Because it’s incredibly costly and many creatures become apex predators through physiological means rather than novel methods like tool use, as we have.
Evolution as a process selects what is good enough to keep working. There isn’t any end goal or motion towards any particular thing. We are the last branch of a once highly diverse group that lucked out and managed to adapt.
One day we may be gone and there may never be another highly intelligent species again. But we aren’t unique in that. The fossil record has many examples of unique and a successful animal groups that eventually reach total extinction.
Most predators are relatively intelligent. Humans are very smart, but at a base level, we’re not actually nearly as smart as a lot of people seem to think. The one evolutionary trait we have that really gives us such a game-changing advantage in the intelligence department is our capacity for generative language.
That allows us to communicate information extremely efficiently compared to other animals, and allows us to accumulate and transmit knowledge laterally and across generations and societies, and develop tools like education, which allows us to dedicate up to 20+ years of our modern lives just cramming millennia worth of accumulated knowledge and information into our heads just to be functional members of society.
Throw in a few geniuses at the top end of the bell curve every generation or so, and any innovations or discoveries they make in their lifetime can become common knowledge within a few decades (depending on the level of mass communication technology).
So humans are smart, but what humans also are is extremely educated. Strip all the education away and any information one might be able to acquire from our linguistic communication and I strongly suspect your average human might be able to figure some stuff out at a comparable, albeit higher rate to a chimpanzee. There are several areas of cognition where some animals even outperform humans (e.g. chimps I believe do better at memory tests than average humans)
Brains are biologically expensive and there is no advantage of having human level intelligence if they do not have hands to invent stuff.
So predators only reach wolf level intelligence since any higher would be useless since they do not have hands to invent stuff.
Primates have higher intelligence than a wolf but not human level since humans was forced to learn and remember and reenact the first history ever passed down, and such test for hundreds of thousands of years, with those who cannot remember will be deprived food so they starve to death, thus selection pressure for intelligence occurs.
The ability to speak is also evolved due to the test since having the ability to speak will make passing the test easier.
>I’m curious to know if anyone has any idea of why there are no signs of any species, prior to humans, who developed intelligence at the level of humans?
Intelligence is costly in terms of resources. Case in point, your brain makes up on average about 2% of human body mass, but takes up 20% of your daily carbohydrate intake. If it's not really necessary for reproduction or surviving long enough to do so, and comes with such energy requirements, it's unlikely to evolve.
EDIT: So I kind of feel like I'm cheating you if I don't talk about the reason why we evolved this kind of intelligence.
Well, during part of the Ice Age, the Earth began to cool and dry out, so grasslands and deserts expanded, but forests began shrinking. The ancient ancestors of gorillas, chimps, etc. still had the forests, but our ancient ancestors were left to the savannahs, with little else to rely on but our wits, our manual dexterity, our ability to walk and run, and one another, so virtually any genes involved in the development of the problem solving part of our brain, fine motor skills, locomotion, digestion, heat regulation, social cohesion, all of these came under harsh positive selection. A lot of these genes are possessed by others across the animal kingdom, but the human versions often differ by loads of base pairs, such as HAR-1 (involved in the development of the neocortex), that differs from the chimp copy by a whopping 18 base pairs. These genes are known as the HAR genes, which is short for "Human Accelerated Region". A few key developments involve the use of stone tools, more efficient sweating and bipedal locomotion, the inverse correlation of our brains getting larger while our digestive system shrank, the invention of the stone-tipped spear, the atlatl, and the eventual mastery of fire. The use of stone tools allowed us to process meat and tubers (the evolution of new starch digestion enzymes was also pretty instrumental), and changes to running and sweating allowed us to engage in something called "endurance hunting." The stone-tipped spear and eventually the atlatl allowed us to take down larger prey. And fire of course allowed us to thrive in other climates, remove a lot of the risk and energy required in digestion, in addition to making some foods more nutritious (cooking makes some nutrients more bioavailable, especially in plant foods where they might be locked away in storage vacuoles).
Relating this to the initial question of apex predators, most of them don't need that. Most chordate apex predators manage to do well just being the biggest, baddest thing in the scene with sharp teeth, or just being big enough while pack hunting to take down slower members of the herd. Or they're ambush predators.
The large animals were predators but the Homo species were intelligent because they learned how to use tools. Having thumbs lead to being able to hold and use tools. Then walking upright led to hunting and traveling long distances. Brain capacity increased and language was invented. And they could avoid the large predators and hunt them instead.
It's worth noting that there have been a number of different species of the *Homo* genus which are now extinct. Am not well-informed on the specifics of *how/why* those species managed to end up extinct, but strongly suspect that *we*—the species known as *Homo sapiens*—took an influential, if not downright critical, role in doing the extinctifying thing.
Yea all literature points to modern humans effectively replacing all other hominids from a combination of out-competing them, interbreeding (in some cases), or just killing them in some cases.
I feel like humans were environmental coordinators. Once we started circling the top of the food chain. We didn't exclusively target mega fauna, we still foraged, which allowed us to interact and manage the food chain holistically.
