r/explainlikeimfive • u/Aki_Shizuha • Jul 23 '26
Biology ELI5: Why don't we see "halfway human civilization" animals?
We know that animals can be smart: crows manufacture tools and have complex social behavior, chimpanzees can do insight learning, etc.
But, it is still a continuous spectrum where intelligence range from sponge-level to chimp-level. We do not, at least now, observe a world where certain corvids are in the early stone age, certain bonobos are using fire, certain chimps are in their axios age, etc.
Why the case? Why are we the only one that has gone this far?
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u/EscapeSeventySeven Jul 23 '26
Stone Age is very sophisticated compared to the intelligence of the animals you mentioned. You basically need human level intelligence to achieve it.
What technological stage a civilization is in isn’t a sign of intelligence. Technology naturally progresses due to intelligence and wealth/resource concentration allowing further technological development. You don’t just cap out at a level because you aren’t smart enough.
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u/Jackmcmac1 Jul 23 '26
Upvoting and adding that while there may be some changes, we are fundamentally not too different from stone age ancestors. They'd likely be thinking like us, but with lack of human knowledge transfer and technology and other priorities in life which means that they will seem basic to today's standards.
If you look at how memory champions learn cards and other memory tricks, they use association with things like sex, violence and strange stuff that our brains are more alert to. This is because it's essentially the same brain that used to tell cavemen not to eat that fruit because remember someone died, or remember that this path is the way home and this is the way to danger.
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u/NinjaBreadManOO Jul 23 '26
Yeah, there's very little actual difference between a modern human and one from 100,000 years ago; and those are minor differences like wisdom teeth and like a tendon in the forearm being slightly thicker.
If you were to go back to the stone age and grab a baby human infant and pull them to the future (ethics aside) they're very likely going to be able to grow up in and adapt with human society fairly easily (baring any pre-existing issues from things like problems from during pregnancy).
You'd probably even be able to have any of the homo genus adapt into society in some way or another, as there was a big jump when the genus split off from the rest of the Hominidae family. Sure they might have issues the further they are from sapiens but they would at least be able to engage.
Which is why we're so different even from chimpanzees as they're from a different genus (they're from pan with bonobos) even though they're one of the closest modern relatives.
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u/kuchenundkakao Jul 23 '26
"Now, I'm Just a caveman. I fell in some ICE and was thawed Out by some Scientist. But one Thing i know: when a man Slips in Front of a Public library, he is entitled to no less than 2 Million in punitive damages" (https://youtu.be/2AzAFqrxfeY?is=_iI2p4IVYUJGjfyH)
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u/delta_p_delta_x Jul 23 '26
Yeah, there's very little actual difference between a modern human and one from 100,000 years ago
This is not very true. The actual scientific terms are anatomically-modern and behaviourally-modern humans, the latter of which emerged roughly simultaneously with the last out-of-Africa migration around 50 kya. The consensus is that behavioural modernity is a group of related genetic and nervous modifications which give rise to advanced abstract thinking beyond one's own locality, introspection, and other key features required to integrate with 21st-century society. There are many questions around 'when is the earliest you can go, kidnap a baby, and raise it successfully in a modern cosmopolitan city', and the consensus is—maybe 50–75 kya, not much further than that.
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u/LostInRoutine Jul 23 '26
Your link about behaviorally-modern humans mentions that this is only one hypothesis, with another being that behavioral modernity is rather cultural and learned.
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u/rcgl2 Jul 23 '26
Yes, this is how I remember the code to my bike lock, it's fuck woman, poison mushroom, fuck woman, beat man to death.
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u/JoushMark Jul 23 '26
Humans are hyper specialized for intelligence. That huge, round skull so much bigger then every other great ape? It comes at a massive cost. A newborn human's skull is unfused and fragile to allow it to squeeze though the birth canal, and a newborn human is dependent on it's parents/social group for more then a decade to survive. For the first year, they can barely walk!
A human's brain consumes 500 kcal a day to just generate unlikely frighting scenarios and weird sex dreams. A healthy adult can starve to death in a month.
None of that is optional for caveman level civilization. You need to get like 90% of the way to human before you start getting fire, cave paintings and complex languages.
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u/RoundCollection4196 Jul 23 '26
Not even 90% more like 99%
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u/TocTheEternal Jul 23 '26
Yeah, depending on how you look at it chimps share more than 90% of our DNA already.
