Does life evolve towards intelligence?

Cockroaches are extremely successful in evolutionary terms -- they have been around for 300 million years. Cockroaches have survived multiple mass extinctions and have been eaten and squished by all kinds of critters, from amphibians to dinosaurs to mammoths. The cockroach is still around. Most of their predators/squishers are not.

The evolutionary success champion is the cyanobacteria. There are still a few anerobic bacteria around, but the cyanobacteria killed most of them off emitting an incredibly toxic gas. The cyanobacteria remain today one of the major producers of this toxic gas. The cyanobacteria make cockroaches look like newcomers -- they have been around for 3.5 billion years.

Intelligence has nothing to do with the success of cockroaches and cyanobacteria.

 

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Succes in evolution is often measured in terms of radiation. That is the more species there are generated within a phylum, class, order, family, or genus the more succesful this group is.

For mammals this clearly suggest that for instance rodents are very succesful with a few thousand species and so are bats.

The human species is however on the brink of extinction with only one viable line left: Homo sapiens sapiens. As a hominid we are doing slightly better, with chimps, gorillas, gibbons etc flying through the jungle. And as a primate group there is still hope. There are still 350 species or so left of these.

But if we want to talk about true success in radiation then we must look at invertebrates, archea, bacteria etc.

(the term radiation is used losely here. It is defined here as the speciation of a single group of species into different niches and forms resulting in many new species)

 

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After that you then posted definitions of intelligence - no one is disputing that. But the accumulations of instincts can be correlated with increases in intelligence. However, ethologists (those who study animal behavior) now rarely use the term "instinct" because of its ambiguous meanings.

Spurious: "if we want to talk about true success in radiation then we must look at invertebrates, archea, bacteria etc."

Wow! That couldn't have been said better! But the question is "Does life evolve towards intelligence," not radiate outward into open niches. Archae, bacteria, etc. have remained unchanged - no evolution? Cyanobacteria today are the same as cyanobateria 4 bya. So does life evolve towards intelligence? Then the answer has to be "yes," because intelligence has evolved since 4 bya? What do you think? I dunno.

 

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Cyanobacteria today are clearly not the same as they were they were (3,5 to 2,7 billion years ago).
Bacteria are subject to rapid evolution under most conditions. Mainly due to their short generation time and horizontal gene transfer. Why should they be exempted from evolution?

 

I think it's the other way around. The organisms with the most instincts and less ability to learn (fruit flies, cockroaches, monarch butterflies, fish, etc) are less intelligent than those who have to learn their behaviors instead of them being programmed into them (humans, gorillas, elephants, parrots, etc). In fact, that's one reason why humans are so intelligent, because we are born so utterly helpless. When we're bourt just about the only instincts we have are to cry when we're hungry, to stare at moving things, to grip with our hands, etc. We have to learn everything else. We have no complex instincts (like migrating from canada to mexico or something)

What ambiguous meanings? I thought it was pretty much straight forward. If you're born knowing how to do it, it's an instinct. If you don't, then you learned it along the way and is therefore not an instinct.

 

We learn to walk, then that becomes an instinctive trait: we don't think about how to do it any more. We learn to eat with a fork, drive a car, open a book: no step-by-step thought process involved. We say that we "instinctively do this". The behavior becomes a fixed action pattern. Over longterm time (milleniums), these learned behavioral fixed action patterns may become genetically instinctive, i.e, able to be acquired without learning, as sex and acquisition of intelligence is today in humans.

As I stated, in general ethologist try to avoid using the word "instinct" because of its multiple ambiguous meanings and interpretations.

CharonZ: "Cyanobacteria today are clearly not the same as they were they were." I definitely agree, but they have not evolve much to the extent as other organisms have.

 

How could you possibly say that? You do not know to which other organisms cyanobacteria have split up to. Extant cyanobacteria have adopted to an environment very difficult to that 2-3 Mrd years ago. Furthermore there is evidence of extreme cyanobacterial evolution: chloroplasts.

 

I definitely agree, they have evolved and split up, but the cyanobacteria of 3.8 bya and what we still call cyanobacteria today, although different today, are still uni-cellular photosynthetic nitrogen-fixing bacteria (not all) organism, while other organisms (and these other organisms could have split off from the countless lineages of the extreme cyanobacteria evolution) evolved into much more extreme complex, multicellelur organisms, with differentiated cellular functions, that radiated out into every nook and cranny on Earth, in every possible conceivable figuration; in short, into all of the multi-cellular animals that do and have ever existed in the history of the world.

 

I agree with TheAlpha Wolf - "instinct" is as well defined and understood as most nouns used here. In contrast, your Larmackian (Spelling is wrong, I am referring to the politically correct, for the old USSR, genetist who also though as you, that after a many generations the "new Soviet Man" would be born with "socialist values" etc.) is dead wrong. He nearly starved USSR by ignoring the role of genes and placing his weight, (backed by Stalin who like the idea of reshaping the "soviet man") behind environmental factors, like fertalizer, being more acquried by each generation of crops so they would be more productive "next year" when their seeds were planted.