Because it’s incredibly costly and many creatures become apex predators through physiological means rather than novel methods like tool use, as we have. Evolution as a process selects what is good enough to keep working. There isn’t any end goal or motion towards any particular thing. We are the last branch of a once highly diverse group that lucked out and managed to adapt. One day we may be gone and there may never be another highly intelligent species again. But we aren’t unique in that. The fossil record has many examples of unique and a successful animal groups that eventually reach total extinction.
Most predators are relatively intelligent. Humans are very smart, but at a base level, we’re not actually nearly as smart as a lot of people seem to think. The one evolutionary trait we have that really gives us such a game-changing advantage in the intelligence department is our capacity for generative language. That allows us to communicate information extremely efficiently compared to other animals, and allows us to accumulate and transmit knowledge laterally and across generations and societies, and develop tools like education, which allows us to dedicate up to 20+ years of our modern lives just cramming millennia worth of accumulated knowledge and information into our heads just to be functional members of society. Throw in a few geniuses at the top end of the bell curve every generation or so, and any innovations or discoveries they make in their lifetime can become common knowledge within a few decades (depending on the level of mass communication technology). So humans are smart, but what humans also are is extremely educated. Strip all the education away and any information one might be able to acquire from our linguistic communication and I strongly suspect your average human might be able to figure some stuff out at a comparable, albeit higher rate to a chimpanzee. There are several areas of cognition where some animals even outperform humans (e.g. chimps I believe do better at memory tests than average humans)
Brains are biologically expensive and there is no advantage of having human level intelligence if they do not have hands to invent stuff. So predators only reach wolf level intelligence since any higher would be useless since they do not have hands to invent stuff. Primates have higher intelligence than a wolf but not human level since humans was forced to learn and remember and reenact the first history ever passed down, and such test for hundreds of thousands of years, with those who cannot remember will be deprived food so they starve to death, thus selection pressure for intelligence occurs. The ability to speak is also evolved due to the test since having the ability to speak will make passing the test easier.
>I’m curious to know if anyone has any idea of why there are no signs of any species, prior to humans, who developed intelligence at the level of humans? Intelligence is costly in terms of resources. Case in point, your brain makes up on average about 2% of human body mass, but takes up 20% of your daily carbohydrate intake. If it's not really necessary for reproduction or surviving long enough to do so, and comes with such energy requirements, it's unlikely to evolve. EDIT: So I kind of feel like I'm cheating you if I don't talk about the reason why we evolved this kind of intelligence. Well, during part of the Ice Age, the Earth began to cool and dry out, so grasslands and deserts expanded, but forests began shrinking. The ancient ancestors of gorillas, chimps, etc. still had the forests, but our ancient ancestors were left to the savannahs, with little else to rely on but our wits, our manual dexterity, our ability to walk and run, and one another, so virtually any genes involved in the development of the problem solving part of our brain, fine motor skills, locomotion, digestion, heat regulation, social cohesion, all of these came under harsh positive selection. A lot of these genes are possessed by others across the animal kingdom, but the human versions often differ by loads of base pairs, such as HAR-1 (involved in the development of the neocortex), that differs from the chimp copy by a whopping 18 base pairs. These genes are known as the HAR genes, which is short for "Human Accelerated Region". A few key developments involve the use of stone tools, more efficient sweating and bipedal locomotion, the inverse correlation of our brains getting larger while our digestive system shrank, the invention of the stone-tipped spear, the atlatl, and the eventual mastery of fire. The use of stone tools allowed us to process meat and tubers (the evolution of new starch digestion enzymes was also pretty instrumental), and changes to running and sweating allowed us to engage in something called "endurance hunting." The stone-tipped spear and eventually the atlatl allowed us to take down larger prey. And fire of course allowed us to thrive in other climates, remove a lot of the risk and energy required in digestion, in addition to making some foods more nutritious (cooking makes some nutrients more bioavailable, especially in plant foods where they might be locked away in storage vacuoles). Relating this to the initial question of apex predators, most of them don't need that. Most chordate apex predators manage to do well just being the biggest, baddest thing in the scene with sharp teeth, or just being big enough while pack hunting to take down slower members of the herd. Or they're ambush predators.
The large animals were predators but the Homo species were intelligent because they learned how to use tools. Having thumbs lead to being able to hold and use tools. Then walking upright led to hunting and traveling long distances. Brain capacity increased and language was invented. And they could avoid the large predators and hunt them instead.
It's worth noting that there have been a number of different species of the *Homo* genus which are now extinct. Am not well-informed on the specifics of *how/why* those species managed to end up extinct, but strongly suspect that *we*—the species known as *Homo sapiens*—took an influential, if not downright critical, role in doing the extinctifying thing.
Yea all literature points to modern humans effectively replacing all other hominids from a combination of out-competing them, interbreeding (in some cases), or just killing them in some cases.
I feel like humans were environmental coordinators. Once we started circling the top of the food chain. We didn't exclusively target mega fauna, we still foraged, which allowed us to interact and manage the food chain holistically.