[fnovd]

When we define intelligence as having the ability to do the things that only humans do, it's no wonder that we can't see intelligence in other species.

Most animals don't have digits they can use to manipulate things with the precision we do. That doesn't mean they aren't intelligent.

There are dogs that have learned to ride public bus and metro systems. They know how to act to be accepted in these scenarios when other animals would not be. They have a sense of where they will be going and what the purpose of the vehicle is. They can use their noses to detect things that we cannot even with our fancy tools, and we even rely on them for their noses when our human tech fails.

If intelligence is the domain of humanity then I'm not so interested in intelligence. I'm interested in whatever it is that allows sentient beings to understand, operate within, and adapt to their environments.

[dahwolf]

We vastly overestimate the intelligence of us and underestimate the intelligence of any other living creature.

Or rather, humanity acts as a highly intelligent collective but individual humans are only moderately intelligent in comparison.

As a thought experiment: put an average urban person on an uninhabited island. No tech. The person would have absolutely no idea how to recreate any of our technology. Nor would they know how to hunt, do agriculture, do mining, do anything.

We have no idea how anything works and outsourced even basic survival skills. The magic of humanity is that actually smart people are able to store and communicate knowledge to build ever more advanced tech, which through sophisticated supply chains and management systems is widely distributed to all other people whom don't require to know how anything works.