ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE

  

For the purposes of this article we will divide intelligence into 

two categories: reactive and proactive.

Reactive intelligence is a pre-programmed or instinctive 

response to the environment and proactive intelligence is a 

learned response to the environment.

The responses of organisms to their environment range from 

almost totally instinctive to almost totally learned.

The behavior of the “lower” life forms is the most instinctive 

and the behavior of the “higher” life forms is almost totally 

learned.

 

Each organism has its own way of understanding its 

environment but the goal remains the same: the ability to 

forecast the immediate future quickly and accurately.

Intelligence, simply defined, is the ability to know what comes

 next.

If intelligence is not the ability to do this, then what is it?

If intelligence cannot do this then of what use is it?

Do not doubt that all living things have intelligence to some 

degree.

Intelligence and life: one is not possible without the other and 

all species of living things have the requisite intelligence 

necessary to flourish.

 

We normally think of predatory animals as simply running 

down their prey and overpowering it but there is far more to 

successful hunting than that.

Finding prey and killing it is matter of being at the right place 

at the right time.

This is not so easy as evidenced by the low success rate of 

predators.

 

To successfully prey, predators must anticipate the behavior of

 the prey and formulate a plan of attack.

This is extraordinary when you think of it.

The predator must have sufficient knowledge of the prey’s 

habits to be able to predict their movements (memory and 

spatial reasoning), must know the geographical features of 

the land (memory and pattern recognition), must select the 

most advantageous ambush point (spatial reasoning), and 

must do all this in a timely fashion (analytical ability).

 

And as if these attributes were not enough, hunting is often 

performed by a group that relies on an coordinated effort.

I have no idea how they do this.

I don't know how they mutually form a plan and assign the 

individual duties and communicate the plan to each other.

Nonetheless, they do it and all of this is not only suggestive of 

a high intelligence but of an even more effective coordinated

 collective intelligence.

 

Prey animals do not have the predator’s burden.

They are reactive rather than proactive and, one concludes - 

because of the evolutionary axiom that abilities are developed 

according to need - that their intelligence has no need to 

further develop and so has remained at a significantly lower 

level.

In fact, one is left to conclude that, however unpalatable it 

may seem, predatory behavior is the driving force behind the 

evolution of intelligence and organisation.