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Do we know that intelligent life is an evolutionary inevitability? Most of these discussions seem to assume that it is, but I haven't read any biologists menti

• slg 7y ago
  Or to take it a step further, whether it is inevitable that intelligent life will have both the capability and opportunity to make their presence known. Maybe some planets are full of superintelligent dolphin-like creatures that had their development stall because they didn't have the dexterity to manipulate tools to the extent that sapiens can. Or maybe there is intelligent life on a planet similar to Europa that never prioritized space exploration/communication because instead of an Earthlike atmosphere their planet is surrounded by miles of ice.
• koheripbal 7y ago
  What we can infer from the gradual evolution of various species on Earth is that brains do seem to evolve larger, more complex, more efficient - though are often bottlenecked by other costs. If you look at a snapshot of all life on Earth over tens of millions of years, the average brain size of dominant species has clearly increased.
  • kevinmchugh 7y ago
    Tens of millions of years is a pretty small snapshot to use. Brains have existed on earth for approximately 500 million years. Life for about 7 times that.
• jtolmar 7y ago
  I don't think we even know that a planet that's had life twice as long gets twice as much evolution. The rate of evolutionary change is far from constant, and whatever factors affect that rate might be different on some other planet.