BIOLOGY | PART 5 | DRAFTING ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE

A HUMAN IS 17x MORE INTELLIGENT THAN A BLUE WHALE...

THIS POST IS A CORRECTION OF THE ONE MADE IN 26/11/2019

 

Alright, so what I based to make this post's title is the Encephalization Quotient, which as the name suggests, it establishes more or less how big/dense is your cephalic mass, though, it may vary from individual to individual as it takes into account it's body mass and size, so it's fairly accurate to an overall estimate of a group, while useless to a single individual.

It is important to highlight that, these studies are more accurate towards mammal builds, as birds, reptiles and insects work differently, so as the creature you're measuring stray further away from a mammal - the result will be fairly inaccurate.

Before getting into the main topic, I may present you some early scientific misconception, that besides it's downside, still holds some degree of truth.

BRAIN SIZE x BODY SIZE

The human brain on the example is nearly 1/53,5 of the total body mass, ~1,4kg, and thus, ~1,86% of it's total mass.

Following the same concept, a bottle-nosed dolphin has a larger brain than the human, ~1,5kg, though, they weight about 120kg, making the dolphin brain size 1,25%.

Although, as said in this study:

The results tend to substantiate to some degree the perception that the intelligence of humans is superior to that of other living beings. While the formula seems logical, it has some inconsistencies. For instance, a shrew’s brain weighs 3 g and its total weight is 30 g, making its ratio 10%. The tiny shrew has the highest brain-to-body mass ratio of any known animal. The result suggests that a shrew should be five times more intelligent than a human being.

On the other hand, an obese individual weighing 160 kg would have a ratio of 0.84%, which would suggest an intelligence level similar to that of a chimpanzee. The fat undoubtedly distorts the formula.

So Brain x Body is not a good go through.

ENCEPHALIZATION QUOTIENT

What is often used instead, even by paleoneurologists (they study the intelligence of long dead animals), is this formula:

 

EQ = 10 × [ Brainweight / (0,12 × Bodyweightᵐ ) ]

 

Plug in estimated brain mass, creature weight, and power it to m, which is 2/3 for mammals, and 3/4 for non-mammals.

If you feel your animal might not be as intelligent, mean reptile EQ might fall around 1/10 that of most mammals (mammals average at ~2,85 according to the list sample on the cited work), so if your animal is a pseudo-reptile build, it's EQ is around 0,25 and no much higher than 1, since non-avian dinosaurs are less intelligent than modern birds, and even the ancestors birds had a rather low tier EQ compared to modern birds

Sorry Alpha Draconians, you're proven just too primitive to ever exist as an alien civilization due your optimal EQ being no more than that of a parrot.

On the other hand, that applies to Earth fauna as far as we know it, so, in order to classify our alien fauna, and if you wish to pick the creature with the most potential and make it your base body-plan to your alien civilization, we must well define what characteristics your creature borrow from other animal classes, orders, and families.

In my personal opinion, most humanoid creatures from outer worlds should be classified as pseudo-synapsids, by that I'm implying they're warm-blooded, have life-birth, are active omnivores, and maybe tetrapod.

If your creature does fit these and other characteristics that are oddly mammal, towards the more primate and subsequently, human characteristics, so these calculations might fit well and fairly accurate.

So far, we may be lead to rank creatures EQ as:

Mammal
Bird
Reptile/Amphibian
Other lifeforms

How intelligent is Lisa, and her pseudo-amphibian counterparts?

Using the Chinese Giant Salamander as a model we have an animal that weights around 30kg.

As the Chinese Giant Salamander's head is roughly 1/6th of it's body length which is pretty much uniform in thickness, and it's brain occupies ~1/4th of the head (according to salamander anatomy drawings), that gives us 4,16% of the total body mass, assuming the salamander has nearly uniform density.

Our ancient salamander then has a brain with a mass of ~1,25kg, which is a good value since their heads are as big as a human head.

The largest salamanders are able to sustain a body with 80kg, but the average body weight is more similar to that of Commerson's dolphins than that of humans, still we are going to use both constants to draft an EQ range.

So let's weight our salamander, 1,25kg brain, ~30kg body - we have an EQ of 8,12, which is incredibly developed weight-wise - even if we make the creature 45kg in body weight, it's still comparable to that of humans.

Cetaceans are known to vocalize, it's the main part of their navigation technique, but also do primates.

As well do the CGS, able of barking barking, whining, hissing, or crying sounds and en eerie resemblance to a human young crying. Which cetaceans aren't able to do. At around 1,6~1,7 EQ, it would be as intelligent as dogs and coyotes.

 

And it may live as long as 50~60 years as a giant pseudo-amphibian - which is scary to know it's so developed.

Have a good time weighting sci-fi brains, bye.

 

- M.O. Valent, 12/10/2020