Does the intelligence of human beings fill a niche that in some way prevents other intelligences from evolving? As the dominant species, on top of the foodchai

Does the intelligence of human beings fill a niche that in some way prevents other intelligences from evolving? As the dominant species, on top of the foodchain, I can see that we might try to prevent a rival intelligence from competing for resources; but it seems that that would not prevent that rival intelligence from arising in the first place. The brains of birds have developed further since our common ancestor, and it seems reasonable that an intelligence similar to our own could evolve in quite a different brain structure. (I think abstraction is the key need; maybe grammar is somehow based on an internal mechanism for relating abstractions, but it certainly helps in communication - and without that, we would gain much less benefit from our intelligence.)