1.0   Human intelligence seems to have required an extraordinary set of coincidences

    If life requires strict reject limits, customizing a specific animal would appear to require even tighter
    specifications. Not only must Mother Nature mix a cocktail with the right chemicals under the right
    environmental conditions to manufacture the primordial cell, but she must in addition have a lengthy
    process consisting of carefully crafted relations with the right type of plants and animals. It takes a more
    complex process to manufacture Man than it does to create a simple cell. Kingsolver and Gomulkiewicz
    express the common wisdom prevalent in scientific circles when they explain that the environment
    determines the range of morphological variation. [1]  If intelligence is a function of environment any
    change that we make to this specification has the potential for upsetting our prediction. Indeed, Mayr
    remarks that only one species out of millions developed human-level intelligence. This rarity, he suggests,
    shows that Man is an extraordinary coincidence:

    “ High intelligence has originated only once, in human beings. I can think of only two
       possible reasons for this rarity. One is that high intelligence is not at all favored by
       natural selection… all the other kinds of living organisms, millions of species, get
       along fine without high intelligence...The other possible reason for the rarity of
       intelligence is that it is extraordinarily difficult to acquire.” [2]

    In Mayr’s opinion, if Mother Nature had to do it all over again, she would most likely fail to give birth to
    Man. Anything could go wrong during the long pregnancy. Any slight deviation in environmental
    conditions or in the history of interrelations with other plants or animals and the elephant would not have
    developed its trunk or the kangaroo its pouch.

    Mayr's argument is not new. It is a holdover from traditional religion which maintains that Man has a
    special place in nature. God made us in His image and made us only once.


    2.0   The experts confuse the organ with its function

    I sympathize with this seemingly persuasive argument, but it fails to convince me. I am not persuaded
    because it glosses over the distinction between intelligence and brain. Mayr seems to confuse the
    function with the organ. If an animal intends to interact with the environment, it must necessarily develop
    organs to perform physical functions. The elephant developed a trunk to grab things whereas a monkey
    may use its tail and the dog its mouth, but grabbing is universal. The brain is an organ whereas intelli-
    gence is more like grip: a skill, a function, or maybe a category. When we ponder whether intelligent life
    exists somewhere else in the Universe we take for granted that the alien has a brain and continue to
    theorize about the function.


    3.0   One king necessarily develops per function

    In fact, just to get the hang of where I'm headed with this argument, why don't we begin with a ‘lesser’
    skill. Intelligence is such a sensitive topic – especially with religious folk – that it tends to distract people
    from the issue at hand.

    Let’s look at might. No one can deny that every animal has a body. And no one can deny that every region
    in every geological epoch had its top predator. Who would we propose for the heavyweight champion of
    all time? Who was the top predator of them all?

    I think that there would be no argument here either. I believe we would all agree that no one would last
    one round against the largest theropods, the T-Rex-like dinosaurs that appeared on and off again from
    the Jurassic to the late Cretaceous (Fig. 1). You would think that there should be no reason preventing
    Mother Nature from having made cats (e.g., lions, tigers, smilodons) as big as T-Rex while preserving
    other favorable attributes. However, this seems to go against the grain. Surely the towering
    tyrannosaurids surrender dexterity and cunning to animals such as panthers and foxes, but so must a
    heavyweight give up speed to a flyweight. A T-Rex doesn’t need to move fast or be sophisticated because
    he makes up for these deficiencies with sheer size.

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All living entities
developed Intelligence

    In other words, by focusing on intelligence skeptics like Mayr seem to overlook the fact that all animals
    developed heads. If we direct our attention to the 'object' brain rather than to the 'function' intelligence the
    task of determining whether intelligence was unavoidable simplifies enormously. Now it is an objective
    issue dependent on definitions. Now we can carry out an 'intelligent' discussion.


