If not for humans, what animal do you see evolving into an intelligent species?

Question

forgot to answer my own question, i think elephants

i did not mean to imply that animals are not intelligent, but i meant to evolve to a level of technology similar to us

Answer 1

Well, I would say Ravens/Crows or wolves. I would also like to add that animals are already intelligent but I took your question to mean what animal would turn out the most like human intelligence as it is now, if there had never been humans. Also there is nothing to prevent a species from continuing to evolve towards a higher level of intelligence alongside humans, and thier evolution may even be influenced to develop more like human intelligence because of it.

I would also like to point out that dogs because of thier close association with humans may well evolve an intelligence along the lines of our own. They have already diverged considerably from thier wolf ancestors after only 15,000 years of domestication. It is concievable that they will continue to evolve in close association with humans and they may eventually become more like us because of it.

I think many species of animal today are already extremely intelligent, such as whales/dolphins, elephants, wolves, ravens/crows etc... and I think they will keep getting more intelligent as time passes.

PS ihatehippies's is the real idiot (he can't even pluralise words properly) dogs, rarely kill each other for coming into thier territory.. in fact the violence rarely escalates to that level. Dogs, like thier ancestors wolves, have a social dominance hierarchy, with clearly defined rules for ritualized aggression/submission in order to establish who will be the dominant dog without resorting to lethal force. Sometimes, there is a clash of wills, but one dog will almost always submit after a few clashes in which he is beaten by his opponent. I own 2 dogs and I have found it best to allow them to work out the social standing when they meet other dogs, rarely does it lead to aggression and when it does it is always when my dominant intact male dog meets another dominant unaltered male.. and even in those cases it has never escalated to deadly violence. They simply practice ritualized aggression and submission to find out who is boss and then they all run around playing with eachother. Dogs are the perfect example of an animal that may evolve intelligence along the lines of our own, they live in social groups, they eat meat, they have complex body language and vocal communication skills.... they are already extremely intelligent.

Answer 2

Evolving in the direction of an more desirable intelligence required an significant form of particular situations to ensue until now Human brains could evolve the way they did. Happenstance offered a brilliant climate replace to the rain forests of considered necessary Africa. with the intention to forage for nutrients, one particular species descended from the canopy and started walking the african plains in seek of nutrients. starting to be upright bipedal, they discovered hearth and gadget-making. This, over a million years, had a reciprocal result and have been given the early Hominids questioning and studying. vast brains observed many many 1000's of years later. Now, in the perspective of Planet earth with 6.5 billion people crowding the outdoors, the question isn't 'will different creatures evolve to larger intelligence..?' yet 'will different creatures stay to tell the story in any respect..? we are wiping out species at an alarming fee and somebody defined the placement as being worse that the super Extinction of seventy two million years in the past, while the Dinosaurs have been wiped out. the only way yet another species could evolve to an more desirable intelligence is for people to make way and disappear. jointly as we are nonetheless around, no different species has the slightest hazard.

Answer 3

Without proper selection pressure? None. Besides, intelligence is not a " goal " of evolution. Humans are not holding animals back from evolving any thing, let alone intelligence, though they are making it rough for them to just survive. The evolution of all animals is going on all the time, but you would need the right mutational variation and environmental change to drive natural selection into such an expensive change as intelligence.

Answer 4

That is a very interesting question, but it is not easy to answer. What do you mean by intelligent? Are humans intelligent? They seem to do some things that are not very intelligent. Kill each other over some "gods" that may not exist. Fight for some little pieces of paper they call money. Dogs and cats don't do that. Maybe dogs and cats are really more intelligent than humans.

Answer 5

Dolphins are pretty smart. They use tools, they do things for fun, they experience emotions, they are the only other animal that has sex for fun. (Hense the reason for the joke about the dolphins in the movie Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). Who knows, they may have already evolved that way but we can't really communicate with them so we don't realize it. Maybe one day we will be able to like in the movie about the sharks where the super intelligent dolphins have voice translators.

Answer 6

Jabber is sooo smart. Dogs and cats fight each other over much better stuff than us, like who gets the next female dog and who gets the leftover scraps of dog food. They are much smarter than us.

By the way, he is really an idiot. I know some of you guys don't get sarcasm, so I will explain it. If you think dogs and cats dont fight, constantly, you have never owned one. A dog would kill another dog simply becasue it came in "its" yard. Dummy.

And to answer the question, no, it seems very strange that animals like apes evolved into something as smart as a human. I don't think another animal could do that.

Answer 7

I watched a program about the future on animal planet a couple years back, they said its the squid, but they've moved out of water and act kinda like monkeys

Answer 8

It must be group animals. It must be warm blood. It must be mammal. It is whale or dolphins!