i don't know if this should go here or in earth science but here goes (feel free to move if its wrong)

why do the most intelegent species on earth always seem to be the preditors?

examples are Humans, Dolphins ect

Several reasons (that I know of):

<ol>
<li>high-energy-density, protein-rich diet (helps a lot with large brains that take a lot of energy to sustain)</li>
<li>it doesn't hurt to be cunning if you are planning on not starving to death and successfully competing for food with your peers at the same time.</li>
<li>you must be capable of adapting to your prey. For example, as it shifts location you must shift with it (and adapt to whatever new environment there is.)</li>
<li>you can't prevail over some types of prey unless you use nontrivial strategies -- like pack hunting, for example. So predators targeting such prey tend to be social which puts additional demands on the cognitive system.</li>
<li>in many cases, as a predator you possess superior sensory abilities and/or coordination and navigation -- all of which take up brain real estate</li>
</ol>

6. herbivores don't need all that stuff 'cause what they eat is just sitting in front of them all day.:D

7. you must be smarter than your potential food to get it

Originally posted by Asguard
why do the most intelegent species on earth always seem to be the preditors?

examples are Humans, Dolphins ect
I don't think they are the most intelligent; if they were, they would have eaten all their prey already. Also, Dolphins, arguably humans, are prey too, aren't they? Won't sharks eat dolphins? (Admittedly humans aren't really prey to anythng naturally, but there's other examples - you might say a hen is a predator cos it eats worms, but then it, in turn will be eaten by a fox. (But what eats foxes?!)) I think the only "smart" predator is humans, cos we're at the top of the food chain, whereas most other predators are also prey to something.

Though I have a nagging feeling something I've said isn't quite right? :confused:

8. Theres some kind of Carnivore School

Originally posted by Firefly

I don't think they are the most intelligent; if they were, they would have eaten all their prey already. Also, Dolphins, arguably humans, are prey too, aren't they? Won't sharks eat dolphins?

about sharks and dolphins- rare

because when a shark attacks (dolphins live together in sacks) the dolphins together beat the shark back (sharks are lone hunters) thus dolphins have overcome their weakness by living together and if there is more that 1 dolphin then sharks are no real problem

same as with humans

you said,
"I don't think they are the most intelligent; if they were, they would have eaten all their prey already."

That's not true. Prey-predator interactions are density dependent. As prey abundances decrease, predators switch prey or their abundances decrease as well. There are no instances where a predator has hunted a prey to extinction (except humans).

Humans are not predators (evolutionarily they are opportunists, probably a lot of scavenging) but are the most intelligent species on earth. However, predators are, in general, more intelligent than prey. As far as I'm concerned, there are no satisfactory explanations for this.

Good question, though.

Originally posted by Avatar
about sharks and dolphins- rare

because when a shark attacks (dolphins live together in sacks) the dolphins together beat the shark back (sharks are lone hunters) thus dolphins have overcome their weakness by living together and if there is more that 1 dolphin then sharks are no real problem
But dolphins are prey to something, I'm sure of it. They're not only predators.

they are a prey to sharks mostly, but they have learned to push the shark back in most cases (as observed by undervater videos).
same as humans.
lions can eat us, and they eat, but most times we can prevent that from happening.

first people did the same- they gathered in small groups, because it would increase their security and higher the possibility of survival in the wild world

you dont have to be that intelligent to run something down and eat it. I saw a program on the Discovery channel about these birds called "honey find birds" They love honey, but cant get it from inside the nest without being stung to death. So what they do when they find a hive is tease the local badger and lead him to the hive. The badger also loves honey and dosent care about being stung. The badger will climb in the hive get the honey comb and eat some and then, "it looks like he knows what he si doing." leavs the small bird nice chunks of honey. Thats prity smart, dont know if you would call that preditory or not though.

It dosen't take much intelegence to sneak up on a leaf.

Possibly because it is predators (Humans) who are defining
"intelligence". An herbivore might decide it is a clear sign of UNintelligence to eat meat!

Why would it be unintelligent to eat meat? It is packed with more nutrition than veggies so you don't need to graze 18 hours a day.


