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On (2), how do we know elephants aren't more intelligent than us, but along some entirely different axis from the ones on which we excel? Obligatory: https://x
by api 6y ago
On (2), how do we know elephants aren't more intelligent than us, but along some entirely different axis from the ones on which we excel?
Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/638/ https://xkcd.com/638/
Of course on the contrary brain size may not matter much at all. Crows can count and display many other signs of shocking intelligence despite having tiny brains. Crows may be smarter than elephants, but if so then why would evolution select elephants to have all that extra worthless metabolic load? Brain matter is costly in both energy consumption and nutrients required to grow it. It's unlikely that elephants would have hypertrophied brains if all that brain matter were doing nothing.
At the end of the day I think crows and elephants show us how much we don't know.
- catalogia 6y agoI'm generally skeptical of any study of elephants because they're obviously a social species and they've been very badly mistreated for many generations. Even in cases where an individual elephant may receive a lot of attention and care from compassionate humans, that elephant may still be deprived of a healthy development by being deprived of other healthy elephants to live with. And even in cases where a group of wild elephants may have lived happily undisturbed for generations, those elephants would be inherently difficult to study in detail.
- api 6y agoThat's an excellent point. How intelligent would a human seem after years of abuse and solitary confinement? Solitary confinement alone can reduce humans to near catatonia.