As I was letting Tippy the Wonder Dog out to do his business, it ocurred to me . . . Are we influencing the development of intelligence or consciousness by taking animals into our midst? I chose this forum for my question because it addresses how environment effects intelligence. For instance, if we took H. habilis into our homes and fed him, clothed him, bought him toys, took him to the doctor, and dressed him up at Christmas, would it have taken him 750,000 years to develop into H. ergaster? Or would we speed up the process significantly? How many reruns of the Waltons have to appear before the dog changes the channel to Animal Planet? Seriously, I notice too, the bar for intelligence has been raised several times. Things like use of tools, communication, disposition of dead, and social hierarchy get tossed out the window as indicators when we observe these traits in the animal world. Anyway, just wondering . . . are we creating the meek who will inherent the earth after we destroy ourselves?

[edit on 23-2-2008 by Tippys Dad]

things wont get any more.. intelligent? there will need to be selective pressures, or artificial selection of intelligence by humans in animals for them to progressively get smarter.

for example if you have 100 monkies. the average IQ is for argument sake 20, we select the male and female with the highest IQ.. say 23 each, then we breed them to have another 100 monkies, the average IQ being 22, select the smartest again, being 25 and 24, breed them, the next generation may stay the same, but hypothetically if you do this enough you could get some smarter monkies than originally. (this may dwell in a bit with eugenics)

things wont just get smarter without smarter ones reproducing/reproducing more than the average/dummer ones.

i would just like to add and example of the power of this artificial selection. correct me if i'm wrong but all the different types of dog breeds in the world are descendant of the wolf (maybe minus a few like the dingo). this was just through human selection and breeding techniques. as we all know some of these breeds are faster than others and some are smarter. so in a way we have influenced there evolution if you like.

hope this helps you with your question.

[edit on 27/2/08 by cheeser]

While on the one hand, it seems we're creating just the opposite of intelligence in some of our domesticated animals (numerous small fuzzy dogs who spend most of their time shivering come to mind), it seems to me that we might at least be working toward creating new life forms, with new ways of relating, due to our influence on them. Dogs are probably the best example; though they can still be bred back to wolves and even some foxes to create viable, fertile offspring, there are significant differences in the way that the average dog thinks and the average wolf thinks. While a wolf will look generally at a human's hand, a dog (retrievers, for example) will look to where the hand is pointing. Additionally, an adult wolf is in fact fully adult, whereas a dog generally matures to a sort of teenage stage, one that is more pliable for humans to use. However, what we've really managed to accomplish is the honing of specific behavior patterns we find useful, such as herding or tracking, and not really creating new behaviors for the animals. And in any case, they've remained able to interbreed--so really, we've not managed to create a new species

I've heard that primates in labs have taught other primates to use sign language. In that respect, we've done nothing to change the genetic makeup of the animal, but we have introduced a new means of communication.

On the other hand, we have managed to create new kinds of plants--the green pea, for example. Plants are probably rather easier to work with than animals, I would guess, but I think it shows what we could possibly do. The question then becomes, to what end would we want to be responsible for creating another intelligent, possibly self-aware being?

St Udio said:

? are human researchers accidently, unintentionally accellerating the
knowledge growth & smartness evolution in the population of domestic chimpanzees... while chimps in nature are 'left behind'

This is exactly where I was going! I understand the need for problem solving to develop intelligence and the genetic significance of "mating" the most intelligent to develop the most intelligent offspring . . . (well, actually, I have a very rudimentary understanding . . .) ("Dammit Jim! I'm a truck driver, not a genetic scientist!")


My original point is development of intelligence through stimilation that isn't there for any pet's "wild" counterpart.