Anyway you eat what you are born equipped to eat. Intelligence has little to do with that. A deer eats grass because there is nothing else it can extract nutrition from. A lion can't just choose to eat grass.

Being a carnivore promotes intellegence. Only the smart live to raise young.

You missed my point: intelligence is DEFINED (and studied) by predators (US!). Intelligence, in the way you specifically are talking about it (ability to get food as opposed to ability to avoid being eaten), is clearly given from the predator's point of view.

Mankind is the "top of the totem pole" by any standard precisely because we are deciding what the standards are!

I am really enjoying this debate

I know of some smart herbivores.

The gorilla or most other large primates for example. Koko, the most famous of the species, can read, write, do simple math, and use sign language. Smarter than the dumbest of people.

Filter feeding cetacians are quite intelligent. All they do is swim in circles to feed.

Colonial insect hives are brains within themselves.

Herbivore: "Oh look, more grass. I'll eat that."

Carnivore: "Oh look, a herd of bison. Somehow I have to separate one of them from the rest, then kill an animal that outweighs me, and deal with the food before a bigger carnivore steals it. Gotta figure out how to do this..."

Originally posted by Avatar
7. you must be smarter than your potential food to get it

Not so, i'll give you one example, an unarmed(or even armed) human against a tiger or wolf, i'm sure there are many many more varied examples that exist.

ps- a definition of intelligence is also required to answer this question and as far as i'm concerned there is no definitive one.

the ability to use tools IS a form of intelegence

Originally posted by Asguard
the ability to use tools IS a form of intelegence

yes sure it does, but even a two year old can shoot a gun, even my dog can properly use it's dog bowl, but neither of the two invented it. You could e.g. call our arms a piece of technology, sure it takes intelligence to use but intinct comes into play doensn't it? so where is the line drawn? when do we start learning, stop learning, i have no doubts that humans are the most dominant and percievably intelligent species on this planet, whether or not that intelligenec is a real thing i'm not so sure about, or whether it is all instinct, just we have more and better intincts.

the reason i prefer instinct over intelligence is because you could say a man is more intelligent than another man but could that man beat the other man in a battle to the death? could he beat him at chess? cooking a pizza? raising a family? How can we test which man is more intelligent? and if we can't how can we say we are more intelligent to any animal? can anyone here build an ants nest? how helpful would you be to that species!?

If by intelligence you mean that we have technology and computers etc etc then sure i'm willing to accept that, but i'm also willing to accept that robots are the next step in evolution i.e. intelligent beings with the definate chance of immortality, and that we are now on the chopping block. Furthermore if AI did take over and was not violent and did not eat, could it not then be said that the most intelligent species is NOT a predator(anymore).

The most intelligent animals are not predators, but animals that live in complex, interactive social groups. It requires a lot of brainpower to deal with social group dynamics.

Humans are not predators in a strict sense, they are opportunists. Sometimes this means adopting the predator role.

now we can make some generalizations:

in general carnivores AND omnivores are more intelligent than herbivores

in general social (group) animals are more intelligent than non-social animals


and of course, there are always exceptions.

ur telling me SHEEP are intellegent??????????????????????????????????????? ????????????????????

they r the stupidest animal on earth

Originally posted by Asguard
ur telling me SHEEP are intellegent??????????????????????????????????????? ????????????????????

they r the stupidest animal on earth

All they do is eat, sleep, and shag. Seems pretty smart to me.

i seem to need to spell out everything, since people forgot that they have a brain stashed away somewhere...sheep live in social groups, but the group dynamics are not as complex as those of a wolf pack...hence they get by with less intelligence.

I dont think predators are always more inteligent but an explaination into why that might be the trend could be found with one of Darwins theories. Can't remember it perfectly but i do remember something about those species that are better equipped for their environment are bound to survive. It may be that many other predators just failed to survive because they just didn't have the brain power to get what they needed. Those that did (have the brains) manage to survive and thrive.

its the hunt!
i like clockwood's explanation! (sneaking up on a leaf!)

:D

To the extent that we compete against similar species and members of our own, if predators/omnivores/etc. are smarter they should continue to get smarter.

