Intelligence
Cf.
Forms and versions in use:
- cognitive intelligence
- embodied intelligence
- social intelligence
- emotional intelligence
- ecological intelligence
- artificial intelligence
- collective intelligence
- swarm intelligence
- crowdsourced intelligence
- organizational intelligence
Relate to decision-making.
Roudavski, Stanislav, and Douglas Brock. “From Dingoes to AI: Who Makes Decisions in More-than-Human Worlds?” TRACE ∴ Journal for Human-Animal Studies 11 (2025): 56–96. https://doi.org/10/g89xj8.
Definitions
Intelligence is the ability to apply past knowledge to new problems.
Kaplan, Gisela. Bird Minds: Cognition and Behaviour of Australian Native Birds. Melbourne: CSIRO, 2015.
Cf. with the discussion of information resources and their use in niche construction theory.
Odling-Smee, John C. Niche Construction: How Life Contributes to Its Own Evolution. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2024.
"Intelligence is a human construct to represent the ability to achieve goals."
Hochberg, Michael E. 2025. “An Information Framework of Intelligence.” BioSystems 256: 105548. https://doi.org/10/hbbnpc.
Intelligence, Creativity, Subjectivity, Imagination
"The continuous nature of intelligence has been described in the past by Piaget (1952, 1971). Sternberg (2017, p. 45) wrote “an appropriate way to look at the intelligence of any organism is to look at how well it adapts to the range of environments it confronts.” Viewing intelligence as a capacity necessary for survival in humans and animals alike offers an opportunity for cross-disciplinary, cross-species study free of preconceived, hierarchical categories."
Bar-Hen-Schweiger, Moran, and Avishai Henik. “Intelligence as Mental Manipulation in Humans and Nonhuman Animals.” Animal Sentience 3, no. 23 (2019). https://doi.org/10/gkfbj7.
The Purpose of Intelligence
Evolutionary, intelligence is selfish, it emerges to solve local problems for an organism and a species. It is about satisficing within constrain information and experience. It is an expensive approach to the problem of survival, not always the best.
Costs of Intelligence
Greater learning and analytical abilities are not necessarily superior for adaptation. Human-style intellectual and cultural capacities carry costs that may explain their rarity in the animal kingdom.
Limited memory and analytical capacity help animals avoid information overload when making decisions. Too much information and too many options can flood attention. Therefore, intelligence beyond a certain threshold often becomes an inappropriate hindrance for adaptation. Consequently, such intelligence is unlikely to evolve.
Humans possess outsized memory and analytical capacities that can be inefficient. However, these costs were evidently outweighed during the human evolutionary transition by the adaptive benefits of cultural generalising, transmitting, and diversifying.
In the discussion of interspecies cultures.
Lohmann, Roger Ivar. “Human–Canine Interspecies Cultures in Oceania and in General: An Introduction.” In Dogs and Their Humans in Pacific Island Interspecies Cultures, 1–34. New York: Routledge, 2026. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003658696-1.
The argument is from:
Enquist, Magnus, Stefano Ghirlanda, and Johan Lind. The Human Evolutionary Transition: From Animal Intelligence to Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023.
Cooperative Intelligence
Cooperation based on tolerance is a significant evolutionary advantage.
Hare, Brian, and Vanessa Woods. Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity. New York: Random House, 2020.
Environment and Intelligence
When environments vary, species with inventive intelligence become more common. For example, crows. There are now more crows than ever in history. Smart birds can cope with variability.
On the contrary, the lack of variability as something many species need.
Dunn, Rob R. A Natural History of the Future: What the Laws of Biology Tell Us About the Destiny of the Human Species. New York: Basic Books, 2021.
Marzluff, John M., and Tony Angell. Gifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans. Free Press, 2014.
Artificial Intelligence
References
Relevant
Schlanger, Zoë. The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth. New York: Harper, 2024.
Generic
Ajuwon, Victor, Tiago Monteiro, Alexandra K. Schnell, and Nicola S. Clayton. 2025. “To Know or Not to Know? Curiosity and the Value of Prospective Information in Animals.” Learning & Behavior 53 (1): 114–27. https://doi.org/10/hbfghn.
Amodio, Piero, Markus Boeckle, Alexandra K. Schnell, Ljerka Ostojíc, Graziano Fiorito, and Nicola S. Clayton. 2019. “Grow Smart and Die Young: Why Did Cephalopods Evolve Intelligence?” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 34 (1): 45–56. https://doi.org/10/gfwk9s.
DiMatteo, Larry A., Cristina Poncibò, and Michel Cannarsa, eds. The Cambridge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence: Global Perspectives on Law and Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022.
Malabou, Catherine. Morphing Intelligence: From IQ Measurement to Artificial Brains. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019.
Sternberg, Robert J., and Scott Barry Kaufman, eds. The Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
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