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Post by theropod on Oct 5, 2023 13:51:22 GMT 5
Well that (not applying to stegosaurs and sauropods) would at least be what Herculano-Houzel seems to argue, as she apparetly prefer the estimates based on an ectothermic metabolism for these taxa, based on their brain-body scaling being more similar to ectotherms, which would give them far fewer telencephalic neurons than a theropod or ornithopod with the same brain size.
I however am not so sure about that. There aren't really any 30 ton reptiles today to be so sure how they would scale, and sauropods weren’t ectothermic either, showing the limitations of this very simplistic categorization, so the evidence is not that good (leaving aside the inherent self contradiction and mild nongsequitur in using regressions for brain on body size to determine how telencephalic neuron count should scale with brain size).
At the very least I would expect sauropods and stegosaurs may have been smarter than commonly given credit for, but really it would be important to try and take into account the actual shape of the brain, and try to somehow find as good a quantifiable indicator of relative cerebrum size as is possible, rather than to just assume that telencephalon size is predicted by a very oversimplified universal scaling relationship for all endotherms or ectotherms respectively, and that it is basically just the same as the size of the cerebral pallium.
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Post by Supercommunist on Mar 21, 2024 8:10:07 GMT 5
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Post by Supercommunist on Apr 29, 2024 3:39:17 GMT 5
Thought we had a reptile intelligence thread. Apparently not but since the most recent evidence suggests dinosaurs apparently had reptile levels of cognition: Eastern garder snakes pass a smell-version mirror test. The less social ball pythons failed. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rspb.2024.0125 |
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Post by Infinity Blade on Apr 29, 2024 5:50:56 GMT 5
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Post by Supercommunist on Apr 29, 2024 7:58:32 GMT 5
TBH I think "fish intelligence" is a bad description because there seem to be a lot of brainy species of fish. As of now, I have seen more impressive displays of fish intelligence than amphibian intelligence, so I am not sure you can easily group all the animals classes in order of intelligence. I realize that on average mammals and birds probably are more intelligent than the other groups but I am not confident that most reptiles are more intelligent than most fish. |
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Post by Infinity Blade on Apr 29, 2024 18:03:11 GMT 5
TBH I think "fish intelligence" is a bad description because there seem to be a lot of brainy species of fish. As of now, I have seen more impressive displays of fish intelligence than amphibian intelligence, so I am not sure you can easily group all the animals classes in order of intelligence. I realize that on average mammals and birds probably are more intelligent than the other groups but I am not confident that most reptiles are more intelligent than most fish. I'll go further and say "mammal-level" or "bird-level" intelligence are pretty horrible descriptors too. Even if we must define "intelligence" as essentially "human-like behavior" (all the "intelligent" animal behaviors are things we humans conveniently fill to the maximum extent), most birds are not as "intelligent" as corvids or parrots, and most mammals are not as "intelligent" as apes, odontocetes, or elephants. Sure, maybe you could say that most non-bird dinosaurs were likely on par with turtles, lizards, and crocodilians, while maniraptorans were on par with ratites. But crocodilians are capable of things like learning, long-distance navigation, and cooperative hunting, apparently even play behavior and potentially tool use. On the other hand, I've seen a clip of two emus keep trying to bite at a picture of seeds on a bag. (Of course, the reason for this is because crocodilians need these skills for their lifestyles, while emus evidently don't need to be able to differentiate between actual food and a picture thereof, which goes into the whole "how to define intelligence" thing.) Ftr, I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea that mammals and birds may be more "intelligent" on average than other animal groups (but A) this is assuming "intelligence"=human-like behavior and B) I don't think the gap is nearly as wide as people think), but it's also worth noting that the amount of research put into reptile cognition is far less than that put into endothermic vertebrates. I'd imagine the same is true for fish and amphibians. Could be that with more research into the other animal groups, they could be more or less on par with most mammals and birds in cognition. |
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Post by Exalt on Apr 29, 2024 20:52:06 GMT 5
This probably sounds very simplistic, but does this mean that stereotypical notions of Stegosaurus being very dim are likely wrong?
Of course, defining stupidity might be it's own problem.
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Post by razor45dino on Apr 29, 2024 22:39:02 GMT 5
This probably sounds very simplistic, but does this mean that stereotypical notions of Stegosaurus being very dim are likely wrong? Of course, defining stupidity might be it's own problem. Stegosaurus was certainly not as dumb as many people like to ridicule it for ( it's brain was more the size of a hotdog rather than a walnut, anyway ) |
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Post by Exalt on Apr 29, 2024 23:10:40 GMT 5
That is some mildly funny mental imagery.