Whereas herbivores don't really need to be clever, predator prey dynamics will keep some subset alive. Sure the more clever ones that can avoid predators will have a selective advantage, but they don't inherently depend on cleverness for survival. No matter how smart a herbivore is, it's capacity to feed is probably limited by its gut not it's brain. I guess this basically is a fleshing out of sneaking up on a leaf.

On an off note: I wonder sometimes in humans though if a high fraction of suicides are smart people who can't handle living in a world filled with so many idiots ... it's not fun to not be understood by others. Though maybe it's not that intelligence dependent ... who really understands anyone else?

lets sum things up again:

who are the smartest animals on earth:

primates

are primates predators/carnivores....

no....

are predators the smartest animals....

no....

are predators more intelligent than herbivores...

mostly yes....

are predators most intelligent.....

no...primates are....

are primates predators....

no...some show some predatory behaviour, like humans and chimps....



what makes primates so intelligent?

might it be their complex social structure?
it often could be the explanation...lots of biologists say it is....


interestingly...i read recently in new scientist something about the hunter ability of the early humans. Apparently, they were probably not active hunters at all (of larger animals), but scavengers. That would put us back again in the position of opportunists. Apparently we didn't evolve to be hunters, just to be clever and adapt. The classic hunter role therefore might have come much later.

Too bad your name declares you as a fake primate ... you've excluded yourself from the most intelligent population by your own words ; )

Then again I once new a self declared hamster I thought was pretty clever.

I'm not sure if your comment was aimed at me - I was just trying to point out what the rate limiting factor seems to be for herbivores vs. predators/omnivores in survival. In one case it's being eaten, in the other it's finding food. This might have some impact on evolution of attributes such as intelligence. Defense to a large degree requires alertness more than cunning. Offense is easier to plan than defense, since you don't know the form of attack ahead of time.

I would guess scavengers like predators are limited by finding food and coming up with ways to get well protected foods. Both require out competing similar individuals, either in your species or a species with overlapping food preferences, for resources. I would imagine this would be a very effective way of a species to hone it's intelligence - especially once physical capacities for physical attributes are nearly optimal (for the body plan etc. in the local genetic neighborhood). I would imagine that physical attributes in such a plan are easier to hone than creative intelligence as intelligence is so much more open ended.

Even if scavengers are more intelligent than predators, if predators are more intelligent than most of their prey that is still a reasonable topic for discussion if people so choose. One might point out that predators aren't the most intelligent. If scavengers need to be more intelligent it's interesting to compare all three methods for obtaining food. Do scavengers need to be smarter to survive when more individually powerful predators are around?

Personally, I have no idea if omnivores evolved from herbivores or carnivores or are a maintained line with a flexible palate. Are they smarter predators that couldn't compete physically and were gustatorily adaptive? Did predators come from omnivores that were so successful at getting meat they lost the ability to eat herbs?

Your comment that social organization requires complex reasoning certainly makes sense, but there is more to discuss. First to act socially requires the intelligence, whether rooted in instinct or reasoning, to actually work together to get food. It allows speedy consumption of resources discovered. Further social communication allows faster discovery of food that might not be in abundance.

To sum up I think you make intelligent comments, but discussions require an open mind and personally I hope sciforums is a forum for discussion not pontification. While I find your comments intelligent, it's really not very fun to be lectured and talked down to.

And I for one would never do that ; ) ...

ok maybe I would, but not because I actually think I have a right to. It seems to be an adaptive reflex learned by many in elementary school. It reminds me of rubber and glue.

what did happen to hampster?


anyway removing humans are primates or dolphins\wales more intelegent???

i herd that they can train a dolpin to understand human speach (not just mindlessly repeat it like a parrot actully understand)

Originally posted by scilosopher

Personally, I have no idea if omnivores evolved from herbivores or carnivores or are a maintained line with a flexible palate. Are they smarter predators that couldn't compete physically and were gustatorily adaptive? Did predators come from omnivores that were so successful at getting meat they lost the ability to eat herbs?


i do not think that it is possible to say that omnivores evolved from carnivores or herbviores...

why...because eating habits are very flexible. Two closely related species can be at opposite ends of the spectrum.
Let's look at primates. We have the gorilla who is a strict herbivore, a chimp is mainly a herbivore, but doesn't shy away from eating small animals, eggs, insect, etc. Then there is humans, who are clearly omnivores.
Therefore within one closely related group of species we see a lot of diversity in the eating habits.
This phenomenum is not restricted to primates. There is an enormous amount of variation out there.
bears for instance...most bears are omnivores...pandas are herbivores..and the polar bear is almost strictly a carnivore in its natural environment.

