Chapter 4 Chapter 3 The Evolution of Animal Intelligence

I know that apes behave at every moment as if they had a mind, very similar to the human mind.They may not think as much, as deeply, or plan ahead as we do.Apes make tools and coordinate their movements while hunting their prey, as do monkeys.But none of the monkeys has been observed to plan far enough ahead, and to combine tool-making skills with predation for a general purpose, activities that were crucial in early human life.These higher skills that I have as a human being are why I can build my shelter, earn my wages, and obey the law.These skills make me behave like a civilized human, but it doesn't mean that I can think and apes can only react.

Answering the "how" almost answers the "why".Just keep in mind that the "how" question divides into two extremes, sometimes called immediate and ultimate causation.Adepts can even get confused sometimes and find that what they've been arguing about is just different sides of the same thing, so I thought I needed some background here. When you ask "how did that work?", you sometimes use the word "how" in a short-term, mechanical sense—how something is being done in someone's hands right now.But sometimes you use the word "how" in a long-term, changing sense—including changes that occur in a range of animal groups over the course of species evolution.The physiological mechanism of intellectual behavior is the immediate "how"; the ancient mechanism that allowed the brain to evolve into its modern form is the ultimate "how."You can sometimes "explain" in one sense without even involving the "how" in another.Completeness in such a false sense is of course a good cover-up.

Furthermore, the question of physiological "how" can be examined from different levels of organization.Consciousness and intellect are supreme forms of the mind, but they are often confused with more elementary mental processes, such as those used to recognize a friend or tie a shoelace.Of course, it is likely that these simpler neural mechanisms underlie our ability to think logically and make metaphors. There are also different levels of explanations for the "how" of evolution. Simply attributing it to "caused by mutations" may not be enough to explain the evolution involving the participation of the entire group.Both physiological and evolutionary levels of explanation help us to understand human intelligence in detail, and may even help us assess how artificial intelligence or alien intelligence evolved, which can be done differently through top-down ( top-down) design".

Each of us marveled at the bald eagles as the boat cruised through the narrow passage at the end of the Georgia Strait between Vancouver Island and Columbia.We found eagle nests one after another, the eagles were busy feeding the young eaglets waiting to be fed, and some eagles perched on the branches idlely. I stare at the raven, which has found a clam, trying to open its shell to access the meat inside, while the clam is closing its shell tightly.The raven picked up the clam with its beak, flew to the height of several floors, and then threw the clam onto the rocks on the bank.I saw it do this 3 times before getting its delicious meal out of its shattered shell.

Is that an instinctive behavior, or learned from other companions?Or learned through trial and error with occasional success?Was that an intellectual innovation?Some ancestors of the raven thought about how to eat mussel meat, and got the answer?We hardly ever get to the middle stage between "reacting" and "thinking," but we also have an untested belief that "more is better"—more behavioral choices are better than fewer . There are many experts in nature who are very good at a certain field.Like a featured actor, only one role, never a set.Most animals are specialists; gorillas, for example, can process around 20kg of fresh plants of all kinds every day.Giant pandas are equally good at this.

In terms of foraging, neither gorillas nor pandas are as slick as horses.Their ancestors may have lived in a different ecological environment and needed to use their brains to find food, but they can't imagine now in an ecological environment that does not require much intelligence.The same is true for the marine mammals seen on cruise ships in Alaska, which now live like those low-intelligence fish, eating other fish for a living. In contrast, the chimpanzee's diet is much richer: fruit, bugs, leaves, and even baby monkeys, piglets, etc. What contributed to their extensive predation ability? Many action programs are innate, and many others are acquired, and some are reorganized from existing programs, so that some new behaviors suddenly appear. Omnivores, For example, octopuses, crows, bears and chimpanzees have more "magic tricks" because their ancestors had to change various food sources. They also need more sensory templates, that is, the images and sounds of their search for prey.

Another way of accumulating new behaviors is through living and playing in groups, where new combinations can be discovered.Longevity must have contributed to the accumulation of learned and newly established behaviors, which is what is lacking in the best of the invertebrates, the octopus, which in some respects is as intelligent as the rat.Vertebrate species include intelligent animals—ravens among birds, but also marine mammals, bears, and primates. If specialization is the thing that matters most of the time, what makes it possible for animals to develop multiple talents?One answer: fickle environments.This answer emphasizes the role of environmental factors in natural selection.But let me begin with the other major factor contributing to the development of intelligence, the herd life itself, which includes the sexual side of natural selection.

