelligence, I think Humans are very baised in their definitions of intelligence.

 

I think it would be more accurate to say that complex social interactions lead to the development of what humans consider 'inteligence'. I've met individuals of primarily or partially asocial species (such as monitor lizards and crocodilians) that put dogs and cats to shame in terms of raw problem-solving, yet we consider those species "dumb" because they aren't as "interactive" (except when trying to kill us).

 

Mokele

[zeroth]

-I love the idea of rapidly changing enviroment, Martin. Also I had been wondering about the cause for dolphin intelligence for a while now, and that explaination seems plausible.

-Advanced communication is another good point I never considered.

-I don't think i've ever hear anyone defend that point of veiw before, 5614. But it does make sense.

-Let me define intelligence here to prevent further debate. The type of intelligence I care about is the kind that developes technology similar to our own.

 

I'm interested if anyone who knows more about how our brains work than I do can point to any other requirements for brains to function like ours. For instance I heard someone say reptiles could of never gotten this smart because their cold-blooded nature required a different type of brain functioning. And I would assume if ants had been larger they would have been more likely to develop an intelligent brain instead of communicating on instincts, the same may be true for birds.

[Sayonara]

Social interaction drives intelligence, I think Humans are very baised in their definitions of intelligence.

By 'definitions of intelligence', do you mean with regards to the collection of social interaction mechanisms that lead to it?

[ydoaPs]

Would we have stopped getting smarter if we were cold blooded, because there was no evolutionary advantage to a brain that could discover fire?

wouldn't fire be MORE of an advantage to cold-blooded creatures?

[Mokele]

wouldn't fire be MORE of an advantage to cold-blooded creatures?

 

Quite a bit moreso, yes.

 

For instance I heard someone say reptiles could of never gotten this smart because their cold-blooded nature required a different type of brain functioning.

 

Well, possibly. Reptile brains *are* different, but that doesn't necessarily mean inferior. In fact, many species with rather small brains demonstrate intellectual capabilities on par with dogs, cats and pigs, in terms of problem solving to get food.

 

However, I *do* think that warmbloodedness is essential to human-level intelligence, for an only tangentially related reason: metabolic cost. Brain cells are very expensive, and I've heard that our brain consumes 25% of our calories (though that may be an exaggeration; I don't remember the source, but I recall it being non-technical but mostly trustworthy).

 

Think of it like this: Say we have a 100 lb hominid and a 100 lb monitor lizard, populations of each. Say an individual in each population manifests a mutation that increases brain size by 20 cc's, with similar increases in congitive capacity. Now, bear in mind that the default hominid needs to consume about 20x as many calories as the default lizard.

 

So each one gets more brain, which has benefits (better problem-solving) and drawbacks (metabolic cost). For the hominid, with it's already high energy requirement, 20 cc's of brain matter is just a drop in the bucket, probably representing a 1% increase in total metabolic cost. But for the lizard, with it's extremely low metabolism, 20cc's of brain is a *huge* metabolic investment, probably increasing the amount of food needed by, say, 10% or more.

 

So, as noted, the increase in brain has a benefit (l33t skillz) and penalty (needing more food). If the benefit outweighs the penalty, it'll be selected for, and you know the rest. But while the benefit is mostly the same for the hominid and the lizard, the penalty is much higher for the lizard; it'd need to get a *lot* more use out of that 20 cc's than the hominid to make it worthwhile and selectively advantageous. Add to that the the hominid has an entire extra field of problems (social interactions) that the lizard barely has, and the chances of a big brain benefiting a lizard go way down.

 

Of course, given this situation and the seeming incogruity between reptile brain size and apparent intelligence, I'm tempted to wonder if they haven't simply found another way, a way of making their brains more powerful without more cells, more space, and much more metabolic cost.

 

But that's just me. Anyhow, I trust I've explained the barrier that ectothermy poses to the evolution of large brains, yes?

 

Mokele

[Kygron]

Here are my personal thoughts on this:

 

First, technology defined as "similar to our own" is too general. For example, you might say that complex social groups (read: government, military structure) are technology. In this case, many insects are very intellegent, as they have these things down pat. I'll assume you mean advanced versions of the tool-making technologies, and intellegence as highly adaptive and complex individule intellegence.

 

I'd like to propose that physical environment plays only a small role in the development of intellegence. This role is mostly in resources and motivational factors. I'll lead my discussion away from these, but keep in mind that having a hand (a resource) makes it much easier to hold a tool, and finding food (a motivation) is very usefull in getting a population to migrate.