Apparently it is possible to switch between herbivore, omnivore and carnivore role in evolution. It is of course more difficult to switch from specialized herbivore to carnivore and vice versa, then to switch from omnivore to carnivore or herbivore. Why? because it would require more evolutionary change.
The biggest changes usually have to occur in the digestive tract and teeth. Some systems might be more suited for a herbivoruous lifestyle, but that doesn't mean that less species with less efficient digestive tracts can't be hebrivores....look at the panda bear for instance...it has to eat most of the day since it is so ineffecient as a herbivore, but still it evolved into a herbivore...

well, someone finally said it..

"The biggest changes usually have to occur in the digestive tract and teeth. Some systems might be more suited for a herbivoruous lifestyle"

Humans are all combined, predator, cultivator, scavenger, opportunists. predators like lions, wolves etc, are cunning in tracking, and depend on stealth and speed for food! they do not have the inventive traits that humans or chimps, have, such as chimps using a reed to suck out sweets from certain plants. humans and primates both have herb and meat eating teeth, as do apes, I think bears also have both, and have a flexible diet. cunning and intellegence are separate from instinct in survival, such as lions, which the females are the primary hunters. most males in other species are the breadwinners. what about penguins?

penguins?


birds in general are quite lucky in the sense that they don't have teeth...just a single beak...

It might be easier to change the shape of the beak than to make a herbivorous tooth out of a carnivorous tooth.

look at darwins finches of the galapagos islands. One findh species radiated out to many different finch species occupying different niches. What are the most remarkable changes...the shape of the beaks.

well, take an AntEater for example, they have no jaws, if I remember correctly. just a verylong tongue, and all they eat are insects. ants mainly. the preying matis, some frogs, and some fish are chameleons. they let their food come to them. is this intellegence? predatory for sure! a Penguin eats fish, not sure what else, bugs, maybe! cranes, and others eat fish also.. but the buzzard, is a scavenger like a jackal, or catfish, shark.. the food chain thang.. I saw a pic of a porpoise once, that had been bitten by a great white shark, supposedly, a huge chunk was taken out of it! it was noted that sharks rarely eat a porpoise, and it is well known that for centuries porpoises' were more than a match for sharks, and they also would lead sailors through deep water, and on more than one occasion they have kept sharks away from swimming people, like they know what they are doing.

Snakes are predators also, but not all that brilliant thinkers.. yeah!...lol.. neither Am I sometimes.. and I love Chicken breast meat, so I skillfully, unmercifully, scavenge, procure, or otherwise obtain it intellegently or not.:D

And I like Taters too!

i'm not sure if an anteater has no jaws...probably no teeth...

there is this Order of Edentata (means no teeth), which includes for instance sloths and armadillos. I thought the anteater belonged to this group too, but i am not sure anymore
Although Edentata means no teeth, some of the species that belong to this order have in fact teeth. Sloths for instance have very simple teeth. Round pegs consisting of Dentin, with no enamel. As you might know Enamel is the hard white stuff on the surface of your teeth. Dentin is also hard, but less hard than enamel, it is more like bone.
The teeth of the sloth start out with a little enamel cap on top, but they lose this quickly. What is left is then only the dentin and a pulpchamber. How can they be herbivores with such soft teeth you might wonder? Well they might be soft, but they grow continuously throughout their lifetime, thus compensating for the wear of the teeth.

end...biology lesson...

to the list of unintelligent predators you might may add:
crocodiles...
predatory insect species....

