Animals that can become sapient and develop civilization?

[OneCatch]

Any and all creatures may have that capability. Some just have fewer evolutionary hurdles to jump through.

In any event, apes and other primates are the obvious choice. Raccoons are also in an excellent position.

Elephants and crows are in the second group I would consider. Both have high logic skills, but while they can use tools, said use is extremely crude.

Pigs, killer whales, and dolphins have a high enough level of intelligence to be serious contenders, but as mentioned lack the physical means required to make the most of it. Many canids (dogs, wolves, foxes, coyotes, etc.) and felidae (cats, both great and small) are in a similar position, but are not quite as strong in the reasoning department

I was going to suggest elephants as a contender behind certain primates.
I'm not even sure you could regard their tool usage as crude - the trunk, while not as flexible as two sets of opposable digits, is more that adequate for a great number of tasks.
And they're fearsomely intelligent and social - it seems like every few months there's a new study or report saying that they're capable of something previously unsuspected.

 

[Flatfrog]

Any and all creatures may have that capability. Some just have fewer evolutionary hurdles to jump through.

In any event, apes and other primates are the obvious choice. Raccoons are also in an excellent position.

Elephants and crows are in the second group I would consider. Both have high logic skills, but while they can use tools, said use is extremely crude.

Pigs, killer whales, and dolphins have a high enough level of intelligence to be serious contenders, but as mentioned lack the physical means required to make the most of it. Many canids (dogs, wolves, foxes, coyotes, etc.) and felidae (cats, both great and small) are in a similar position, but are not quite as strong in the reasoning department

I was going to suggest elephants as a contender behind certain primates.
I'm not even sure you could regard their tool usage as crude - the trunk, while not as flexible as two sets of opposable digits, is more that adequate for a great number of tasks.
And they're fearsomely intelligent and social - it seems like every few months there's a new study or report saying that they're capable of something previously unsuspected.

I think there's one factor working strongly against elephants which is that they need an enormous amount of food, and that severely limits their population size. Without a large population it's hard to see how they could develop much past their current level. I think you're only going to see true civilization emerging from a species that can get its food in small intense packets - ie meat. That enables specialization which leads to trade and efficiencies of scale. A browsing or grazing animal just has to spend too much time eating, and doesn't have enough time to gather food for lots of others as well.

I'd second the suggestion of rats or other rodents - beavers, perhaps. Meerkats or similar social species also have a head start.

It's also worth mentioning that any species coming after us will be able to benefit from all the hard work we've done creating domesticated crops. Obviously most of them wouldn't be able to survive in a human-free environment, but the seeds would still be around for any creature with the smarts to use them.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I think there's one factor working strongly against elephants which is that they need an enormous amount of food, and that severely limits their population size. Without a large population it's hard to see how they could develop much past their current level. I think you're only going to see true civilization emerging from a species that can get its food in small intense packets - ie meat. That enables specialization which leads to trade and efficiencies of scale. A browsing or grazing animal just has to spend too much time eating, and doesn't have enough time to gather food for lots of others as well.

You have a point there...though elephants could fairly easily shrink to a more manageable size, turning carnivourous is a bit more.

 

[shootthebandit]

You could argue that the societies created by bees and ants are actually more advanced than humans. There is evidence of a heirarchy, they obviously communicate effectively and operate as a unit

Bees and ants have a far larger impact on the earth than we do as human beings. If humans were wiped out the world would carry on (infact it would probably be better) where as without bees or ants the world would probably fail to exist

DO BEES DREAM?! Do they look to the stars and wonder "Who am I? Why am I here?" Does the bee, when it stings another creature, ever stop to think "How must it feel to be that creature, stung by me OOP I'M DEAD." NAY, SIR. I submit that it takes MORE than an efficient society and the meeting of basic needs to be considered "advanced." IT TAKES HOPE! AND FOLLY! AND PERSEVERANCE! But above all else, IT. TAKES. PASSION!!!

Phew... think I didn't get enough sleep last night. Probably should go to bed.

According to steven fry there are over 200 species of animal which exhibit homosexual behaviour yet only one that exhibits homophobic behaviour

Will a bee ever use its sting to deliberatley cause harm to another creature simply for pleasure? I think youll find that it is only humans that exhibit that sort of behaviour (studies have shown this behaviour in a few cases amongst primates)

So how is that advanced?