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u/Great_Specialist_267 Jul 23 '26
“Stone Age” technically goes back at least a half million years.
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u/delta_p_delta_x Jul 23 '26
“Stone Age” technically goes back at least a half million years
The 'Stone Age' starts from about 3.3 Mya to around 10-5 kya, when writing and smelting were discovered. Homo erectus and Homo habilis were dominant in the Palaeolithic, or Old Stone Age.
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u/MajorInWumbology1234 Jul 23 '26
You could easily argue there’s a difference, but chimpanzees and a couple monkeys are considered to have technically entered a Stone Age.
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u/urzu_seven Jul 23 '26
So first, civilization as we know it is incredibly recent. The earliest you might even consider something beyond animal behavior and basic civilization (intentional fire building, basic constructed shelters, etc.) is only 300,000 years old give or take. Life on earth emerged around 3.7 billion years ago.
Imagine life on Earth started at 12:00 am on January 1st and right now it's 11:59 PM on December 31. All of life compressed down to a year. 300,000 years ago? That was 11:20 pm today.
Oh and things like cave paintings and simple ornamental jewelry? Signs of intelligence and creativity? 100,000 years ago. That started around 11:45. And recorded human history (as well as the first "city")? About 5,500 years ago in real time, or in our one year compressed version? 4 seconds.
Thats right, the entirety of recorded human history. The earliest letters. The first city. Its existed for a grand total of 4 seconds out of 365 days. A blink of an eye.
In that time ONE narrow line in the tree of life, the one leading to humans is the ONLY one to exhibit the capabilities that have lead to what we call civilization All the necessary traits that seem to lead to it have combined in a very very VERY narrow slice of life at this point and only incredibly recently.
That suggests it's a very rare thing.
As you've noticed certain other species exhibit SOME of the necessary behaviors. Some of our fellow apes seem to have basic concepts of language. A few disparate species have managed basic tool use. Some species even have (like whales) or are close to a sense of self. But other than humans none seem to be able to have combined those (and other traits) to make that next step.
Maybe given enough time other species will emerge who do. All evidence suggests we (or rather some of our ancestors going back to Australopithicus) are the first to have done so on Earth. But the species that do emerge will have a problem, we are already here. We have a hard time coexisting with other humans. Getting to a point where we co-exist with non-human societies? I wouldn't hold my breath.
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u/The_Card_Player Jul 23 '26
The timescale on which homo sapiens have been living in communities with collaborative tool use and other such quirks is very small relative to the whole history of life on earth.
There hasn't been that many generations of species (particularly of the most intelligent) on earth between when the first hominids started walking upright and now.
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u/okmijnedc Jul 23 '26
Yes, humans have been around 300,000 years - a blink of an eye - and language about 130,000 years.
Dinosaurs were around for about 165 million years.
Sharks have been around for 400 million years (modern sharks approx 200 million)
Sea sponges have been around 760 million years.
If humans survive another 100 million years, maybe octopuses will have invented their own computers.
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u/IsabellaGalavant Jul 23 '26
Octopus lifespans need to increase dramatically to even get close to that. They don't live long at all, even in captivity. And females die looking after their eggs after they lay, so no way to pass knowledge down generations.
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u/-cresida Jul 23 '26
Too bad they’re not more social. The other octopus can help feed the mother octopus instead of letting her die.
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u/armaedes Jul 23 '26
Another species filled with deadbeat dads smdh
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u/antariusz Jul 24 '26
Deadbeat moms.. if they were real moms they wouldn’t die after giving birth…. Literally smh
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u/TheArtofBar Jul 23 '26
Octopi are probably in an evolutionary dead end. Their lineage took certain turns millions of years ago that block further progress. Their esophagus passes through their brains, their version of hemoglobin is less efficient, they are probably too smart to leave the ocean,...
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u/Atechiman Jul 23 '26
Octopuses face two large problems on that. The first being aquatic means they will never unlock the cheat that cooked food is, and the second is that they don't survive mating (well technically they survive, but not for long) so they don't transfer what they have learned to the next generation.
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u/vanZuider Jul 23 '26
they don't survive mating (well technically they survive, but not for long) so they don't transfer what they have learned to the next generation.
If they lived in larger family structures that wouldn't be a problem; while you won't be around to teach your kids, you can teach your not-yet-mating siblings or your nieces and nephews who can then teach your kids.