**Mercy sakes... my , my... is all this stored in your brain? or are you reading from a book? hehehe... kidding..:)

"Sloths for instance have very simple teeth. Round pegs consisting of Dentin, with no enamel. As you might know Enamel is the hard white stuff on the surface of your teeth. Dentin is also hard, but less hard than enamel, it is more like bone."

.....I knew all that, I was just testing you.

they are mulchers, I think!

..I do know all about dillos, dillers, or armadillos.. I wrote a description about those to a canadian gal I met last year.. She thought I meant dildos.. and I made a typo. so, I had to explain the difference.
........want to read it?

Dillers are everywhere here in Texas. they are good to eat also, as they taste like chicken.

I really think that anteaters have no jaws. I think it was on the dicovery channel, or newspaper, or mad magazine, or a restroom wall somewhere. I suppose I could get online and look it up.. ehh?

this was actually stored in my brain...but to my defense i am supposed to know these things

that's funny...i started searching the net...and now one site says that sloths have 'rootless' teeth...

I learned from other sources that they have continuously growing roots.


2 conflicting sources...i should get to the root of this

quote:
Families:
Myrmecophagidae (anteaters)
Megalonychidae (two toed sloths)
Bradypodidae (three toed sloths)
Dasypodidae (armadillos)
Edentate means “without teeth”, but only anteaters are totally toothless. Sloths and armadillos have simple rootless molars that grow throughout their life. Pangolins, now in their separate order, Pholidata, were once included in the order Edentata because they have no teeth.

quote no2 (which i trust more)
Xenarthrans lack incisors or canines, and if present, their molars and premolars are simply cylinders without the covering of enamel that is found on the teeth of most other mammals. These teeth have a single root.

quote no3:
The teeth of three-toed sloths are highly distinctive. Incisors and canines are lacking and the number of cheek teeth is reduced to 5/4-5 = 18-20. Each tooth is a simple, ever-growing peg surrounded by a thin layer of dentine (but no enamel) and coated with cementum. The anteriormost teeth are smaller than the more posterior ones, and the anterior upper teeth do not occlude with the anterior lower teeth.

---cementum clearly indicates the presence of a root, therefore we have a root and one website has been real sloppy. Interestingly enough it is an academic website and a course. Yes...it is really true, they teach you crap in school.
http://www5.wittenberg.edu/academics/biol/courses/mammals/edent.htm

lets flip a coin... ya ownt to? how about jaws in the anteater? somehow that sticks in my head, because of, well.... no jaws!

Where I live in the U.S , the fireants are awsome! they put blisters everywhere they sting, so we are thinking anteaters, although the ants have a natural enemie, which is a small fly that lays eggs in the ants head.. a really SMALL fly! the eggs hatch and the baby fly drives the ant slowly insane,, kinda like human babies do moms and daddys.. they are breeding those and turning them loose in the south where the ants are dominant..

haven't seen anyone mentioning that they don't have jaws...just that they don't have teeth...

I think they have jaws, I found this on Yahoo search, It mentions an Ant Eater Jaws, though the rest of the info don't seem correct.

This was how ants died in his belly, in the thousands, squashed not by his narrow snout's feeble jaws but by the walls of his muscular gut.
He belched, long and high-pitched, and rolled onto his side, enjoying the swollen feeling. Instead of spending hours hunting for ants or termites, and having to rip open the hill and lick them up, his tongue had found this man's feet as he slept in the field. So quickly had be pulled it in that the meal had only awoken when up to his armpits in snout.
It'd screamed then, unsure what was happening, but before it had time to cry out again the swollen snout had pulsed and rippled, and the shoulders and face had been gone. Hands had clutched at the lips of his snout, and then a last, heavy gulp, and he'd settled down as he was now, enjoying the squirming inside.


hmm... naaa...

anyhoo....

it is an anthropomorphic thing to do to measure the animal kingdom according to intelligence.

we know that we are intelligent...therefore it is an important quality. Many animals get by without being intelligent at al...the entire plant kingdom gets by without a single thought...ever...and yet we search for the qualities which resemble ours, not thinking about whether they are important in the big picture.

