Explaining natural wonders (Animals)

by David Turell , Sunday, December 04, 2016, 15:24 (2910 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: It’s good to hear that you recognize the intelligence of these birds. Of course it’s not surprising if you accept common descent and the hypothesis that all life forms have inherited their intelligence from the earliest forms and have developed it in countless different ways as the countless different organisms have learned to cope with or exploit the countless different environments.

I don't accept the 'intelligence from the earliest forms' comment: it is still my position that bacteria are automatic reactors. The intelligence we both agree on in current animals appeared after the evolution of the neuron and its development in the Cambrian explosion.

dhw: Here is another example, from a review in The Times of a book called: What a Fish Knows: The Inner lives of Our Underwater Cousins by Jonathan Balcombe. He claims that fish are “conscious and modestly intelligent animals with rich social lives”. They can distinguish individuals, feel pain, enjoy being stroked, and tests on one species (archerfish) showed that they recognized one photograph out of 44 different human faces, while carp could even distinguish between types of music.

Further proof of our discussion. Great find.