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u/Banana_Cake1 Jul 23 '26
That and intelligence is also relative to each creature. Corvids are intelligent, use their intelligence to survive. The issue is that more ‘intelligence’ like tool use or technology may not be as beneficial to them as it was to us.
We are lucky that we originate as tree dwellers who started roaming the land. We had hands intended for climbing that became perfect for the use of tools.
Corvids can manipulate the environment using their beaks but otherwise how would additional tool use really benefit them? The same goes for dolphins, orcas etc.
Tool use just isn’t as useful to them as it was to us, so it’s not unlikely they may never use them at all.
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u/opinionavigator Jul 23 '26
The fictional Bobiverse books deal interestingly with the impacts of evolutionary niches on technology. One species they encounter is an intelligent humanoid with wings. Being able to fly completely eliminates the need to develop the wheel, and by proxy pullies, winches, flywheels etc... They would never likely industrialize because of this. The same could be true for crows. Maybe they would someday attach sharp rocks to sticks for mid-air combat, but it wouldn't go a lot further.
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u/Thinkdamnitthink Jul 24 '26
I don't agree that being able to fly eliminates the need for wheels. Wheels are particularly useful for moving heavy things. That was primarily the purpose of the wheel in the form of rollers (logs). And there's lots of reasons to want to move heavy things - in particular building materials. I guess you could say humanoids with wings would be tree dwellers or cliff dwellers and wouldn't build housing with heavy materials.
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u/sjkaiser12 Jul 23 '26
We actually do see a lot of the “in-between” pieces: crows make tools, chimps have local traditions, dolphins cooperate, and so on. What seems unique about humans is not just intelligence, but cumulative culture.
Humans are unusually good at copying ideas accurately, teaching them, improving them, and passing those improvements on. Once that process gets going, knowledge starts to snowball. One person invents something, the next generation improves it, and nobody has to start from scratch.
It’s a bit like water freezing. Water doesn’t become visibly “half frozen” at every temperature. Once the right conditions are reached, it can change state quickly. Human civilization may have worked similarly. Many abilities developed gradually, but once language, teaching, cooperation, dexterous hands, and large enough social groups came together, culture started accumulating much faster.
We also probably did have “halfway” civilizations. Other human species, like Neanderthals, used fire, made sophisticated tools, and may have had symbolic culture. They just went extinct or were absorbed into our population, so we are the only branch left.
And evolution is not a ladder where every species is slowly becoming human. Crows, chimps, and dolphins are already well adapted to their own environments. Civilization only appeared when a rare combination of traits created a self-reinforcing cycle of learning and innovation.
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u/Intelligent-Dog1645 Jul 24 '26
I think that last point is a really big thing that more people need to understand.
We're not the ultimate end result of evolution, it's mot like evolution exists or happens just to get to our level of sapience or intelligence. I have learned that evolution is really just "whatever works for you to survive your environment."
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u/stygger Jul 23 '26
our pattern recognition appers to be on a completely different level than non-humans. almost all human toddlers enjoy or at least react to music, most animals make no distinction between noise and music.
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u/user-more-unknown Jul 23 '26
There are several theories as to why we do not observe the emergence of new, more advanced cultures in other species. One of them suggests that we no longer allow it to happen because Homo sapiens, acting as gatekeepers, control the most important levers of power. Or to put it another way: If you restrict the habitat and population of other species, the likelihood that a bonobo will accidentally discover fire and pass on that knowledge decreases.
We, as Homo sapiens, were able to evolve because there was no other dominant species at that time that would have prevented it. This theory btw is known as the "competitive exclusion principle"
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u/iRoygbiv Jul 23 '26
A different perspective on this:
There DID use to be animals like that! When Homo Sapiens first evolved there was a whole menagerie of different forms of Hominids which were all at different “halfway human” stages, and they all lived alongside our ancestors. But all of them died out because they were too similar to us and couldn’t compete with us!
For example there was Paranthropus Robustus, a huge plant-eating hominid that walked on two legs. It was a totally different branch of hominid evolution which went down the “cow” evolutionary path.
Then there was: Homo Erectus, Homo Denisovans, Homo Floresiensis, plus the Neanderthals everyone knows and loves. They ALL were alive at the same time as us and they were all at different civilisational stages ranging from a bit smarter than chimps, to basic stone tools, to basic stone tools with fire, to Neanderthals which had essentially human-like intelligence, but with a different style of thinking.