    4.0   Every living entity developed a 'brain' and 'thinks'

    Every plant and animal must have a manner of feeding itself. And every plant and animal must have a way
    of moving and of reproducing, and of sleeping. We can agree to call the feeding mechanism a ‘mouth’ and
    the locomotion mechanism ‘legs’ or ‘feet’, with the caveat that in some instances these organs will border
    on euphemisms. A plant does not have a specific organ that we would identify as a mouth, but it must
    absorb nutrients in one way or another if it wants to be a member of the Club of Life. Likewise, every
    animal must have a headquarters from where to regulate its physiology. We can agree to call this organ a
    brain with the understanding that, in this specific context, the word brain is broadly defined. If we define
    brain objectively and restrictively as a control center, and intelligence as the output or result of what the
    control center does, intelligence is not such a rarity as orthodoxy would lead us to believe. Under this
    particular definition, even the simplest life-form – the cell – has developed a rudimentary ‘brain.’ All
    animals have a CPU (Fig. 4).  The level of sophistication of the software is a matter of degrees and levels.
    Hence, wherever life develops so does ‘intelligence.’ And here we must recognize that Mother Nature   
    was very generous. She blessed all her children in the Wild Kingdom, including the primordial cell, with
    a  CPU. [3]

    Let’s make our next competition speed. Who would we suggest for the King of Sprint?

    If we consider 100 or 1000 meter dashes, perhaps the fastest animal that ever lived is our very own epoch’
    s champion: the cheetah (Fig. 2). Clocked at 60 mph, the cheetah is perhaps not even outrun by
    prehistoric cheetahs.

Fig. 1   King of the Road
Relative sizes of some of the terrestrial kings of might and size:
T-Rex, Lion (Tiger is slightly larger), Elephant, Inostrancevia ( a
therapsid of the late Permian)

Fig. 2 King of Speed

    I think that you’re getting the hang of it. The objects are: torso, legs, hands, tails, necks, heads, and
    brains. The categories in which animals compete are: size, strength, speed, ferocity, diving, flying,
    jumping, grabbing, reaching, and thinking. Objects are digital kind of stuff: you either have them or you
    don’t. Skills or features such as size, length, weight, and speed are analog type of stuff. Once you have
    legs, speed is an issue of degrees. A mouse darts orders of magnitude faster than a slug and a cheetah
    leaves a mouse biting the dust. Likewise, a mouse is orders of magnitude larger than an ant, yet it is
    dwarfed by an elephant which in turn is outclassed by T-Rex.

    So where does intelligence fit in? How are we going to decide which is the smartest species in the world if
    we don't even have a definition of the word intelligence? The best that the experts can do is objectively
    compare brain size or brain to body size. The king of brain of all times appears to be the whales. They
    have the largest brains in the animal kingdom, but this doesn't help them understand Math. The king of
    brain-to-body ratio was probably Neanderthal. He had both a bigger brain and a larger brain to body ratio
    than modern Man. Perhaps he would have understood Math eventually had he still been around. But
    today it's our species which holds the record in brain-to-body (Fig. 3). Dolphins, parrots, and poodles are
    farther behind in this category and seashells and termites are farther still. So what have we learned about
    intelligence?

Fig. 3   King of IQ?

    5.0   There can only be one champion of intelligence

    On the other hand, Mother Nature can only allow one champion per function. There can only be one
    largest animal of them all. And there can only be one fastest of them all. And if we define 'intelligence' as
    simply the brain to body ratio, there can only be one smartest of them all, both within a given epoch and
    throughout the entire history of Earth. If each species strives to be the best at what it does and eventually
    manages to perfect its trade, competition leads to a champion in each category. In the case of the
    hominids, Mother Nature apparently had pity on her least physically endowed children. The hominids
    weren't the fastest or the strongest or the biggest. They were no match in the open field against a cat.
    They couldn't flap their stringy arms in the air or under the sea. So dear Mother Nature blessed them with
    smarts. In retrospect, it was predictable that a messiah would one day come to rule the Earth and that this
    King of 'Intelligence' would descend from the trees (Fig. 5). If there is human level-intelligence somewhere
    in the Universe, you can be assured that it isn't made of silicon or wrapped in green skin. If there is human-
    level intelligence elsewhere, it looks pretty much like us.

Fig. 4

    Fig. 5
animal cell
plant cell
Adapted for the Internet from:

Why God Doesn't Exist
We can't reason with you any
longer, Bill! You've got the brain
of a vegetable! We believe it's
our moral obligation to put you
out of your misery.


Even the most primitive cell is a CPU, a control center.

Intelligence descends
from the trees
your brain
your brain
on drugs