Are you SURE that humans are more intelligent than primates?

Question

Yeah, humans can make computers and airplanes.

But at least one thing's for sure -- all these millenia have gone by, and primates/apes still understand that you cannot crap in your own nest. They do not destroy their own environment, the place in which (on which) they live.

Collectively, apes and other primates have grasped that concept. Humans cannot even get the message. I wonder what it will take to learn.

I won't even go into the primate ability to resist cultism and kill other apes in the name of crocoducks or the Great Banana... Even more proof of collective intelligence.

Are you really sure that humans are that much more intelligent than primates?

Answer 1

I always liked Douglas Adams' take on the relative intelligence of humans and dolphins:

That humans thought they were smarter than dolphins because humans invented cars and atomci bombs and digital watches, and dolphins spent all day mucking about in the water.

And dolphins thought they were smarter than humans, for precisely the same reason....

Answer 2

HUH? humans are of the order of primates though.
Superregnum: Eukaryota
Regnum: Animalia
Subregnum: Eumetazoa
Superphylum: Deuterostomia
Phylum: Chordata
Subphylum: Vertebrata
Infraphylum: Gnathostomata
Superclassis: Tetrapoda
Classis: Mammalia
Subclassis: Theria
Infraclassis: Placentalia
Ordo: Primates
Subordo: Haplorrhini
Infraordo: Simiiformes
Taxon: Catarrhini
Superfamilia: Hominoidea
Familia: Hominidae
Subfamilia: Homininae
Tribus: Hominini
Subtribus: Hominina
Genus: Homo
Species: Homo sapiens
Subspecies: H. s. sapiens

Answer 3

It depends on what we understand intelligence to be. If it is making digital watches in order to relate ourselves to a regulated time scale, we win. If it comes to a cohesive existence with our environment, on the whole we seem to be losing. However, if you examine the past it wasn't always the case. Most cultures were able to live in relative harmony with their environment, at least until the Industrial revolution, and many cultures tried to avoid that, but Western cultures forced it on everyone. That's what really led to a population explosion by making more food, housing and water available and medicines to cure sicknesses. Then again, we have also been making conscious efforts to correct our destruction of the planet and to prevent further loss.

As far as killing each other, you need to look more broadly at this idea. We have wars, and they are massive, but that is due to the large size of our social orders; apes only live in groups of several dozen or less. Ants have similar battles of relatively more massive scales involving millions of ants, we just don't notice because they're a lot smaller. We have a greater effect on the planet because we are larger. Perhaps we are indeed more intelligent because we consciously try to use diplomacy to avoid physical conflicts and destruction.

It isn't that we are incapable of living in a similar way to the apes you refer to. Tribal cultures all over the world achieve this, but I personally don't want to revert back to that sort of lifestyle, do you?

Answer 4

"Collectively, apes and other primates have grasped that concept."
How do you know that they have? Just because they don't doesn't mean that they don't because they know better.

"I won't even go into the primate ability to resist cultism and kill other apes in the name of crocoducks or the Great Banana."
They also don't seem to build hospitals due to their religious beliefs either. Or build universities. Or....

Answer 5

The ability for humans to pollute and destroy the environment is proof that we have the ability to transcend our environment. If anything, it is proof that we are much more than animals.

Inteligence is not the only factor when it comes to evaluating such destructive human behavior. People are also driven by will determined by a huge number of factors. For instance, if a person is convinced that something is for a greater good, like putting in a shopping mall and erasing wetlands, then they will happily destroy the environment and make the trade-off.

We have to make decisions like that everyday and that type of higher reasoning is something animals are incapable of. Animals dont make decisions based on their analysis of the moral or environmental implications of their actions. They make decisions based on their very basic instincts, needs, and desires.

Answer 6

In my humble opinion, Human beings ARE the lowest animal on the planet. We are literally RAPING our environment, poisoning our earth, air and water at an astonishing rate. No other animal even comes close.
I'm 40 years old. I recycle, I buy organic, I support local farmers and my car gets 30 mpg. At least I am TRYING to be better human, but there are simply too many people who don't try that pull the rest of us down.
The only way we will learn is for the environment to have a major, life-altering event that wakes people up.

Answer 7

We are also primates and, yes, we have the potential to be smarter than the other ones. And some of us, a scattering of us, are quite a lot smarter. Edison, for example, and the chaps who brought the computer into everyday use by we common folk, and, in decades to come, the scientists and researchers who discover a cure for cancer.

Answer 8

After reading this forum for some time I am not sure that humans are smarter than primates. Also, I am firmly convinced, with evidence and proof, that cetaceans ARE smarter than humans.

Answer 9

Yeah, thats completely possible. As long as each step benefits the dogs or cats they could eventually become of human like intelligence

Answer 10

Given the number of people that can't understand the difference between "scientific theory" and "theory", it does make a person wonder, doesn't it? Honestly, I think most of us are still nothing more than animals, since they obey 2000 year old books instead of their own heads.