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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (246516)	8/18/2005 6:38:47 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572481

"What is the quality that makes us different.......smarter? Is it simply because we have opposable thumbs?" There were probably many factors. Bonobos, chimps and humans have pretty complex societies and tend to be generalists. As generalists, they can exploit feeding opportunities as they come up. So they are more immune to climate and other changes that would force other animals to migrate or die. Or both. I suspect strongly that the ancestors of humans were forced out of the forests onto the coast by some climate change. Because they weren't well suited for that environment, intelligence was a decided advantage. So you are saying that due to environmental reasons or something similar, humans defaulted to better intelligence rather than more hair or better agility in the trees; that intelligence is nothing more than just another random trait in the genome that is available for the picking and choosing by an organism; that its just by chance that it became a huge deciding factor in the human species survival on this planet? There also were some physical changes like losing the hair, bipedal locomotion, subcutaneous fat, swimming, the hair pattern on the back, etc. Maybe a relationship with porpoises was developed during that period and the dolphins remember what we forgot... So you are suggesting that dolphins may be even superior to humans in intelligence but they manifest it in ways we don't understand. I guess I don't see it. Don't get me wrong......I think dolphins are unusually bright. The stories of their saving a human who has been attacked by a shark are extraordinary to me. I have a respect for the ability of all animals. I do think they are smarter than we give them credit. I had a dog who always knew when I was depressed and would do the funniest things to cheer me up. However, maybe due to a personal bias, I do not think they are more intelligent or even as intelligent as we are. Now of course, when it comes to character and loyalty, they beat us hands down........but then that's a whole different story.