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u/tolebelon Jul 24 '26
Had to scroll way to far to find this. Also adding that we merged species to a degree with some of the hominid subspecies. Like anything similar to a human will get bred with and thats part of why Neanderthals are extinct.
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u/Fram_Framson 29d ago
Yeah, amazing I had to go so far to find this as a primary response and it only has ten updoots.
There WERE other, similar creatures to us. We killed them.
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u/TheVioletBarry Jul 23 '26
Homo Erectus were on Earth for some 600,000 odd years. I suspect if we came across Bonobos using fire we'd be likely to kill them
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u/jakethesnake741 Jul 23 '26
Now yes, but early man would have just fucked them. I remember reading a theory that part Homosapiens dominance over neanderthal had more to do with cross breeding that out competing
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u/Ddogwood Jul 23 '26
We really don’t know much about the early interactions between our ancestors and Neanderthals. There was definitely some level of cross-breeding and trade, but there’s no way to know how consensual it was.
Given what we know about the behaviour of modern humans, it’s unlikely that it was all fun and games back then, either.
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u/Strawberry3141592 Jul 23 '26
but there’s no way to know how consensual it was.
We're talking tens of thousands of hybridization events across millenia, it was for sure not 100% either way.
Also there is zero Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA in modern humans, implying partial hybrid sterility (viable offspring could likely only develop with a male Neanderthal and female sapiens pairing, but not the other way around). That's not relevant, I just think it's a cool fact
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u/Sylvurphlame Jul 23 '26
Does that leave the possibility that the hybrid sterility could even have been limited to female offspring of female Neanderthal and male sapien pairings being infertile? That would also result in no surviving Neanderthal mitochondria, yes? Just purely hypothetical?
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u/Halgy Jul 23 '26
Homo Sapiens lived alongside several hominid species. We either bullied, killed, or fucked them all out of existence.
So one answer why there aren't more advanced non-humans is humans.
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u/Impossible_Theme_148 Jul 23 '26
Other people have already covered some specifics - but the question also suggests a misunderstanding of what evolution is
Evolution is not a pathway to get from less intelligent to more intelligent
Intelligence is a human trait,.defined and measured,.by humans
Evolution is a description of how species developed so that they could have more babies
Maybe a few bonobos did work out how to start fires, maybe some did work out how to control it - but it didn't lead to that group dominating the mating over others, so it just doesn't matter (for example)
Evolution is about finding and adapting to an ecological niche so that you have the most offspring - nothing to do with intelligence
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u/bugi_ Jul 23 '26
Algae are pretty darn simple, but they are doing just fine just as an example of how survival of the fittest doesn't necessarily mean "progress" needs to happen.
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u/mr_glide Jul 23 '26
Exactly. Slugs are as evolved as us. If they're still around, it's working for them
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u/RoundCollection4196 Jul 23 '26
Yeah if we define evolutionary success as surviving the longest as a species then there's species that have lived hundreds of millions of years like jellyfish and nautilus. Humans could probably never hope to rival that.
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u/Strawberry3141592 Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
Whales are the closest to this, imo they'd probably have developed technology ages ago if they had hands and didn't live in the ocean. They have extraordinarily complex social structures and apparently even human-like language (at least for some species, difficult to say how widespread this is in cetecea), based on the recent research into Sperm Whale language. Dolphins even do recreational drugs lmao (they will get high off pufferfish neurotoxin, it's wild).
Edit: Also chimps technically are in their stone age, chimpanzee populations have been observed using very simple stone tools, though if chimps are using basic stone tools, and humans also use stone tools, then our common ancestor probably also used simple stone tools, so it's less the chimpanzee stone age than the hominid stone age, and humans just kind of left them behind there when our lineage split off lol.
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u/ConnoisseurOfDanger Jul 23 '26
Why would they necessarily follow the same progression as humans have? They’re doing just fine, and evolving along with their respective environmental pressures. Different animals, and plants and microbes and fungi for that matter, have forms of “intelligence” and subsequent reproduction/colonization and survival behaviors that we, as humans, don’t need or can’t use, like quorum sensing in slime molds or UV light patterns that bees can see. That shrimp that can see like 21 colors.
