Neither of those animals has the appropriate morphology to build tools or use complex language. How do we know they aren't actually smarter than us?

I think it’s unlikely they would evolve more advanced intelligence than its possible for them to make practical use of in their behaviour.

Now, clearly humans have been able to adapt our intelligence to uses far beyond the behaviours it evolved to support. Our ancestors 50,000 years ago had more or less the same brains we do. Nevertheless their behaviours were highly complex. They broadly did what we do, crating art, manufacturing artefacts from multiple processed materials, ornamentation, social rituals such as burials. We just take those behaviours a lot further.

To argue that whales might have sophisticated intellectual capabilities, you’d need to show what behaviours they exhibit that require them. Otherwise that intelligence would serve no evolutionary purpose and might actually be a survival disadvantage. See the cognitive trade off hypothesis.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-Cognitive-Tradeoff-hypothe...

> or use complex language.

That we know of. They might completely have complex language using different mediums (infra sounds, vibrations, movements, smells, etc.).

I believe all animals definitely have some sort of language, and that the complexity of a language depends on its utility in facilitating everyday interactions and activities. What are the most complex activities you've seen elephants get up to?

I never had the chance to meet elephants.

Now, from what I've learned/read about their behaviours, I have no doubt on the depth of their lives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_cognition#Elephant_so...

And I wouldn't call that "some sort of language". That's language. Species-specific. Not "human" language.

Even language that another species can grasp more or less perfectly. You can get that with minimal observation of dogs, cats, even birds. And obviously, animals read us as well.

Now, the complexity of an other species language may be partially out of reach because we do not have the same senses, abilities, history, memories.

So they might even engage in activities we cannot grasp or identify (and reciprocally) but for great patience, observation, study, understanding, and luck.

When I see a videos / images of wolves I don’t perceive that “intelligence” that I perceive from dogs. Not to say wolves are any less intelligent or cognitive, dogs just have had the constraint that they needed to be able to communicate with humans well or they could die.

Kind of makes me think if we ever were to encounter extraterrestrial intelligence we might have trouble identifying them as intelligent, or, have trouble communicating with them, because we have trouble identifying and communicating with the terrestrial intelligence that surrounds us and is abundant.

Fun fact: Dogs developed whole extra sets of facial muscles during their domestication: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/06/domestic...

This happened in a remarkably short period of time, and the running theory is that early dogs with more expressiveness were better cared for and received by human societies than similar dogs that were less expressive.

Depends on the situation in which we encounter the aliens. If wolves were building interplanetary spacecraft, we'd have a hard time saying they weren't intelligent.

If they were, we probably wouldn't be there to see it. :D

Where No Wolf Has Gone Before.

I would call it some sort of language, or substitute "sort" with "type" if the word seems too casual for your tastes.

I agree that there may be a lot happening in this world we're unable to perceive, and then your whole argument can be summarized as "anything is possible, we don't really know for sure".

Which I now see is why scientists insist on sticking to things that can be measured, proven and quantified. Anything else is drifting into the territory of religion, superstition and imagination. Humans have been known to worship certain animals as supreme gods after all.

"Which I now see is why scientists insist on sticking to things that can be measured, proven and quantified. Anything else is..."

No. Science is a mean to an end, not an end in itself. And intuition, an open mind, imagination help a lot, without drifting into superstition.

Read some history, you'll find out that a lot of scientific (and engineering) discoveries were triggered by imagination servicing some more rational/rigorous practices.

> So they might even engage in activities we cannot grasp or identify

I don't think that's what they mean when they say imagination: imagining things we can not imagine. And science starts with real imagination, then move on to practical, measurable applications.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_cognition will give you the high points.

You are asking me to prove that humans are smarter than elephants? It makes for an interesting philosophical debate, but that is all it really will be. Kind of like me asking you to prove you are smarter than a rock, or that you are really conscious.

Elephants' computational machinery look almost exactly like ours, except much larger. I can measure the thermodynamic properties of any rock's machinery and conclude with certainty it has no familiar intelligence. The only thing elephants have against them is they don't have technological civilization and just sort of bumble around, but so did Socrates. To me it remains an open question.

What makes you so sure of your measurement machinery? An advanced alien race may laugh at your rock measuring equipment the way we laugh at early mans tools.

See what i mean about pointless philosophical arguments?

Elephants and whales have big brains but they don't have as many neurons as you'd think from their brain volume. For most mammals neuron count scales as roughly the 3/4 power of brain volume. For primates and birds it scales linearly.

An interesting aside: elephants and whales do still have more neurons than us - African elephants have about twice as many.

But fascinatingly, those neurons aren't evenly distributed, and in fact humans have far more neurons in the cerebral cortex than elephants. Their extra neuron count is almost all in the cerebellum. Primates are skewed towards the forebrain, but elephants are far more cerebellum-heavy than e.g. rodents, which implies that a lot of their extra brainpower is being 'spent' on operating their larger bodies.

By forebrain neuron count, humans are beaten only by pilot whales - and all of the other close contenders are also cetaceans. No one quite seems to know why pilot whales have twice the neocortical neurons humans do, but it's still the number that tracks best with observed intelligence.

http://nautil.us/issue/35/boundaries/the-paradox-of-the-elep...

One argument I've seen frequently is that humans offset our smaller crania by losing the sloping foreheads of earlier hominids.

Neuron count in the cerebral cortex seems to predict intelligence better than total neuron count (e.g. putting humans ahead of elephants, and chimps ahead of giraffes), with only one odd case (pilot whales) beating humans. So if we lost overall capacity but retained most or all of our cerebral cortex size, the change might be explained.

(Full disclosure: a quick look says most primate brains are right near 26% cerebral cortex, while humans are around 18%. It's possible intermediate hominids were even lower, but without knowing why the difference exists I can hardly assert that.)

I wonder which had the most “brain folds”

You know how they say that insult “smooth brain”

We have more neuron surface area and thats how we pack a punch in intelligence ive heard...