morgan@csc32.dec.com (Mike Morgan/Colorado Springs) (02/06/90)
In article <16358@boulder.Colorado.EDU>, bobk@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Robert Kinne) writes... >This is a clever, catchy statement about the development of >intelligence, but plays a little fast and loose with the truth. >We live in the great age of mammals. The preceding age was >dominated by the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs almost surely included >the most intelligent animals on earth at the time, and had >evolved to fill almost all the niches available for animal life. >We did not spring from the dinosaurs, but from a small population >of furtive mammals that existed on the fringes of the world of >the great thunder lizards. It is very likely that similar >discontinuities in the progression of 'most intelligent animals' >happened at earlier times before the dinosaurs. Do you think that if something hadn't happened 68 million years ago to reduce the dino. populations that mammals might be their pets today?? B^) >Of course I don't know whether the author considers homo sapiens >to be the most intelligent animal extant, do I? :-) I dunno. I never met a lizzard who was smarter than me. But I know some real snakes (with two legs B^). *** As always I speak for myself. ***