Alien intelligence (not strictly dinosaurs)

[NEIL CLARK <NCLARK@museum.gla.ac.uk>]

**This is not a lot to do with dinosaurs, but I guess in some general 
way it has.  If you don't want to know my thoughts on the evolution of 
'intelligence' delete now**

A reply relating to Tom Myers' message,

I didn't repeat your message here.  One thing that I understand from 
the evolution of life is that life 'adapts' to (or its mutations) take 
advantage of environments to survive.  I see 'intelligence' as a 
character of a mutation that has developed to take advantage of 
situations where survival depended on it, or a consequence of it.  
Dinosaurs may not have been as 'intelligent' because there was not 
the environmental or ecological need for them to develop this 
characteristic to the extent that, perhaps, we have.  For this reason, 
many of the life forms we live with today do not exhibit 'intelligence' 
in the way we perceive it, nor to the extent we believe we have it 
either.  The reason I see an animal such as _Lingula_ surviving 
unchanged for so long as a genus is because it is perfectly happy to 
have found an environment where it has not needed to change.  Their 
environment was obviously affected by extinction events, but enough 
of this environment survived to allow the genus to survive.  The 
reason _Lingula_ didn't change is presumably because it didn't need 
to.  Mammals, on the otherhand, as well as many other terrestrial life 
forms, were subjected to much more varied, restrictive and changing 
environments and had to 'develop' (or mutate) various means to 
survive.  Dinosaurs 'developed' their own characteristics for survival 
which may, or may not, have included 'intelligence' (I'm thinking 
_Troodon_ and similar here).  If the environment in which humans 
found themselves evolving was not so changeable, with ice-ages and 
warmer periods, perhaps we would not have developed 'intelligence'. 
 But then, why didn't any other animal develop this 'intelligence'?  I 
don't think that it was to their advantage.  They are probably well 
enough adapted to the environments that they have evolved into.  The 
reason they may not survive in the future is perhaps because the 
environments may be changing too fast for them to produce enough 
advantageous mutations.  

This brings me round to the dinosaurs.  Maybe they became extinct 
for similar reasons.  They may not have been able to 'adapt' as fast 
as their environments were changing, the same goes for the rest of 
the life forms (aquatic or terrestrial) that died out at the same time.  
The survivors probably lived in environments, or microenvironments, 
that buffered them against the major changes, whatever they were 
(any arguments here?).  The cause of the changes may be the 
extraterrestrial thingy, excessive volcanism, or whatever your 
personal preference.

As for extraterrestrial 'intelligence', I think that it really depends on 
the particular requirements of the individual extraterestrial species 
whether an 'intelligent' mutation is advantageous or not.  My vote 
would be against such a possibility.  I don't believe that time is a 
major factor in the evolution of characters such as 'intelligence', 
maybe chance has more to do with it.  If time had anything to do with 
it, why are bacteria not super-intelligent?  After all they have had a lot 
longer to evolve this character.  It may also be true that the mutation 
'intelligence' was neither advantageous nor disadvantageous, but 
passive (initially).  Now it seems to rule our life and future .... 
perhaps.

Neil