Intelligence
A Uniquely Human Characteristic
Or
A Universal Phenomena?
Jack Barry
Summer Carrillo
Ashley Van Osdel
What is Intelligence?
 A very general mental capability that, among
other things, involves the ability to reason, plan,
solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend
complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from
experience…it reflects a broader and deeper
capability for comprehending our surroundings—
"catching on", "making sense" of things, or
"figuring out" what to do.
 "Mainstream Science on Intelligence” 1994.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_(trait)
• The earliest unicellular organisms on Earth
did not possess nervous systems.
• The first multicelled animals (metazoans)
developed simple nervous systems about 560
million years ago.
• More recent groups, such as vertebrates,
have even larger brains and suggested a
trend.
• Consistent with this pattern is that the most
encephalized animal, modern Homo sapiens,
arose only 500,000 years ago.
• http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_intelligence_030821.html
Two Types of Mechanisms for the
Increase of Intelligence
• Passive -- If earlier organisms arose near a lower
limit on brain size, then, as diversity increased, mean
brain size could only increase along with it. Brain
size, in John Maynard Smiths words, had "nowhere
to go but up." We term this mechanism a passive
trend because it does not imply any active selection
for increased intelligence.
• Active -- In contrast, an active or driven trend
involves an upward tendency toward increasingly
higher encephalization levels induced by natural
selection.
• http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_intelligence_030821.ht
ml
• If trends in intelligence are driven, then less
intelligent species will evolve into more
intelligent species more frequently at a faster
rate than otherwise. Therefore, the expected
number of highly intelligent species at any
given time will be greater than if no such
tendency existed. Further, larger numbers of
highly intelligent species increases the
probability that at least one such species will
survive extinction, or in other words, that
intelligent life will be continuously present
somewhere.
•
http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_intelligence_030821.html
Humans are at the
top of the food
chain!
• For the past 6 million years humans and their
most archaic ancestors have been evolving
and adapting
• Some time between 2.5 &1.8 million years
ago Homo habilis first used primitive stone
tools
• In 1997 a sheep, “Dolly”, was cloned
• This is a lot of technology in not very much
time
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Cetaceans
• Cetaceans are the mammals
most fully adapted to aquatic
life.
Includes whales, dolphins and porpoises
Evolved from land mammals during the Eocene Epoch
Vestiges of mammalian hands and feet can still be seen
 Cetaceans are highly encephalized, possessing EQs
that range very close to that of humans and higher
than that of other mammals.
 Cetaceans haven’t shared a common ancestor with
primates for over 85 million years. As a result, their
brains are very differently organized than primate
brains.
 They can afford us the opportunity to examine a
highly elaborated brain that has taken a very different
evolutionary path from our own.
 http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_intelligence_030821.ht
ml
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Astrobiology
• Multidisciplinary field utilizing physics,
biology, and geology as well as
philosophy to speculate about the nature
of life on other worlds
• Involves the Drake Equation
• Drake and his colleagues found there to
be 10 intelligent civilizations in our galaxy
• Johnson, Stevens F. The Drake Equation. Department of
Physics/Science, Bemidji State University. June 25, 2003
QuickTime™ and a
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DNA Equivalent
• Nucleotides other than DNA could create life
• “DNA is so unbelievably complex, how in the
world was it first synthesized? Are there
different ways to make DNA? Was ours just
the first out of the gate? Was there a whole
zoo of DNAs out there, competing with each
other? Is this the most efficient way to make
it, or is this simply the way you make it under
the conditions of 3.5 billion years ago, when
we presumably first appeared?” -Peter Ward
•
http://www.astrobio.net/news/article2168.html
http://www.weirdparanormal.com/zPicture2alien.gif