Social intelligence is the other side of intelligence.I don't mean mere imitation, but the challenges of living in groups that require innovative problem-solving.For example, the British psychologist Nichol S. Humphrey argued that social interactions (rather than tool use) played a pivotal role in human evolution. Group living is undoubtedly the catalyst for the expansion of mobile sets.Some animals do not stay with their own kind and cannot learn by observing each other.Except for short-term friendships, an adult gibbon rarely sees its adult counterparts, because their food is spread out, and a large area is required to support an adult gibbon.A pair of mother and child (female) tends to form the largest group (except for brief marriages formed by adolescent gibbons), so there are not many opportunities for intellectual transmission.

Living in groups, in addition to promoting the spread of new skills, is also full of conflicts to be resolved between individuals (such as pecking order).An animal may need to hide food out of the Beastmaster's sight so it can eat it alone.You need a lot of sensory templates to avoid confusing individuals, and a lot more memory to remember past interactions with each of your companions.Living in groups is far more challenging to survive and reproduce than the environmental impacts that solitary gibbons typically face.Therefore, living in groups is indeed crucial to the accumulation of "wonderful works"-although I think the potential intelligence of a social dog may not be better than that of a solitary gibbon.

Natural selection for social intelligence does not involve the life-sustaining factors usually emphasized in adaptationist arguments.The advantages of social intelligence manifest themselves primarily through what Darwin called sexual selection.Not all adult animals have the opportunity to pass on their genes.In a multiple-female mating system, only a few males have a chance to mate after they have demonstrated their superiority or subjugated their fellow animals.Acceptance as a gregarious partner may be important for males in the mating system of female choice.For example, they need to be good at grooming, happy to be shared with their food, etc.Some males are better than others at detecting a female's approaching estrous cycle, and are able to make a female leave other females and go into the bush with her. These animals have far more opportunities to pass on their genes, even In sexually promiscuous mating systems. (This mechanism of female selection bootstrapping may improve more than just intelligence. As mentioned elsewhere, if a female insists that the male's language skills be at least as good as her own, then the female chooses Can be an excellent mechanism for improving language skills.)

