Hi Josh,
Neither do I.
Within a species there is no correlation between brain size, body size,
and intelligence. Within a class there are some correlations, but realize
that intelligence tests are truly arbitrary evaluations with a decidedly
homocentric bias. For some animals, perhaps all other species of animals,
our evaluations of their intelligence are quite simply meaningless
speculations.
This news group has suffered weeks of discussions about determining
intelligence in other species and in fact there was considerable discussion
about determining intelligence in humans. For example, what is the IQ of a
native living in the Amazon basin? Beyond estimates of minimal IQ
standards for predicting how an individual will function in a particular
society, intelligence testing is really aptitude testing. A bird digging
grubs from the bark of a banyon tree may have a better aptitude for
surviving that life history than a literature professor surviving life in
the outback of Australia or the back streets of SoHo.
rlh
At 3:20 AM +0000 11/10/99, JoshCahoon wrote:
>Thanks for responding...
>>I don't mean to sound dense, but I really don't follow the reasoning at
>all...How is that the relative universality of a certain level of blood
>pressure prevents more brain from resulting in more intelligence?
Richard Hall, Associate Professor of
Comparative Animal Physiology
Division of Sciences and Mathematics
University of the Virgin Islands
St. Thomas, USVI 00802
340-693-1386
rhall at uvi.edu
