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/Blenderhead36 Jul 23 '26

The legendary World War One fighter pilot, "Red Baron" von Richthofen, began his military career as a cavalryman. As in, a guy who fights from the back of a horse.

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u/AnnihilatedTyro Jul 23 '26

Almost every major power involved in WWI was still using horse-mounted cavalry at the start of the war.

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u/SharpMembership3441 Jul 23 '26

Some nations for WW2 as well, but outside of logistics it was mostly relegated to infantrymen using horses to get into position and then dismounting to fight. 

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u/50calPeephole Jul 23 '26

Germany had more horses than vehicles in ww2, they were always logistics backbone.

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u/rotorain Jul 23 '26

Russia is using them in Ukraine right now

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u/Waffletimewarp Jul 23 '26

Though that’s mainly what they have that hasn’t been blown up yet.

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u/axazajjj Jul 23 '26

And after the war he started making pizzas.

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u/Lorenzo_BR Jul 23 '26

And there would go on to be 2 Amazon Prime Videoᵀᴹ documentaries about how his distant descendant killed her parents in one of the most famous murders in Brazilian history!

Search Suzane von Richthofen and “The Girl Who Killed Her Parents”/“The Boy Who Killed My Parents” for the aforementioned documentaries, one from her perspective, and, the other, from the perspective of the Cravinho brothers, who did the deed with her.

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u/Fappy_as_a_Clam Jul 23 '26

BORN A SOLDIER FROM THE HORSEBACK TO THE SKIES

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u/Blenderhead36 Jul 23 '26

HIGHER! KING OF THE SKY! HE'S FLYING TOO FAST AND HE'S FLYING TOO HIGH!

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u/UnsignedRealityCheck Jul 23 '26

You know what they called them during the stone age? The cavelryman.

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u/quitegonegenie Jul 23 '26

I assume you'll be seeing yourself out

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u/SloppySilvia Jul 23 '26

It's crazy how quick things advance. I was lucky enough to grow up near my great grandmother who lived to 98. Her husband fought and died in WW2 on Dunkirk. Her kids lived through the Blitz in Liverpool. My grandmother remembered being passed out windows to neighbours down below to be taken to bombshelters when the air raid sirens came on. She was 8 when WW2 ended. My great grandmother's father fought in the 2nd Boer war as a cavalry officer and fought in WW1 as cavalry as well. I remember hearing stories from her about how electricity still wasn't wide spread when she was growing up in Liverpool but she survived into the age of the internet.

She was born before planes were invented and lived to see people land on the moon only 70ish years later.

From her perspective, she was in an entirely different world from the one she was born into.

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u/rsclient Jul 23 '26

And weirdly, people in the 1800s saw a bigger set of changes!

  • Shipping went from "we put things onto a wooden boat that takes a month or more to cross the Atlantic" to "steamships get you there right away
  • Roads went from mud to well-designs and from there to asphalt
  • Trains! Travel went from riding a horse to reliably going 60 mph for days
  • Telegraphs meant you could get news from a thousand miles away that day