The Evolution of Intelligence

Here we have a conventional approach to the notion of intelligence, by someone whose work I have always admired. But on this I think that he is wrong. I constantly see evidence of multiple types of intelligence in all kinds of animals. To be sure, it is not the kind of cognitive skill picked up “standardized testing” but it is “high intelligence” all the same.

What do you think?

“Nothing demonstrates the improbability of high intelligence better than the 50 billion earthly species that failed to achieve it.”

–Ernst Mayr (German-born American Evolutionary Biologist, 1904-2005)