I recommend you watch a movie called "instinct" with antony hopkins. He plays an anthropologist studying gorillas and he gets lost and ends up living alongside the gorillas. He kills some poachers and gets arrested. He describes modern man as "takers" and how prehistoric man lived happily amongst the animals and only hunted what they needed

Why do you think we are described as "consumers" in the news. Because we just consume things until they run out then move onto something else. Just because we are aware of our actions it doesnt make us any more advanved than any other creature.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Will a bee ever use its sting to deliberatley cause harm to another creature simply for pleasure? I think youll find that it is only humans that exhibit that sort of behaviour (studies have shown this behaviour in a few cases amongst primates)

Dolphins, killer whales, some felines, and most especially chimpanzees.

Actually, just noticed that there's some overlap with the more intelligent animals that have been given as possibilities.

 

[Dragonbums]

Honestly I would say our primate relatives would be the first.

Second up in that category would have to be dolphins. They are smart as shit. They just happen to have the unfortunate to migrate and evolve in an aquatic environment with now dexterous fingers.

 

[Korolev]

Currently, no such animal exists. With time and evolution and luck, potentially descendants of the great ape species could. Chimpanzees are fairly intelligent - they can learn some aspects of sign language - not enough to form coherent sentences but enough to communicate on a primitive level with humans. Dogs are intelligent also, and can solve problems, but lack the necessary digits to create a technological society. Maybe if they evolve another set of paws that eventually become hands?

Dolphins are VERY intelligent - not as intelligent as us, but not too far off. The US navy has trained Dolphins to detect and classify naval mines and even assassinate people (no joke, weapon-equipped dolphins are real, look it up). The stuff the Navy Dolphins can do is astonishing. But they couldn't create technology, being water based, lacking in hands and thumbs.

Elephants are fairly intelligent as well - they pass the "mirror" test, they have societies with rules and they have good memories (they have 'graves' where they return to to mourn their dead by rubbing their trunks over the bones). But again.... no hands, no real way to make complex vocal sounds meaning that their ability to create technology is virtually nil and their ability to form a complex, "real" language is limited. I suppose given a few million years of evolution, the elephants may develop highly sophisticated "dual" trunks that can manipulate objects much like how our hands manipulate the environment, and they may become a technologically advanced civilization.

It's all speculative of course. None of the current species on this Earth could ever become a technologically advanced species. But, with luck, some of their distant descendants might. Not very likely, though.

 

[Shraggler]

Language isn't really a good indicator. Whales, cats, dogs, humanoid apes, bees, birds and elephants also have some variation of languages with varying complexity. Some of these animals also use tools and birds are actually more intelligent than we give them credit for.

It's hard to call that language. Language implies a construction in order to convey information.

Since human beings are the only species on this planet to have done what we've done, the characteristics that separate us from other species are places to start looking why.

Speech is fairly interesting in this regard. Humans are the only species known so far to use the tongue to change the sound coming out of our vocal tract. We've done it to such an extent that it is our primary active method of communication (and presumably has been for some time).

No one knows why humans developed this capability in the first place, but speech and language seemed to have had an effect on the development of what is considered "civilization". It is also unknown why or how we evolved this "intelligence", this sentience and self-awareness we have.

If these are truly random, successful mutations, it would stand to reason that perhaps every form of life is capable of "getting there" as time marches ever onward. It's clearly been a successful mutation for us. Who's to say it wouldn't be for any number of species?

 

[Esotera]

The smart money is on apes, they're the closest animal around to us so it wouldn't take too much evolutionary pressure to turn them into Humanity_2.0. I can't really imagine anything else developing civilization, simply because it would look so different from ours.

 

[shootthebandit]

Will a bee ever use its sting to deliberatley cause harm to another creature simply for pleasure? I think youll find that it is only humans that exhibit that sort of behaviour (studies have shown this behaviour in a few cases amongst primates)

Dolphins, killer whales, some felines, and most especially chimpanzees.

Actually, just noticed that there's some overlap with the more intelligent animals that have been given as possibilities.

Interesting thought. Does "intelligence" actually breed this kind of behaviour?

If so could this behaviour be described as "advanced"?