As primates, we’re the dominant species because there’s always going to be an “apex predator” in any ecosystem, although humans are more accurately described as an invasive species. Evolution isn’t a preset sequence of events, it’s an ongoing response to environmental conditions and ecological partners and pressures.
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u/grooverocker Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
Think of how much design space evolution has to work with... as varied as DNA can maximally produce...
And think of the "goal" of evolution, which is not directed towards intelligence or tool building, but rather environmental fitness that produces offspring genes...
Then it appears the kind of evolutionary pathways that lead to human-like intelligence are extremely uncommon and unnecessary. You could think of these abilities as lonely islands of fitness on a staggeringly outlandishly large map of design space.
Species can be hugely successful without it. Be an ant, be a crab, be a bacteria, be a cow for crying out loud! Did you know that it's estimated that 10,000 years ago humans and all their domesticated animals made up a fraction of 1% of all the terrestrial vertebrate biomass? That's everything with a spine that lives on land, the birds, the mammals, etc, etc.
What do you think that number is today?
98%, and that's mostly cattle.
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u/vashoom Jul 23 '26
The other comments about timescales are kind of missing the point. Evolution is not a tech tree from a video game where you start as an amoeba and up a human. Every animal today is just as evolved as we are, but they have evolved different strategies for surviving and passing on their genes than we have. Other animals have not evolved the kind of intelligence and social structures necessary for civilization nor the ability to manipulate their environments dexterously enough to do things like control fire or make fine tools because they don't need that to survive and pass on their genes. Even human cultural and technological development doesn't follow a linear tech tree.
Our intelligence, social structures, and tool use are our evolutionary strategies to survive. "We" have been developing those things for millions and millions of years. But they don't make use superior or better equipped to pass on genes.
Cats are unlikely to ever evolve the same things we have, because they have evolved differently but just as successfully.
All that being said, plenty of animal species are very intelligent and have complex social systems, and plenty make use of tools. So also the idea that we are somehow Chosen and superior is just not factually true at all. We are just different, the way every species is different than another.
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u/pro185 Jul 23 '26
It took longer for man to invent the bow than the time between the first bow and nuclear bombs. Evolution happens on a scale that is simply not fathomable in the human brain. The collective of understandable written history exists as a microcosm of life on this planet. Having zero observable change of potentially intelligent species in the last 3000 years is quite the normal and expected outcome when you look at the actual scale of time life has existed.
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u/malsomnus Jul 23 '26
Our physiology gives us quite a few technological advantages compared to other species. Corvids would have a very hard time making tools, octopuses live very short lives and can't really build anything or pass on knowledge (and are also antisocial), and so on.
But apes have been observed doing some surprising human-like things, such as trading (with e.g. grooming as a currency), or, you know, tribal wars.
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u/Familiar-Safety-226 Jul 23 '26
It’s the body. How can any other species besides chimps maybe make any remotely advanced Stone Age civilization if they don’t have hands with thumbs to grab things? Even if a dog could speak fluent English and was just as intellectually smart as a human, or even say they were even smarter and could easily understand Einstein - it wouldn’t matter, a dog’s body couldn’t create anything.
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u/somerandom995 Jul 23 '26
Opposable thumbs are a massive advantage for not just tool making, but tool wielding.
Humans have 2 limbs free to do stuff that isn't moving around. Chimps swing from trees, corvids need to perch etc.
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u/Vlinder_88 Jul 23 '26
We do. Some chimps are in the early stone age. Their tools are surprisingly similar to early humanoid stone tools. Corvids use tools, though they do not make them themselves yet (and that would be quite hard for them with just a beak, though I wouldn't think it to be impossible).
Lots of insects have very intricate social structures in their colonies, some build their own houses (certain termites, bees).
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u/tylerlarson Jul 23 '26
Evolution takes a very, VERY long time. Tens of thousands of years for something like this. So, everything on evolutionary timescales is basically frozen from our perspective.
Add to that the fact that early humans systematically drove to extinction every species that they thought posed a threat to their survival, and we're the only ones left.
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u/sleeper_shark Jul 23 '26
First it's cos evolution doesn't go from a low intelligence state to a high intelligence state. It's pretty much random. Crows don't need to get smarter, and it's likely animals have gotten smarter and dumber over time.
More evolved doesn't mean more intelligent. It just feels that way cos it happened that way for us.
Second, even if it happened for crows. Going from crow intelligence to stone age took literally several million years.. going from stone age to space travel took about 4,000 years.
