Birb
I'm reading Bird Brain by Nathan Emery, about intelligence in birds - tool-making, puzzle-solving, recognising themselves in mirrors. Birds' brains have evolved to do many of the same jobs ours have, but the architecture is different. Emery discusses the theories about how intelligence arises. The leading theory is that social animals need social intelligence to keep track of their relationships, to know what others are thinking and to deceive. This theory depresses me, because it suggests that bullying - which is, at core, about excluding someone from the group - will be a universal practice of intelligent species, wherever we find them.
But there are other theories. One is that spatio-temporal intelligence is needed to find food; an avian example is the scrub jay, which can remember not just where it has cached food, but also when the food was cached and who might have seen it being hidden. Another is that using and making tools to obtain food requires brain power. And finally, there's innovation: "the ability to produce novel behaviors or solve novel problems". All of these kinds of intelligence, social, spatio-temporal, tool-making, and innovation, might be at play in the smartest birds.
I don't know whether non-social intelligence could produce a species that's self-aware in the way that human beings are; my idea about that is that since we must model others' minds, we can therefore model our own minds. But if birds' brains have evolved their own structures for doing the same work as ours, maybe there are other paths to self-awareness and to the cooperation needed to build a civilisation. It's soothing - and also intriguing - to imagine a species, a culture, with the benefits of language and technology, but without social anxiety, without bullying, perhaps even without prejudice or war.
(I also watched the documentary "Beak and Brain". Originally from Germany, it includes a marvellous scene of a camera operator clambering across a steep, wet New Zealand hillside, hoping to get a shot of some keas. He loses his footing, slides down to land with a bump, and emits a very Kiwi "Ah, fahk". The keas do some sarcastic flying.)
But there are other theories. One is that spatio-temporal intelligence is needed to find food; an avian example is the scrub jay, which can remember not just where it has cached food, but also when the food was cached and who might have seen it being hidden. Another is that using and making tools to obtain food requires brain power. And finally, there's innovation: "the ability to produce novel behaviors or solve novel problems". All of these kinds of intelligence, social, spatio-temporal, tool-making, and innovation, might be at play in the smartest birds.
I don't know whether non-social intelligence could produce a species that's self-aware in the way that human beings are; my idea about that is that since we must model others' minds, we can therefore model our own minds. But if birds' brains have evolved their own structures for doing the same work as ours, maybe there are other paths to self-awareness and to the cooperation needed to build a civilisation. It's soothing - and also intriguing - to imagine a species, a culture, with the benefits of language and technology, but without social anxiety, without bullying, perhaps even without prejudice or war.
(I also watched the documentary "Beak and Brain". Originally from Germany, it includes a marvellous scene of a camera operator clambering across a steep, wet New Zealand hillside, hoping to get a shot of some keas. He loses his footing, slides down to land with a bump, and emits a very Kiwi "Ah, fahk". The keas do some sarcastic flying.)