Primate socialism is exactly what is required by their very nature to establish and maintain strategic biological systems; they must be able to assess the consequences of their own actions, the likely behavior of others, the balance of gains and losses, and all These are all in a general context in which the evidence on which their estimates are based is fleeting, ambiguous, and capricious, not in the least a consequence of their own actions.In such a case, "social skills" go hand in hand with intelligence, and ultimately the required intellectual abilities are superlative.The game of gregarious stratagem and counter-trick cannot be played solely on the basis of accumulated knowledge...it requires, I think, a level of intelligence unmatched by any animal that otherwise survives by country. The environmental pressures that likely drive natural selection occur most frequently in temperate zones; there is a period of plant dormancy that lasts several months each year.Grasses are nutritious even during dormancy, so herbivory is a strategy for overwintering; another natural selection that requires more complex neural mechanisms involves eating those herbivores.Existing wild apes live in areas close to the equator. They do not have the problem of lack of resources in winter, but they may have to adapt to the dry season. Climate change is the second most common stress, even in the tropics: Each year the weather shifts to a new pattern.Multi-year droughts are a well-known example, but can sometimes last centuries, or even millennia.In some cases climate patterns vary from place to place.We saw an instance in Glacier Bay west of Juneau.When explorers passed the mouth of Glacier Bay 200 years ago, they reported that it was full of glaciers.Now, the glacier has almost retreated about 100 kilometers, and Glacier Bay has merged into the sea again.In the side valleys, there are still a series of large glaciers.As our cruise ship passed it kept a certain distance from the iceberg, which gradually melted into the sea, and even as we watched, large pieces of ice broke off and fell into the sea. When I was on the boat talking to a geographer about the glaciers, I learned that some of the glaciers here are still growing (the ones we're going to see), but others are receding.The process of increase and decrease can be carried out simultaneously in the same place and under the same climate. How is this going on?I asked. A glacier can be in a "growth phase" for hundreds or thousands of years, even when the climate turns cold.Meltwater from icebergs during hot summers, for example, can flow under a glacier and erode its steep connection to bedrock, allowing the glacier to slide down (even if melting has stopped).When the impact occurs, this in turn causes the ice to fracture, thus creating more vertical cracks.The melted water on the surface of the glacier can also flow to the bedrock, which further acts as a lubricant and accelerates the glacier's sliding process.The iceberg cracked from the edge and began to crumble.In the end you can see the glaciers surge, thousands of meters per month, but in Glacier Bay, the icebergs melt into the sea in large chunks, and then drift to warmer areas and melt. Later in that trip; we saw the Hubbard Glacier, a 5,000 meter long ice cliff taller than our boat.Periodically, large chunks of ice loosened by the waves break off and fall into the sea.On the right side of Yukatat Bay, looking back we can see Russell Fjord.Just 10 years ago, the entrance to the fjord was blocked by floating ice from the Hubbard Glacier.The glacier was advancing faster than the waves could chip it away and carry it away, so that it drifted to the mouth of the fjord, blocking it.Water began to rise from behind the ice dams, threatening the survival of trapped marine mammals as seawater became increasingly diluted with meltwater.The ice dam collapsed when the lake rose about two stories above sea level. We know all about the surge of glaciers in Washington state because they blocked the Columbia River at least 59 times before 13,000 years ago.Every time an ice dam fails, huge amounts of water rush into the middle of Washington state, pitting the land and rushing out to sea.Perhaps the earth-shattering roar served as a warning to those trying to catch squatfish in the valley, driving them into the hills. Plugging off a fjord could have far more serious consequences.Fjords are often divided by ice from glaciers, just as rubble dams formed by landslides temporarily seal off valleys.But the blocked fjord acts as a natural freshwater reservoir. When the ice dam finally collapsed, a large amount of freshwater flowed into the nearby sea. What happened for half a year was completed in one day.The fresh water stays in the shallow layers of the ocean and only mixes with the sea water after a while.Unfortunately, the desalination of ocean surface waters may have had serious consequences in Greenland's fjords: it has blocked the North Atlantic Current that has warmed Europe's climate for centuries.I shall return briefly to this topic at a later date. I say this to point out that the formation of glaciers and their melting are highly asymmetrical; this is not the same thing as the energy exchange between freezing and melting ice in a refrigerator ice tray.When the glacier freezes, new snowfall will fill the cracks, greatly reducing the lubrication of the sliding ice.Its melted form is more like a house of cards slowly collapsing. We are familiar with the "operation mode" of glaciers, and the "cooling-fan cooling" of air-conditioning equipment is an example.Not only do glaciers work, but so do ocean currents and continental climates, and perhaps in some cases their operations are even triggered by distant glacial drift.Changes in temperature and rainfall are sometimes so rapid throughout the year that they become major factors influencing the evolutionary process, giving intelligent animals like the raven a real edge over their mediocre competitors.This is exactly what this chapter sets out to illustrate: how the crank of evolution was turned into a critical position so that our multifaceted capabilities—extensive repertoire of behaviors and excellent guesswork—come from a range of climatic instabilities. a special impetus. Paleometeorologists have discovered that