http://gizmodo.com/we-finally-know-why- ... socialflow

Not sure if this is legit, but if it is it reminds me of an argument I had at this board some years ago. It was about the possible size of intelligent aliens; I was told constantly that it was physically impossible for an animal smaller than about half a human to have human-level intelligence, and that if it were possible to compress neurological ability any further, evolution already would have done so.

Zadocfish2 wrote:I was told constantly that it was physically impossible for an animal smaller than about half a human to have human-level intelligence, and that if it were possible to compress neurological ability any further, evolution already would have done so.

If the Gizmodo article is correct, evolution demonstrably already did find a way to compress neurological ability further than what's found in humans.

Zadocfish2 wrote:...evolution already would have done so.

How can that be rational? There can be no guarantees for timescales for particular traits in evolution. To argue that "evolution already would have done so" seems to be to misunderstand evolution.

It's an interesting article.

GrahamH wrote:

Zadocfish2 wrote:...evolution already would have done so.

How can that be rational? There can be no guarantees for timescales for particular traits in evolution. To argue that "evolution already would have done so" seems to be to misunderstand evolution.

That's what I was thinking at the time, but it was the smarter, more senior members of the board telling me that, so I ceded the point...

You argued from authority at yourself.

As long as we can all agree that intelligent birds can't fly...

scott1328 wrote:As long as we can all agree that intelligent birds can't fly...

Oh you had to go there didn't you.

I argued about Grey Parrot intelligence with a biologist about a decade ago. I gave up.

Reptile intelligence has been underestimated too, especially in monitors and turtles/tortoises. I bred monitor lizards for a few years, and they are smarter than cats, easily. Fascinating animals.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/19/scien ... tupid.html

http://link.springer.com/article/10.100 ... 007-0109-0

Lets go fishing!

Then there are Monarch butterflies that navigate a 15,000 km loop on opposite sides of the continent over 4 generations.....

with a brain the size of the tip of a ball point pen.

I was observing a Hornet which frequented the roof of the staff catering tent on site. It turned up during warm weather, when lots of smaller insects would be flying around at the roof of the tent and would hunt those insects until it had had its fill. It was pretty regular in this activity and flew in and out of the tent with precision that the other insects (all flying fruitlessly at the roof) couldn't manage.

Now again we're talking a creature with a tiny rudimentary brain here which still knew, somehow, when the optimal time was to come and hunt at a location, which had only appeared there a few weeks previously. And it had learned how to effortlessly get in and out of said location.

It really is amazing how complicated the behaviors that can be generated from a relatively few neurons, are. According to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_neurons I'm guessing a typical hornet brain sits at around a million neurons.

I remember the first time I saw this video I was awestruck by how many outputs it is possible to generate from a network of a mere six neurons.