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Does evolution help us understand why some species in the same genus are significantly smarter than others?

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Not that some of us can see. The story has to do with smart crows proving even smarter than we thought:

True, crows can be as smart as apes, despite having very different brains. Parrots can also outperform apes, too, for a reward.

But that leads to another question: It’s unclear why crows are significantly smarter than other birds. Most birds probably could not outperform apes. The field is fraught with unanswered questions like these…

Denyse O’Leary, “We knew crows were smart but they turn out to be even smarter” at Mind Matters News

Just how animal species develop a higher level of intelligence than other species in their biological category (phylum) is unknown. There are two questions here, why? and how?: Why animals develop problem-solving intelligence probably relates to need. A clam, attached to a rock, doesn’t need to be intelligent. But an octopus, which controls eight tentacles that it uses to secure food, probably survives mainly by conducting intelligent searches.

Denyse O’Leary, “We knew crows were smart but they turn out to be even smarter” at Mind Matters News

But now we come to the difficult question, the “how?” Just how an animal species gains greater intelligence than others is still a mystery.

One could simply say, “Evolving more intelligence helped the animal to survive.” The trouble with that explanation is, many free-roaming life forms would probably survive more readily if they were more intelligent. But they do not develop greater intelligence on that account. There must be more to the story.

Denyse O’Leary, “We knew crows were smart but they turn out to be even smarter” at Mind Matters News

You may also enjoy:

In what ways are cats intelligent? Cats have nearly twice as many neurons as dogs and a bigger and more complex cerebral cortex.

and

In what ways are dogs intelligent? There is no human counterpart to some types of dog intelligence.

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