many regions of the planet are affected by sudden changes in climate.Decadal droughts are an example, and we now understand the 30-year cycle in which the Sahara expands and shrinks.El Niño events (EINins), which have an average cycle of about six years, "now appear to be an important factor affecting rainfall in North America. There have been dozens of periods in Earth's history when forests disappeared for decades due to sudden drops in temperature and rainfall; The last Siberia-like climate lasted for more than a thousand years before turning back. When the definitive evidence for these sudden climate changes was found in the 1980s, we thought they were characteristic of ice ages. (The ice has been growing and shrinking for the past 2.5 million years, with major melt occurring about every 100,000 years.) There has not been a sudden cooling period in the past 10,000 years. It appears we are now in an interglacial period without sudden climate change.The warm period since the last major glacial melt (130,000 years ago) has been quite volatile compared with the current interglacial period; the earlier warm period lasted 10,000 years and was interspersed with two sudden cold periods period, one lasted 70 years and the other 750 years.Between these two cold periods the pine forests in Germany were replaced by shrubs and herbaceous plants that are endemic to what is now Central Siberia. We are now far from the period that threatened civilization.We've been living in surprisingly stable times, climatically speaking. Climate vagaries have led to the disappearance of fruit trees, which has been disastrous for populations in certain regions of many species of monkeys.While other omnivores are also affected, they can substitute other foods, and since there are few animals left to compete, their populations of offspring will grow after the crisis has passed. During such a growth period, there are shortly enough resources to allow most offspring to survive to reproductive age, even those variants that are abnormal due to genetic shuffling but produce sperm and eggs.Typically, these variants die in infancy.But during the growth period, they face little competition, and it seems that the normal rules of competition are temporarily suspended.When the next crisis comes; some variants may be better able to cope, able to survive on leftovers.Traditionally, the theme of the Darwinian process has been the survival of the fittest, but here we see that evolution has a creative aspect that is facilitated by the rebound after hard times. The upright posture of hominids gradually became established 4 million years ago, when Africa was cooling and drying, but the size of the brain did not change much.So far, there is no evidence of any brain enlargement during Africa's climate change over the past 300,000 to 260,000 years, during which time many new species of mammals appeared in Africa.It is not intended here to discuss all of the factors involved in human evolution extensively, but it is important to note that the hominid brain began to grow between 2.5 million and 2 million years ago, and its cerebral cortex continued to grow, strikingly The land is more than 4 times that of the apes.This period was the glacial period. Although Africa is not the main area where glaciers occur, it may have experienced severe fluctuations in climate change as ocean currents reorganized.This time the ice age was not limited to the Northern Hemisphere; glaciers in the Andes were also changing at the same time. The first major event on Atlantic ice drifts occurred between 2.51 and 2.37 million years ago to latitudes comparable to those of the United Kingdom.Since then, ice sheets in Antarctica, Greenland, Northern Europe and North America have formed, albeit melted from time to time - known as interglacial periods (we are now in one of these, which began about 10,000 years ago).Ice ebbs and flows with a slow rhythm linked to changes in the tilt of Earth's axis and Earth's orbit around the sun. The season when Earth is closest to the sun (perihelion) varies and is now the first week of January; it varies slowly with the calendar, returning to January after 19,000 to 26,000 years (depending on the positions of the other planets).The configurations of the other planets repeat about every 400,000 years (approximately every 100,000 years when the Sun approaches Earth).The sun's gravity changes the shape of Earth's orbit from approximately circular to elliptical (in July we are 3% farther from the sun and receive 7% less heat).In addition, the inclination of the earth varies between 22.0 degrees and 246 degrees, and its change cycle is 41,000 years (the last maximum inclination occurred 9,100 years ago, it is currently 23.4 degrees, and is decreasing).The combination of these 3 rhythms results in a larger glacier melt every 100,000 years, generally when the Earth's inclination is at its greatest and perihelion is in June, which causes particularly hot summers in local northern latitudes with most ice sheets . Superimposed on top of the slow glacial periods were the aforementioned periods of sudden cooling and warming.The first occurred 13,000 years ago, when all factors affecting Earth's orbit around the sun combined to produce hot summers in the northern hemisphere that melted half of the planet's ice.This sudden cooling, known as the Younyer Dryas, is named after an arctic plant (Dryas) whose pollen was found to have a rather sudden onset in formations at the bottom of ancient lakes in Denmark.Studies of ice cores taken from the Greenland ice sheet show that it happened as suddenly as a drought.The annual rainfall has decreased, winter blizzards have increased sharply, and the average temperature in Europe has dropped to 7ny Celsius.All of this happened over decades.This sudden cold lasted for more than 1,000 years until the sudden return of the warm rains. (Speaking of global warming due to the greenhouse effect, note that the previous period of sudden cooling occurred during a major gradual global warming period). The core of the Greenland iceberg was formed during the last tenth of the 2.5 million-year-long Pleistocene glacial period, which means that the glaciers that still exist in Greenland were formed during the last 250,000 years of this period. This may be due to The