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If that were true, why aren't sharks the most intelligent beings on the planet? They've been around in more-or-less their current form since the dinosaurs were
by collias 9y ago
If that were true, why aren't sharks the most intelligent beings on the planet? They've been around in more-or-less their current form since the dinosaurs were around.
Intelligence (as far as we know) requires a brain, which requires a lot of calories to work correctly. Increasing calorie intake requirements is not something that survival-selecting evolution would select for.
Evolution selects for survival, not intelligence. Sharks and other animals have survived very well for millions of years without ever developing a higher level of intelligence. If anything, intelligence seems like it might be a happy mistake of evolution, and potentially very rare since evolution doesn't select for it explicitly.
- goatlover 9y agoIt's probably the right combination of a body, intelligence, social structure and environmental pressures that lead to sophisticated tool making societies that pass their knowledge on down so it accumulates. So far, we're the only species on Earth to have enough of the right combination to get this far. So maybe it only happens 1 in 1000 worlds with multicellular life. How many planets does that leave in the Milky Way? That's the sort of calculation SETI does.
- usaiditurself 9y agoyou answered your own question in the sentence that followed it. sharks face little pressure to evolve, so they aren’t changing very much