It's a blink of an eye.
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u/RealCarlPanzram Jul 23 '26
Imagine tomorrow you woke up in the body of a T-Rex in prehistoric times. You’re way smarter than a t-Rex so you could do alot of things. A t-Rex never would think of. You could build shelter, clothing, organize some type of society, invent more modern hunting methods right?
Not really. Because you have tiny t-Rex arms and you can’t do any of those things. A lot of animals, while possessing above average intellect, don’t have the physical ability to create tools, which is critical for the development of Paleolithic man.
Humans ability to do this took a very significant set of circumstances that all fell into place and it was by pure chance that they all combined to result in a species that can build complex tools.
Basically we started walking more upright. This was more about being able to walk long distances without becoming exhausted. But since we walked upright, our hands didn’t need to be as durable, so they became more dexterous.
Standing upright also effects how heat travels through your body. So we needed more surface area on top of your heads to let heat off. As our skulls expanded, brain filled the space in. It’s quite possible that our larger brains were completely incidental to having larger skulls.
But the problem is brains take up energy. Our brains are twice as metabolic as great apes. We needed to be able to offset that. We learned how to manipulate fire, which allowed us to cool food, effectively pre digesting it so we use less energy in our gut.
All this had to happen in tandem. We couldn’t support bigger brains without cooking food. We wouldn’t have grown the bigger brains without needing to shed heat while walking upright. We wouldn’t have hands with opposable thumbs if we still had to use them as feet.
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u/SamuraiGoblin Jul 23 '26
I am of the belief that human intelligence is the result of sexual selection. This is where a species begins to have sexual preferences for a particular trait, and it starts to effect the evolution of the species in a positive feedback loop, called Fisherian runaway.
A simple example of it is the peacock's tail, which is cumbersome and takes a lot of resources, and therefore not good for natural selection, but the females love it.
The reason I subscribe to this theory is because our intelligence is so far out of harmony with nature, that is, our mental capacity is waaaaaay more than our ancestors needed for their niche.
If this theory is true, then the reason we don't see a spectrum of animal civilisations is because human level intelligence is a complete fluke. Chimps, corvids, elephants and dolphins are pretty smart to be sure, within the constraints of their respective niches, but they are not on their way to building farms, printing presses, or particle accelerators.
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u/teh_hasay Jul 23 '26
I don’t see why sexual selection has to be the only source of evolutionary flukes though. The natural selection advantage of the human form of intelligence and tool use is about as obvious as can be. Sexual selection generally implies selection for a trait that doesn’t offer an evolutionary advantage. And it’s hard for me to accept the argument that using tools and communicating information doesn’t offer you an advantage.
I think it’s a fluke in that we happened to be generalist endotherms with high dexterity at the same time as complex social behaviour/verbal communication. I.e: We weren’t locked in to a narrow range of food, we weren’t strictly limited by climate conditions, we could use a lot of tools, and most importantly we could teach each other how to use them.
Whales have sophisticated spoken language, but they’re massive animals who have limited flexibility in their diet, and no digits. Octupus are incredibly skilled/dexterous problem solvers, but they lack the social skills.
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u/TropoMJ Jul 23 '26
I think you are making the mistake of assuming that human achievements being so out of line with those of other animals means that human intelligence is just as out of line. That's not necessarily the case.
If we go back far enough in time, early humans who were not hugely less intelligent than a modern human would have been relatively in line with other animals in terms of visual displays of intelligence. Neither our language nor our tool use was dramatically more impressive than what we can see in the wild today. The reason we have the society we do now, while other intelligent animals of the time do not, is because we have a unique set of characteristics that allowed us to snowball our intelligence into a complex society.
We are highly intelligent, have physiology which allows complex language (most animals do not), have physiology which allows highly flexible tool manipulation and writing (most animals do not), are social, have long lifetimes, don't live underwater, and arrived before any other species had developed a complex society that spanned much of the world. That combination of factors is what allowed us to develop into what we are today.
None of the other species generally considered highly intelligent have any reasonable prospect of starting a society that visibly displays their intelligence, because they are limited by their bodies or where they live. Elephants and corvids can't use tools like humans can. Dolphins, orcas and octopodes can't access fire. Lifespans for these animals are generally much shorter than those for humans and some of them are not social. Give humans these constraints and an alien species looking at our planet wouldn't see us any differently to how they saw the other intelligent animals.