penultimate melt exposed all the bedrock.The glacier core does record the last two major melts, one 130,000 years ago and the most recent beginning 15,000 years ago and ending 8,000 years ago.Most importantly, the inner core records the entire growth and decline of the glacier for the entire 250,000 years; you can see the "growth rings" that formed in the last few thousand years, from which you can calculate the age, sample their oxygen isotopes, and Derived from the ocean surface temperature at which mid-Atlantic ocean water evaporates, which subsequently freezes as snow and falls on Greenland. Palaeoclimatologists are now able to see dozens of flare-ups over the past 130,000 years superimposed on slow glacial periods—even during warm periods.Large glacial excursions may be one of the reasons, as I have discussed in "Intelligence in Retracement," simply because large quantities of fresh water floating on the ocean's surface before mixing may cause important changes in ocean currents that will A lot of heat is carried into the North Atlantic and helps keep Europe's climate warm in winter.That's why I'm concerned that a glacier surge could create a huge reservoir of fresh water in the Greenland fjords, and when the ice dam finally collapses, it could emerge within a day.The last time I flew over the vast fjords on Greenland's east coast, I was horrified to see that the fjords, although still open to the sea, had taken on the shape of a bathtub of a sunken reservoir.On what is now the coastline stretches an ice-free strip, everywhere seemingly of the same height.This suggests that a large freshwater lake formed sometime after the last glacial period, which trimmed the ice sheet symmetrically. Another temperature plunge could be devastating for European agriculture and the 500 million people it supports.The near-Delias cooling effect can be seen all over the world, even in Australia and Southern California.Although it threatens human civilization, the past few times may have played an important role in the evolution of humans from their ape-like ancestors because it happened so quickly. A round one cannot be expected to fit into a square hole right away.He has to have time to work on his appearance. Whether multiple talents matter over an animal's lifetime depends on timescales: both for modern travelers and evolving apes; on how quickly the weather changes and how long the trip lasts.When Ugandan chimpanzees reach fruit forests, they often find that the edible fruit has been looted by the able native monkeys.While orangutans can catch a bug, or catch a monkey and eat it, in practice this competition makes their population extremely limited, even though their brains are twice the size of their expert rivals. Multiple talents are not always an advantage, and more is not always better.Frequent fliers know that while those with three large suitcases are still waiting for their luggage, those with only hand luggage are already in a taxi.On the other hand, if the weather is so unpredictable and extreme that every traveler has to pack everything from swimsuits to ski jackets, then the "miscellaneous" must be better than the one-man "expert".The same is true of behavioral versatility, which enables an animal to change from "round" to "square" in an instant. Variety of talents may well require a bigger brain.But you need to find some plausible reasons to offset the disadvantages of a large brain.As linguist Steven Pinker points out: Why has evolution selected for a large, bulbous, highly metabolic brain?The life experienced by creatures with large brains is a combination of disadvantages like those posed by putting a watermelon unbiased on a broom handle...and by having a woman pass a large kidney stone every few years pain of.Any choice of brain size must in itself give special favor to the small-brained.The choice for more powerful computing capabilities (language, perception, reasoning, etc.) must have given me even a larger-sized brain as a by-product, and nothing else. How quickly things change is crucial to the incremental accumulation pattern of intelligence, whether it's brain getting bigger or just brain reorganization involved in the process.In any single climate, a specialist can eventually evolve to outperform an overburdened generalist.Anatomical adaptation, however, was much slower than the frequent changes in climate during the ice ages, making it difficult for adaptation to follow climate change.Indeed, sudden changes in climate occur within the lifetime of a single individual, who may or may not have the reserve capacity needed to survive adversity. The above argument holds true for many omnivores, not just for our ancestors.But there aren't any other examples of brains roughly quadrupling in size in the last few million years, so an unstable climate by itself isn't a surefire reason for big brains.There are other factors going on at the same time, and the sudden change in climate may have magnified the importance of these factors, preventing mediocre competitors from outcompeting the miscellaneous. What these other factors are, everyone has his favorite theory.My point is: must cast well while hunting and survive the winter by eating other herbivores.But most people think of language, especially syntax. (understanding of language) involves many aspects of intelligence: distinguishing words, judging meanings, dividing meaning groups according to grammar, grouping meanings into sentences, guessing the connection between each statement, and still remembering the previous ones when dealing with the latter content content, inferring the author's or speaker's intent, summarizing the general idea of ​​a passage, and recalling memory in response to questions posed about a passage... (reader) constructs a mental image of the situation and action being described...reader Tend to remember the mental models they constructed about the source text, rather than the source text itself. I often find that a novel, even a well-written compelling novel, becomes a blur the moment I finish it.I can fully recall the feelings and emotions I felt while reading it, but I'm not so sure about the details it narrates.As I. udwig Wittgenstein said of his thesis, it is almost like an escalator waiting to be climbed, which will be abandoned after serving its purpose.