Jennifer
Ackerman makes a convincing case for bird intelligence in her 2016
The
Genius of Birds.
Birds use tools, sing, live socially, navigate over long distances
and have at least the rudiments of mind. The most intelligent have
larger and more complexly organized brains. In her last chapter,
Sparrowville:
Adaptive Genius,
she suggests that birds that have mastered living in human
environments – house sparrows, members of the crow and pigeon
families and others – have prospered because of their flexibility
and intelligence. She speculates that “we humans, in creating novel
and unstable environments, are changing the very nature of the bird
family tree” by creating evolutionary pressures for species
characterized by increased intelligence. Writ large, she wonders, is
whether the changes being wrought by humans in all the areas we
affect – from city environments, to deforestation, to climate
change – favor the development of intelligence in species that
manage to survive.
It
is interesting to consider whether the new Anthropocene
epoch that we seem to have entered will be one of those
catastrophic periods of destruction that sweep away species that
cannot adapt quickly enough to the pace and degree of change. Among
those species that do adapt and even prosper, the key for many may be
the development of greater intelligence. Some species may find other
ways to survive, but many will go extinct. Intelligence (in the form
of operational flexibility and adaptability) or bust may be the motif
of the next centuries, including for human societies.
And
of course, it is not yet clear that intelligence itself is adaptive
in the long term. We may be in the process of changing the world we
live in faster than even we can accommodate.
2 comments:
It's a lovely notion. But does it hold up?
Other meteoric or volcanic cataclysmic events in earth's history marked the sudden end of many species and the growth of others. Did they survive because of their superior intelligence or coincidence of being able to find food and procreate under those conditions?
We are polluting and warming the oceans, which is killing coral; a critical anchor to life in the seas. What form of intelligence will help them survive or succumb?
I think intelligence is one element that can help some species grow, as it has for us. But I wonder what proportion it is to each species' count of nucleotides; the balance of which may have a greater bearing on that specie's survival.
The elaboration of nervous systems and brains appears ubiquitous in animal evolution. This seems to have been driven by the usefulness of mechanisms that allowed the organism to interact with the environment with purpose. Not all species went this way but the "higher" ones did. With humans as the top predator - or to put it differently, the top organic actor influencing the global system and environment - we have made intelligence a defining characteristic and demand. This is true for us and for probably all higher organisms. Living things - plant and animal, or a mixture like coral - without a complex nervous system may well be defenseless in this Anthropocene epoch. Although in the end, the race may yet go to the dumb.
As to nucleotide count: DNA doesn't itself act but underlies action. Size may count but isn't necessarily everything. Apparently we have more genes than a chicken but less than a grape plant.
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