 

[Thaluikhain]

Will a bee ever use its sting to deliberatley cause harm to another creature simply for pleasure? I think youll find that it is only humans that exhibit that sort of behaviour (studies have shown this behaviour in a few cases amongst primates)

Dolphins, killer whales, some felines, and most especially chimpanzees.

Actually, just noticed that there's some overlap with the more intelligent animals that have been given as possibilities.

Interesting thought. Does "intelligence" actually breed this kind of behaviour?

If so could this behaviour be described as "advanced"?

Possibly, but we'll need to wait until more creatures evolve intelligence to see, I guess.

 

[Hagi]

I think you'd first need to define exactly and precisely what sapience and civilization are.

Which measurable phenomena must occur for an animal to conclusively count as sapient and a group of them to conclusively count as a society.

Because how these sort of questions most often end up is not with both of these concepts defined only by extension of being applicable to us, humans. Meaning that anyone who feels like saying sapience and civilization are uniquely human will just start listing traits they believe to be uniquely human as requirements and should any be challenged they'll just add more traits they believe to be uniquely human. Anyone who feels like claiming that another species also has sapience and civilization will just start listing traits shared by both species but not by many others and, when challenged, just provide more examples of similarity.

So in order to set the context for a fruitful discussion you'd first have to describe the traits which, for this current topic, would conclusively define both civilization and sapience. Otherwise you'll just have a bunch of people using the same word for wildly varied things talking to each other as if they were talking about the same thing.

 

[OneCatch]

I was going to suggest elephants as a contender behind certain primates.
I'm not even sure you could regard their tool usage as crude - the trunk, while not as flexible as two sets of opposable digits, is more that adequate for a great number of tasks.
And they're fearsomely intelligent and social - it seems like every few months there's a new study or report saying that they're capable of something previously unsuspected.

I think there's one factor working strongly against elephants which is that they need an enormous amount of food, and that severely limits their population size. Without a large population it's hard to see how they could develop much past their current level. I think you're only going to see true civilization emerging from a species that can get its food in small intense packets - ie meat. That enables specialization which leads to trade and efficiencies of scale. A browsing or grazing animal just has to spend too much time eating, and doesn't have enough time to gather food for lots of others as well.

See, I'm not sure that diet is so much of an issue - the population sizes (both in total and the size of social groups) of early humans were relatively small as well, and they'd have spent a comparable amount of time foraging. And it's only extremely late in the day in our evolution that you begin to see large social groups and civilisations.
It's also worth noting that current elephant populations are unusually and unnaturally low thanks to European ignoramuses in the last few centuries, and traditional Chinese medicine more recently. The carrying capacity for elephants, both in India and in Africa, is far higher than current population levels.
That said, I'd agree that potential population growth is likely to be much lower than humans because they're big animals, gestate slowly, and have small numbers of young.

Tangentially, another commonly referenced idea is that predatory behaviour itself is in some way conducive to intelligence - in terms of planning, setting goals, social behaviour. Hence why dolphins, orca, and to a lesser degree wolves and social big cats, are intelligent. And there's probably some merit to the idea - for the individual animal a herd defence is a far simpler series of stimuli and processes than the behaviour required to break that herd defence.
What's interesting is that elephants are entirely herbivorous and apparently always have been, and have nonetheless developed highly social and cooperative behaviour in spite of it. There aren't any other 'grazing' animals that do that.

 

[OneCatch]

Will a bee ever use its sting to deliberatley cause harm to another creature simply for pleasure? I think youll find that it is only humans that exhibit that sort of behaviour (studies have shown this behaviour in a few cases amongst primates)

Dolphins, killer whales, some felines, and most especially chimpanzees.
Actually, just noticed that there's some overlap with the more intelligent animals that have been given as possibilities.

Interesting thought. Does "intelligence" actually breed this kind of behaviour?
If so could this behaviour be described as "advanced"?

I've often thought that there's significant overlap between intelligence and what appears to to us to be really nasty behaviour. Of course, that's possibly just making the mistake of humanising a common behaviour originating from evolutionary pressure.

For example, a significant number of animals (everything from lions to rabbits to lizards) will practice infanticide, especially of the young of others, without it being particularly shocking to us because they're just 'acting on instinct'. Perhaps it's only shocking because we think animals like chimpanzees and dolphins 'should know better'.

