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Evolution of Intelligence More Complex Than Once Thought

Posted by timothy on from the ah-but-humans-are-still-the-cutest dept.

palegray.net writes "According to a new article published in Scientific American, the nature of and evolutionary development of animal intelligence is significantly more complicated than many have assumed. In opposition to the widely held view that intelligence is largely linear in nature, in many cases intelligent traits have developed along independent paths. From the article: 'Over the past 30 years, however, research in comparative neuroanatomy clearly has shown that complex brains — and sophisticated cognition — have evolved from simpler brains multiple times independently in separate lineages ...'"

5 of 453 comments (clear)

  1. Wow, evolution by Anton+Styles · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Maybe in a few generations noone will be saying FR1ST P0ST!@!11111!!!1!!1!!one

    --
    "I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
  2. Re:Wow, evolution - IDIOCRACY by KozmoKramer · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I LIKE MONEY!

    --
    My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my Father! Prepare to die!
  3. Re:The hard work is just around the corner... by Shohat · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Erm...
    The ability to extract a certain set of characters from mangled patterns included in an image is not necessarily a task that humans should have an advantage in. I am pretty sure that it would take a human significantly more time to deny/allow a user access, based on biometric data such as fingerprints or a voice pattern.
    A computer has to extract the data from a very limited (a small image) sample, and is 100% "sure" that all extracted data falls within a very limited predefined set of results - the alphabet.
    A (very) well written algorithm can easily have an edge on most humans.

    --
    My Starcraft 2 Blog
  4. Re:Wow, evolution - IDIOCRACY by Stargoat · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I like money too. We should hang out sometime.

    --
    Hoist Number One and Number Six.
  5. Re::-( sad by madolvin · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    So this guy get's modded down for being right? Man, some moderators just aren't the brightest bulbs on the tree.