blabla

I knew it!.... I knew this thread was leading up to something! so, we are intellegent hmmm? lets ponder a moment.. we seek to control all in sight, including each other, and that is a sad game we play, may the best man/woman loose, and the wiley, intellegent, predatory.. "we" in us, eats not only food for free at times, we scavenge each other in the name of good buisiness, we will lure away a spouse from a confused marraige, use them for advantage, maybe, maybe the game turns, and it hurts like hell.. but nobody wants to hear that, because the rules are plain.... yes.. of course we knew because we are ...Predators! or, we are investors in others losses, like a pawnshop we give little for a memento, a speacial commitment, a past Icon of happier days, and it is a Sale.... success! One prospers, the other fails and suffers, or do they? its easy to say... a fool and his money are soon parted, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure! it was a good buy, but I jewed him down more, and got it cheaper... a Winner I am....? only the strong survive! it not my fault they are losers. I went to school! I EArned my way.. lordy,, the Neighbors must be having money problems, they fight and argue a lot! I bet I can get that old Family Heirloom they love so much,,, Real Cheap now! We are not Cannibals, we let our prey live, we do not eat Flesh,, we prefer the Heart and Soul. let them suffer in peace* I'd rather be an AntEater, with heartburn, and hehe...... No teeth!


*fAr OuT MaN... that felt ....Gooude*:D I'm almost done now.. What Else needs dicussing?

My guess: coordination. The coordination of senses and muscles is slightly more important in an organism that pursues than in one that evades -- whereas fleeing prey can rely on number (scatter tactics) and almost ignore the environment (short of not running into things, off cliffs, etc.), a predator must take its prey, its environment, and its personal health into account, all the while performing acrobatic feats of movement coordinated by its big brain. It's a lot easier for random mutations to generate a BIG (or more complicated) brain than it is to create a brain that has been augmented in specifically convenient areas -- thus, intelligence would be a side-effect of a tool for body coordination.

As to the number/society issue, I think the first couple posts in this thread got it backwards: predators are often solitary (stealth advantage), whereas prey usually has no reason not to be social. I don't think pack mentality increases individual intelligence: rats, other mammals, some insects, etc. aren't considered intelligent but are considered social.

One similar alternative that I think WOULD work is that prey species are often R species (light investment, high number of offspring) and predators are often K species (heavy investment, small number of offspring).

But all of this is unnecessarily pan-Darwinian -- it's probably just a coincidence, and, as has been suggested, a problem with our perception of intelligence.

Well intelligence has two components - thinking fast and the ability to grasp the salient features of a problem given long times. I would imagine many animals don't ever need to grasp concepts in a creative manner to thrive. They have survival skills that have a straight-forward implementation and likely fairly hard wired. The calculation of where a prey is going to be in a second could still be blindingly fast and better than one could calculate.

Being able to really figure out better approaches to problems, especially when one can use tools or even with a set of built-ins like appendages, really changes things though. I think the creative type of problem solving is an interesting type of intelligence that is relevant to the evolution of general survival strategies, not super specialized ones, is very interesting and a relevant topic of debate. The evilness that humans can come up with aside (I'm sorry for your pain slim) I think that was at the heart of this discussion. And relevant to the big picture.

I've heard Elephants have good memories and stuff, but how intelligent are they compared to other groups? Has anyone done any type of general comparitive intelligence testing among mammals or vertebrates? I'd love to read something about that.

One can hand wave an explanation about anything complex especially with little information to go on. There's always some feature one can attribute a relationship to. It's like verbal over-fitting your data.

My guess under such a disclaimer would be that Elephants are not highly maneuverable and need to be aware and attentive to their environment to maintain their near invulnerability. In my personal experience data and attentiveness are the root of true intelligence. Uninformed smart people live in a highly rationalized world bearing less resemblance to reality than it should ... but such an explanation as well could be all rationalization bearing little resemblance to reality.

By the way, when I said "it's capacity to feed" I was really thinking more like thrive and reproduce. If predation is a major shaping force of a population I would imagine simple growth dynamics (ie maximal rate of simply producing more individuals) would be selected for strongly. Once again little data to back that up though.

