The evolution of animal Intelligence...

Today, there was a discussion on Intelligence amongst some of my intellectual friends on Whatsapp.?That got me thinking a little deeper on this topic.?

Coincidentally, I come across this very intriguing article by Prof. Andrew Barron of Macquarie University on how Animal intelligence has been shaped by five fundamental evolutionary shifts.?There are different types of intelligence, from the bodily navigation of a jellyfish to the navigation abilities of bees, from the complex songs of birds to varied imaginations of humans.

Shift 1: The coordination problem – Development of a nervous system.?A multi-cellular body needs to be co-ordinated to act as a single entity.?Diffused neural networks in a jellyfish helps in body coordination.

Shift 2: Synthesizing information from different senses – Development of a brain.?This helps body to have specialized limbs and sensory structures.?Leeches and modern worms transform sensory input to motor input, feeding information forward to action

Shift 3: Feedback loop.?When the output of a process is fed back into the process, it leads to Recurrence.?Bees can learn different types of art and navigate to goal locations quickly.

Shift 4: Parallel processing.?Information flow iterates through multiple recurrent systems.?Relationships between different types of information can be recognized.?Birds learn complex sequences in songs easily.?Monkeys can manipulate objects and make rudimentary tools.

Shift 5: Power of Reflection.?The brain processes information on the fly to complete the task in the fastest and most efficient way.?This has enabled our imagination.?Humans have been able to develop and use complex and symbolic languages.

Prof. Barron argues that one type of intelligence is not better than the other, but they are all different, each supporting a different requirement and environment.?Each transition builds on its past.?For example, a bee is fully functional as soon as its wings dry once it emerges from its cell.?A human baby requires almost a year to start walking.?Similarly, a jellyfish can tolerate a level of damage that would paralyze or kill a mammal.

Do we, as Humans, leverage our intelligence for the greater good??That’s a whole different matter though…