Are Animals Evolving Intellectually?

[fateofmorality]

Hi all. I'm at work right now, so obviously instead of doing actual work I decided to surf the web. And I found a video of an dog figuring out how to get on top of a counter, and open up a toaster oven to steal a piece of food.

At first cute, but that got me thinking. To do this, the animal had to use a fair amount of problem solving, (Moving a chair, opening the toaster oven, etc.) a skill that humans and creatures that are considered intelligent have.

I have also noticed that a lot of animals don't have these abilities. My friends house cat can't figure out how to open a box or a door for example. My moms cat knows how to work a door handle, and how to push the lock off of the top of her half door to get out of the house.

I don't know if this is a common trend among animals for an extended period of time. But a couple 10,000 years from now, do you think there could be a possibility of an animal evolving some sort of sentience or higher level of thinking? It's an idea that's been used in movies and books before (Planet of the Apes), but do you think it could become a reality? I think it could. Even though I don't want my bacon talking to me before I eat it.

[Adam Jensen]

Maybe.

But remember, intelligence is not the end goal of evolution. Survival and reproduction is. If there's pressure in the animal's environment that leads to more intelligence that leads to better survival to reproduction, then intelligence will be favored.

This was the case for humans, but ultimately, evolution is only about survival and reproduction, so animals aren't likely to evolve to be more intelligent, unless their environment pushes their evolution to develop that way.

Think of the cockroach. I consider them "highly evolved." They are not intelligent, not at all, but they survive and reproduce and they're damn good at it.

[Rukentuts]

Unlike human beings, animals can actually adapt to their environment.

[Tierbook]

Unlike human beings, animals can actually adapt to their environment.

Humans can adapt to pretty much any environment.... we are certainly better at it than any species of animal

[Vvulf]

Wild animals are evolving all the time. Whether the evolutionary forces acting on their species will create "smarter" animals is hard to tell, and generally happens so slowly, humans would be hard pressed to notice it within our own lifetime.

Domestic animals can be breed for what the breeder perceives as "smarter", so it potentially can speed up the evolutionary process, but also runs the risk of creating a "shallow gene pool". Several popular dog breeds have been negatively impacted because of sudden popularity due to movies or TV shows ("Lady and the Tramp" resulted in a ton of inbred Cocker Spanials as breeders rushed them out the door heedless of good breeding practices. Same for Dalmatians). There are border collies that have vocabularies of over 2000 words, but that's still not "language", which is constructing sentences. Still, ongoing work with dogs is promising. Of all animals, they really do understand humans best.

10,000 years seems like a long time. Not sure it's long enough though for a species to evolve what we would consider "reason" - the ability to problem solve or think. Many animals are already "sentient" which is the ability to feel pleasure and pain.
Here's a fun video about the dog with the voluminous vocabulary:

[Sting]

I don't think there's a niche for another intellectual species, land based atleast. Might see some deepsea stuff eventually emerge?

[Raptor With a Saber]

Probably..but then again who knows. Humans brains are getting smaller because we are learning to not need the entire thing. Dinosaurs were said to be peanut sized brains for such large creatures.... Just reinforces my theory that Dinosaurs up and left Earth millions of years ago and the asteroid actually just wiped out any proof they were actually civilized.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Depends on the animal. I'd like to think so but in their own way much like humans do.

[Rukentuts]

Humans can adapt to pretty much any environment.... we are certainly better at it than any species of animal

No, we change the environment to suit us.

When was the last time you trotted around the Alaskan winter without clothes?

[Tierbook]

No, we change the environment to suit us.

When was the last time you trotted around the Alaskan winter without clothes?

same time i saw a moose in the desert. I don't really see a difference between using your abilities to make a climate suiting you and just suiiting the environment

[Deleted]

Absolutely.

[grimsanta]

There would have to be an evolutionary benefit for an animal to increase its intelligence. That means, the increased intelligence would result in more reproduction and longer survival of the species. Intelligence evolves at a slower rate than other functions in the animal kingdom because small leaps in intelligence do not affect the longevity of their species like physical changes might.

So no, most aren't. Some probably are, but not to any point we would notice, and certainly not in our lifetimes.

[Rukentuts]

I don't really see a difference between using your abilities to make a climate suiting you and just suiiting the environment

Because only one is actually the definition of evolutionary adaptation.

[Tierbook]

Because only one is actually the definition of evolutionary adaptation.

Humans evolved to have higher brain power....

[chrisnumbers]

I don't think the way a non-intelligent species survives can be compared to an intelligent one. There are different methods and techniques. Like someone else said, cockroaches. We're more intelligent, but perhaps cockroaches have done it better. But, any species that is alive right now is doing pretty well, "intelligent" or not. Intelligence isn't necessary to survive so I don't think it can change so much that it becomes a dominant trait.

Humans evolved to have higher brain power....

Perhaps humans always had the brain power. What evolved were their methods and tools.

[Fahrenheit]

I thought I read or heard somewhere that dogs have been becoming increasingly intelligent as the generations have passed along, due to being in such close contact with humans. As to the truth of such claims I do not know, but it makes sense.

That being said, I'm sure a cat today is just as dumb as a cat 2000 years ago... fuck cats.

[zealo]

Humans can adapt to pretty much any environment.... we are certainly better at it than any species of animal

Humans do not adapt to the environment, we adapt the environment to the humans.

True that we can adapt to many kinds of environments, but these days its more of a case of adapting the environment than adapting to it in a lot of countries.

[Rukentuts]

Right, we developed intellect to quickly see means to alter our current state to make our lives easier, rather than wait for a genetic mutation to replicate through the species over millions of years.

We don't "alter our state". We use tools. Our states remain the same. If we were suddenly without our tools, we'd be fucked on so many levels.

In fact, I wonder how much our reliance of tools has actually devolved our species. Think about it. How many people could actually survive on their own without any societal interactions whatsoever? The number is extremely few.

Remember the days when people could think critically to learn new concepts? Now they just Google the answer, and when they're without internet they're completely and utterly helpless.

[Underverse]

Not on the time scale we experience. If a dog learns tricks, it's doing just that - learning. Not evolving.

[Dezerte]

I got two cats, siblings. One is a lazy bum, the other however is an evil genius.

Can animals develop sentience? Absolutely, there arguably already are several animals now that display sentience. We've also seen what can happen with human influenced evolution (i.e. dogs), we could do that to any animal in theory, but the question is should we selectively breed animals for our curiosity's sake?