They idea that driving a car etc becomes an instinct is silly. If that were true, then riding a horse would not be anyting to learn today as mankind has been doing that much longer. Drop your Larmackian stupidity about "learned behavioral fixed action patterns may become genetically instinctive."

 

I think you meant in individuals? That's still not an instinct. It may become an unconscious act, but it's not an instinct. The only way something is an instinct is if you were born knowing how to do it.
Like Billy said, it doesn't become an instinct because the human species learns it and then does it whithout thinking. It only becomes an instinct when there are mutation(s) that make the animal be born "knowing" how to do it. Note that complex behaviors (like migrations) may have a very simple explanation, such as following the magnetic field or whatever.

 

I never said that "I" was using this definition of the word "instinct." I said that ethologists normally now avoid using the word "instinct" for that very reason - because of its multiple ambiguous meanings. "Fixed inherited behavioral patterns" would be much more precise. Too many people use the word "instinct" to replace what they merely consider as "natural behavior" or behavior that they may have acquired through learning or moral upbringing. Or "fixed behavior" that is not inherited, such as driving a car. This is why ethologists avoid using it.

 

Life started to evolve towards intelligence as a result of multicellular specialization: when individual cells started to become specialized for a particular function. This began with the evolution of multicellular eukaryotes when prokaryotes were engulfed into eukaryotic cells through endosymbiosis, thus allowing them to acquire differing internal organelles for cellular specializations. Some of these cells evolved into chemoreceptor cells, then others into other sensory receptor cells, then synaptic nerve cells, then neurons for nerve impulse transmission, then a complete nervous system, then into the central nervous system in higher order animals, which led to the origin of thought and then intelligence.

The question as titled on this thread is "Does life evolve towards intelligence?" The answer is "sometimes it does and sometimes it does not."

Cyanobacteria are the first definitive proof of life on Earth that we have, with fossil evidence found in Southwestern Australia dating back to 3.83 billion years ago: they are no more intelligent today then they were 3.83 bya. Intelligence is a mental function that involves reasoning, solving problems, and learning. Only higher level animals are able to do that and they evolved from less intelligent and non-intelligent forms of life to get there.

 

that's an incredibly lousy reason why not to use the word instinct. If we're going to use that criteria, why not just lets stop using theory, fact, belief, and pretty much all other words? We're talking about the scientific meaning of instinct, not what ignorant people mean when they say instinct.

no no no no.... prokaryotes were engulfed by other prokaryotes and became eukaryotes. THEN eukaryotes became multicellular (first colonial, then multicelular). Different cells then specialized not by evolving different organelles, but by having more or less of each organelle.

 

A man holds a gun and shoots an attacker. When asked why, he say's, "instinctive behavior"? Would you agree?

A student answers a question in class. The teacher asks her/him how they knew that. The student replies, "I knew it by instinct." Would you agree?

A dog bites a person stretching out his hand to pet him. The owner of the dog says "he bit you because of his instincts." Would you agree?

The point is, again and again and again, that it is because of this ambiguity in the use of the word that ethologists and biolgist are more prone not to use it today. We want to be more precise to avoid confusion.

I never said ANYTHING even close to this. Bacteria and prokaryotes colonize AND some prokaryotes may be consider mulicellular. I never mentioned the word colonize.

What is your purpose in these replies? They are certainly not peaceful or constructive? You're not even clearly reading what is posted when you reply, and sometimes it seems that you're just not even reading the post at all???

 

No, no, & no.
Many scientists continue to use commnonly used words but with very precise meaning that differ from their everday use. It is no work to show "work" is one.

 

I know you didn't say anything about colonizing. When did I say you did? when did I even imply you did? And I know you didn't say anything close to that, that's why I said it.

to correct what you said. Here's what you said:

prokaryotes were not engulfed into eukaryotic cells. Prokaryotic cells engulfed prokaryotic cells, which MADE them eukaryotic cells. The next sentence (well, the whole thing but this one in particular) is very vague. You could have meant that the different prokaryotes that specific cells (in a multicellular organism) engulfed meant they had different organelles, or it could have meant that different organelles allowed for specialization. Either way that's not the case. Differing organelles have nothing to do with cellular specializations. (differing AMOUNTS of certain organelles does)

That's what you seem to be doing!

as for the instinct thing, you really need more information and more specific questions. For example the second one could depend on the answer to the question. If it was something like "what do you do when you get sad?" and the asnwer is "you cry" then you know the answer is crying by instinct.

 

"no no no no.... prokaryotes were engulfed by other prokaryotes and became eukaryotes. THEN eukaryotes became multicellular (first colonial, then multicelular). Different cells then specialized not by evolving different organelles, but by having more or less of each organelle."

Colonial - colonizing???

 

"more or less of each organelle"????

 

"prokaryotes were engulfed by other prokaryotes"????????

 

"first colonial, then multicelular"??????????????????????????????????