 

[zumbledum]

I think we get this argument totally wrong. i think there's a lot of animals that would rate on comparable levels of intelligence self awareness and emotional depth, every one whose ever had a dog knows they have personalities emotion and it may be low but there's definite intelligence, Never mind the more able creatures like orca, monkeys , whales , dolphins etc.

i think the only thing that makes us different is imagination , the ability to picture abstract thoughts. to see an apple fall and realise there must be a reason, to watch a bath overflow and make the leap that the water displaced must be the same volume etc.

Beavers, birds and a bunch of other animals are tool users . but it takes that imaginary leap to move from that to farming.

i think a huge amount of animals have their own civilizations, they just don't see the need to change things to their advantage.


"For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons." Douglas Admas

 

[shootthebandit]

Dolphins, killer whales, some felines, and most especially chimpanzees.

Actually, just noticed that there's some overlap with the more intelligent animals that have been given as possibilities.

I suppose this may have something to do with it. Perhaps this kind of behaviour is indictive of an over advanced predatory nature. It was probably more apparant in humans once farming was invented as we no longer required to hunt any more so we adapted our hunting nature into sport or war. Also at the time of farming conflict over land would have been a catalyst as livestock and farm land wouldve been valuable commodities

I would conclude that as predatory skills become more advanced the further the animal will push these skills and more often than not this will attack one another

Tangentially, another commonly referenced idea is that predatory behaviour itself is in some way conducive to intelligence - in terms of planning, setting goals, social behaviour. Hence why dolphins, orca, and to a lesser degree wolves and social big cats, are intelligent. And there's probably some merit to the idea - for the individual animal a herd defence is a far simpler series of stimuli and processes than the behaviour required to break that herd defence.
What's interesting is that elephants are entirely herbivorous and apparently always have been, and have nonetheless developed highly social and cooperative behaviour in spite of it. There aren't any other 'grazing' animals that do that.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

Well, for a civilisation to form you need a language, whether it be written or spoken or signed or whatever. Without a means to communicate abstractly, all insight and knowledge any individual has in its lifetime is lost once it dies. The civilisation can never advance, technology can never develop beyond the basic tools that individuals are able to make.

Dolphins already seem to have some kind of proto language, so they'd be a strong contender.

But I'd actually go with elephants (if we don't kill them off) because of their existing social tendencies and manipulative organs (ie trunks)

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

Probably great apes. I've forgotten a lot of the details here so bear with me, but I did hear about chimpanzees somewhere in Africa eating ants. They taste awful and there's minimal nutritional benefit (they don't eat enough to have an impact anyway), but they do. In another part of Africa, chimpanzees will eat termites in the same way, for apparently no reason. As far as the researcher that was looking at this could discern, it's a cultural thing, used to show membership of the group. Interesting, huh?

Apart from apes, elephants and orcas have complex social structures, so there's that. I don't really know about elephants, but orcas are intelligent and adaptable, they learn different hunting methods to catch different prey in different parts of the world.

 

[Heronblade]

Will a bee ever use its sting to deliberatley cause harm to another creature simply for pleasure? I think youll find that it is only humans that exhibit that sort of behaviour (studies have shown this behaviour in a few cases amongst primates)

Dolphins, killer whales, some felines, and most especially chimpanzees.

Actually, just noticed that there's some overlap with the more intelligent animals that have been given as possibilities.

Interesting thought. Does "intelligence" actually breed this kind of behaviour?

If so could this behaviour be described as "advanced"?

I think more to the point, advanced intelligence leads to greater variations in personality. Which in turn can allow for douchebags being born.

Whether or not this behavior is curbed by ethical standards has more to do with social advances than evolutionary ones.

 

[Maxtro]

I've wondered what would the world be like if the dinosaurs didn't go extinct. I could imagine a smaller dinosaur that has prehensile hands developing actual intelligence over a vast time period.

The dinosaurs went extinct about 65 million years ago. Humans have only been on Earth for around 200,000 years and look at what we've accomplished in that very short time span. Pretend that dinosaurs didn't go extinct and then one dinosaur species achieved human intelligence 20 million years ago. By now they'd probably be flying in space and mastered faster than light travel.