LoaTzu - interesting ideas ... I think one does have to view the problem more mechanistically in things such as rates and costs of production to get to the heart of it.

Originally posted by Fraggle Rocker
Here's a good question: Why are ELEPHANTS so intelligent? They've got the size to make avoiding predators a very low priority except for their young. Also to ensure that they get first crack at all the tasty vegetation while the zebras wait in line. And they've got the strength to uproot practically anything and eat it. It doesn't seem like developing intelligence had any bearing at all on their chances for survival! It seems overly simplistic, but maybe the same forces that made it bigger made the brain bigger, more expansive/complicated, and thus more intelligent?

Originally posted by LaoTzu

I don't think pack mentality increases individual intelligence: rats, other mammals, some insects, etc. aren't considered intelligent but are considered social.


i'm sorry to inform you that rats are quite intelligent.

we were not talking about the fact that being social requires intelligence....because it doesn't...

BUT complex group dynamics requires intelligence...as can be seen for instance in a group of chimpansees, or a pack of wolves...people....

want you may wonder if what was there first....the egg or the chicken: was there intelligence before the social group and did this make intricate social behaviour possible...or did they both go hand in hand during evolution.


the real answer is:

there is no single answer...intelligence probably emerged for different reasons in different species.

Yes rats are quite intelligent, i'm convinced that in some ways they are more intelligent than people.


Why are ELEPHANTS so intelligent?
Elephants have a rather unique story, they started evolving to be aquatic mammals when water was everywhere, but just as soon as they made those changes water started drying up.
Technically they should have gone extinct but the smarter individuals found ways to survive against all odds and this continued over quite some time.
Naturally now we have pretty smart elephants because strictly only the smartest survived.
Indeed, all the very intelligent animals(including humans) have descended from animals who were faced with overwhelming adversity where the only way around it was to use your head.
Only the smartest bears can store enough fat during the summer to survive hibernation. Only the smartest elephants can navigate through miles and miles of desert to find waterholes and food. Only the smartest raccoons can find food all year round in varying conditions.
All these animals are just getting smarter and smarter.

Cetaceans got their large brains by making the adaptation from land to water first and foremost, that is a huge adaptation to make that demanded much intelligence from the pioneers that originally survived the change.
Even in cases where this adaptation is quite simple, the brain needed to increase. Manatees have very basic lives and their move from land to water was the least demanding intellectually. All they do is eat sea grass. But they still got bulked up a little in the brains department from the change. Juts because its a vastly different environment.

Humans must have faced quite a few hard times in their history to get the brains they have. This also could explain why they are so instinctually bitter at the natural world;)
It must have been tough break after tough break just barging in like the waves of the ocean.
We humans have obviously been tested greatly in our past, with only super genius's making it through some of the hard times.
But, we have well and truely stopped getting smarter now, unlike bears and elephants and raccoons.
This could lead to a revolution in the future, oh god I hope that happens. I can see it now.
Retarded dysgenic future humans walking into traps set up by genius grizzly's, super smart raccoons making people think their food is cursed which makes them keep giving it to the raccons untill the people starve, elephants with human slaves...
Sweet.

Asguard. You've only replied once to all of these posts. What do you think now?

Anteaters do have jaws but they are very small and nothing in comparison to other mammals. An anteater's head is long and tubelike, ending in a small narrow snout that sucks the insect out. Inside the anteater's head is a long tongue that protrudes from the oral opening measuring up to or even more than 2 feet long. This tongue is used to extract insects and is coated with a sticky saliva. Anteaters have no teeth but they use their small internal their jaws to chew.

I see no proof that predators are smarter than their prey. If that were the case than they would soon overwhelm their prey and have nothing left to eat, although there are cases in geological history where this has happened - and also in recent history! There are only about 50 mountain lions left in Florida but this is mostly due to human impact on their environment, but we have been eliminating their natural range and thus preventing them from hunting prey.

In general, and has been shown and proven through biological and genetic studies, the prey evolves a trait or technique (such as camouflage colors in butterflies) to elude the predator, and the predator then evolves a trait to help it get its prey (such as electric field sensory perception in sharks, or larger canines in lions and tigers).