 

My thoughts are that technology and intellegence are results of highly evolved behavior. (Complex) behavior is a result of a highly evolved organism. By highly evolved I mean adaptable, not just well adapted to a purpose. The human body is highly evolved because, even without our technology, we can survive in far more environments than most other life forms.

 

I believe we got to be so adaptable because we changed environments many times over our evolution. As we adapted to each new environment we retained adaptations to previous ones. This process must have happened so many times that complex behavior began to be more beneficial, since the evolution of behavior is far quicker than the evolution of organisms. Humans became a master of nothing, but a "jack of all trades".

 

Behavior evolves in a similar way as an organism. First a new behavior is created for a new enviorment. Then, while bio-evolution is just beggining its work, traditions are established for dealing with that one environment. These traditions act as organisms well fit for a purpose, making the organism very efficient at what it does. But to evolve intellegence I said that the behavior must be highly adaptive.

 

Here's where people may be confused. Isn't behavior defined as adaptive? No, behavior is a way for an organism to be adaptive. "Finding food", "mating", etc. are all behaviors, but my words for them are the same no matter what environment the organism is in! To be adaptable behavior you need, for example, language, formation (not existance) of a social structure, novel tool creation, and intellegence.

 

Intellegence works for behavior the same way behavior works for an organism. It allows quick behavior changes in order to adapt to a changing environment. An environment such as: Missionariess have just come and converted a whole population to a new religion, and that population must now change everything they knew within one generation! You see how this "behavioral environment" is diffenent from a physical one?

 

Now to directly answer the topic question... Intellegence evolves when the environment provides the resources and motivation for a behavior set to require quick changes. (Complex) behavior evolves then the environment provides the resources and motivation for an organism to require quick adaptations.

 

I doubt that the overall environment matters much. Temp, gravity, etc.... as long a SOME organism evolves adaptability, you still have your chance. Same thing with the "behavioral environment", religion, art, sports, or lack thereof doesn't matter as much as the fact that massive change leads to a way to manage it all!

 

 

I'm sorry, I end up writing essays, but this is the only forum I currently know of to express my views. Please feel free to "set me straight" if my facts are wrong, or better yet, lead me to where I'll fit in better!

[Deathby]

Why don't we trace human evolution a bit?

 

Lets start with the primates. One of the defining characteristics of primates is their "flat" faces. Their eyes aren't on the sides of the head (like a cow) but are flat. This is an adaptation to jumping around through trees. That requires quick reflexes and thinking, which I think are strong factors towards evolution. Much of our brain I've been told is devoted, at least partially, towards vision in some way or another. It also required grasping of branches requiring fairly complex motor mechanics.

 

Now evolving into hominids. We retained those grasping hands, but now they've been freed up, which means we can carry things and hold things. I'd class this fairly highly towards your type of intelligence. According to Walking With Mammals, scientists believe the discovery of fire and more importantly, cooking, allowed us to expand in brain size because it allowed us a higher-protein diet. And I don't see how you could invent fire without some kind of grasping limb. In addition, since we'd have evolved on the plains, I think we'd need some kind of social structure like meerkats, with sentries and such to look out for prey. As we've said these sorts of groups help develop intelligence.

 

And just on another note, i believe dolphin's brains are big, but I remember reading something in a science magazine bout them not being overly complex or interlinked. Octopusses (yes that is the most correct plural) are very intelligent, are not cold-blooded, vertebrates, terrestrial or even social. I think their intelligence is linked to their unique camoflage ability (even better than chameleons), as well as their advanced eyes.

[Auburngirl05]

And just on another note' date=' i believe dolphin's brains are big, but I remember reading something in a science magazine bout them not being overly complex or interlinked. [/quote']

 

I think you're right with this line of thinking, brain size isn't always correlated to intelligence. Monotremes have notably small, smooth brains, and yet echidnas have been known to outperform cats in various intelligence tests.

[Hellbender]

I know some ren's use sticks to get ants like apes do. Does this mean there is a chance for birds to gain intelligence someday too? Will we see birds dropping rocks on prey in the next million years?

 

There are already surprisingly intelligent birds. African grey parrots can be trained to vocalize human words with a knowledge of what they are saying. Birds in the family corvidae are mostly pretty intelligent, especially crows and ravens.

[AzurePhoenix]

Don't forget the octopus. For spineless wads of meat, they're pretty smart. Yet they're antisocial (though intensely communicative(or is it cuttlefish and squid that are so communicative?)). Ever see "The Future is Wild" ? I've got the DVD set, and it's awesome. They give a very good picture of a path of development that could lead to arboreal, and eventually, intelligent cephalopods. Frankly, I doubt we could ever surmise the requirements for intelligence until we find at least several intelligent (and all-around advanced) species to compare ourselves with.