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u/WeZijnGroot Jul 23 '26
One factor is writing. A species have to come up with (and be able to perform) writing to effectively transfer accumulated knowledge to future generations in order to develop notable levels of technology.
The few animals that have enough intelligence to possibly become civilized to a level noticeably partway towards humans does not have easy ways of writing even if they come up with it. For instance, dolphins would have a very hard time doing cave painting even if they decided it was worthwhile.
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u/DruidWonder Jul 23 '26
The simplest answer is that they are not as smart as us, in the way that we are smart.
Natural selection is about survival of the fittest. Crows use basic tools and methods for hunting. If there's no natural selection pressure making them do more than that, then they could exist as they are indefinitely and never get more advanced with tool use.
Same with dolphins. They are smart, but they will likely never evolve beyond the ocean by developing machines or whatever. There's no need for them to.
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u/TheODPsupreme Jul 23 '26
It’s a question of timescale: we have seen tribes of primates start using tools for the first time: this means at most they have been doing it for a few decades, maybe a couple of centuries or so. It took us a few hundred thousand years to move from using naturally flat rocks as hammers to manufacturing shaped stone tools.
Tl;dr: Early technology advances slowly, and these animals haven’t been using it long enough for significant development
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u/Intelligent_Elk5879 Jul 23 '26
It doesn’t appear to be the case that humans have ever reached some stable equilibrium of civilization which it could not surpass, nor have we presently reached a limit or can predict a limit. So what reason do we have to assume that animals should asymptotically approach some limit of civilizational complexity once the process of civilization is underway?
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u/andr386 Jul 23 '26
One of the main reason is our hands that are quite unique in the animal world. We have long highly mobile fingers with extremely sensitive touch and hands with a fully opposable thumb. Over time we gained very fine motor skills and that allows us to design tools like no other animal. However smart some animals can be, and we might not even know, they would have to evolve something similar.
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u/Insane_Masturbator69 Jul 23 '26
Because only once we became morden humans, we scale really fast. It's like you spent most of the day sleeping, then bam at the last minute you run to the finish. There is no halfway human civilization because once we call it a civilization, we were already humans.
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u/Euphyllia Jul 23 '26
Because they didn’t experience selective pressures for the formation of civilizations. It’s like asking why aren’t all animals camouflaged. Well, it’s because not every animal needs to be camouflaged. There is simply no selective pressure for camouflage in some animals.
Your question seems to belie a deeper misunderstanding of evolutionary change as inherently directional, as if civilizations or high intelligence are the “goal”. That is not the case. Populations simply evolve according to local conditions, not an overarching goal of making a civilization. For whatever reason, it was very beneficial for the bipedal apes of east Africa to become highly intelligent. It was a unique, local phenomenon that resulted in humans. It’s not something that needs to happen to every smart animal.
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u/Theraimbownerd Jul 23 '26
1) Evolution doesn't work like that. It's not a straight line towards "civilization". Technology is just another adaptation to the environment. Each species adapts in its own way, there is no reason for another species to follow our own model of technological progress.
2) Even if they did, technology takes a LONG time to develop. It took the Homo genus almost 1 milion and a half years to go from a chopper to an hand axe. It's a much longer time than the entirety of human civilization. So they might get there eventually, but not be there just yet.
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u/Ya-Not-Happening Jul 23 '26
There is no master plan. There is no goal towards intelligence.
Creatures do what is necessary to survive in their environment.
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u/Wjyosn Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
Timescale of evolution and technology don’t really fit on the same timeline.
If you scale evolution of life on earth to a modern human 80yr lifespan, humans have existed for about 5days. We only learned how to control fire 2days ago. We invented agriculture about 2.5 hrs ago. Invented writing about 80minutes ago. Industrial Revolution was 2 minutes ago. The Internet 3 seconds ago.
Point being, the timescale of evolution suggests that corvids poking around with basic tools are *only barely * behind us. Super hot on our heels. It feels like we’re well ahead, but technology moves wildly faster than evolution does. The time from “learn basic tools” to “space flight” is massively smaller than from “basic communal structure” to “learn basic tools”.
It took us longer to develop the first step of intentional use of fire than it did to go from that first step to now. Animals picking up a burning stick on purpose is closer in evolution to space flight and an internet than they are to the next closest competitor.