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Post by Supercommunist on Apr 30, 2024 3:03:23 GMT 5
TBH I think "fish intelligence" is a bad description because there seem to be a lot of brainy species of fish. As of now, I have seen more impressive displays of fish intelligence than amphibian intelligence, so I am not sure you can easily group all the animals classes in order of intelligence. I realize that on average mammals and birds probably are more intelligent than the other groups but I am not confident that most reptiles are more intelligent than most fish. I'll go further and say "mammal-level" or "bird-level" intelligence are pretty horrible descriptors too. Even if we must define "intelligence" as essentially "human-like behavior" (all the "intelligent" animal behaviors are things we humans conveniently fill to the maximum extent), most birds are not as "intelligent" as corvids or parrots, and most mammals are not as "intelligent" as apes, odontocetes, or elephants. Sure, maybe you could say that most non-bird dinosaurs were likely on par with turtles, lizards, and crocodilians, while maniraptorans were on par with ratites. But crocodilians are capable of things like learning, long-distance navigation, and cooperative hunting, apparently even play behavior and potentially tool use. On the other hand, I've seen a clip of two emus keep trying to bite at a picture of seeds on a bag. (Of course, the reason for this is because crocodilians need these skills for their lifestyles, while emus evidently don't need to be able to differentiate between actual food and a picture thereof, which goes into the whole "how to define intelligence" thing.) Ftr, I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea that mammals and birds may be more "intelligent" on average than other animal groups (but A) this is assuming "intelligence"=human-like behavior and B) I don't think the gap is nearly as wide as people think), but it's also worth noting that the amount of research put into reptile cognition is far less than that put into endothermic vertebrates. I'd imagine the same is true for fish and amphibians. Could be that with more research into the other animal groups, they could be more or less on par with most mammals and birds in cognition. I feel that snakes and a lot of lizards hold the reptile intelligence mean back. Crocodiles, monitor lizards, and tegus are known to be intelligent reptiles, but overall they are a tiny percentage of the reptile species. Meanwhile, most mammalian species are comprised of rodents and bats, animals that exhibit parental care, and in some species, altruism, traits that do seem to require a decent amount of intelligence. Meanwhile, as much as I like snakes, you don't need much brain power to sit in one place and ambush prey from time to time. I think the amphibian and fish intelligence categories are more eregious because there doesn't actually seem to be evidence that amphibians are more intelligent than fish, it's just assumed that is the case because they are the younger class. |
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Post by Infinity Blade on May 3, 2024 7:04:25 GMT 5
I'll go further and say "mammal-level" or "bird-level" intelligence are pretty horrible descriptors too. Even if we must define "intelligence" as essentially "human-like behavior" (all the "intelligent" animal behaviors are things we humans conveniently fill to the maximum extent), most birds are not as "intelligent" as corvids or parrots, and most mammals are not as "intelligent" as apes, odontocetes, or elephants. Sure, maybe you could say that most non-bird dinosaurs were likely on par with turtles, lizards, and crocodilians, while maniraptorans were on par with ratites. But crocodilians are capable of things like learning, long-distance navigation, and cooperative hunting, apparently even play behavior and potentially tool use. On the other hand, I've seen a clip of two emus keep trying to bite at a picture of seeds on a bag. (Of course, the reason for this is because crocodilians need these skills for their lifestyles, while emus evidently don't need to be able to differentiate between actual food and a picture thereof, which goes into the whole "how to define intelligence" thing.) Ftr, I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea that mammals and birds may be more "intelligent" on average than other animal groups (but A) this is assuming "intelligence"=human-like behavior and B) I don't think the gap is nearly as wide as people think), but it's also worth noting that the amount of research put into reptile cognition is far less than that put into endothermic vertebrates. I'd imagine the same is true for fish and amphibians. Could be that with more research into the other animal groups, they could be more or less on par with most mammals and birds in cognition. I feel that snakes and a lot of lizards hold the reptile intelligence mean back. Crocodiles, monitor lizards, and tegus are known to be intelligent reptiles, but overall they are a tiny percentage of the reptile species. Meanwhile, most mammalian species are comprised of rodents and bats, animals that exhibit parental care, and in some species, altruism, traits that do seem to require a decent amount of intelligence. Meanwhile, as much as I like snakes, you don't need much brain power to sit in one place and ambush prey from time to time.I think the amphibian and fish intelligence categories are more eregious because there doesn't actually seem to be evidence that amphibians are more intelligent than fish, it's just assumed that is the case because they are the younger class. I suppose that (the bolded) is true. I remember someone on Carnivora a while ago saying more or less the same thing on a thread about snake vs mouse intelligence. Even so, it looks like snakes can still think of things like coordinated hunting. The first study I posted earlier today, the latter one involves sea kraits. To be fair, the sea kraits are more active hunters, but the boas seem to just position themselves so they form an effective cave passage barrier. www.researchgate.net/profile/Vladimir-Dinets/publication/317019920_Coordinated_Hunting_by_Cuban_Boas/links/591f4dadaca27295a89e553f/Coordinated-Hunting-by-Cuban-Boas.pdfwww.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-48684-3 |
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Post by Infinity Blade on May 6, 2024 16:44:22 GMT 5
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Post by Supercommunist on Jun 1, 2024 7:24:44 GMT 5
I just remembered that years ago I saw a video of a monitor lizard drown a rat to death. Sadly, the video was live feeding so I won't but the attempt seemed very deliberate and is something terrestrial theropod could have been smart enough to realize.
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