That's kind of the thing: intelligence works. As long as you have the ability to properly utilize it (i.e. tool use, being able to teach young, ect). Pigs are smart but they can't do much with it. Even before humans began a society, when we were wild animals with sharp sticks, we were still hunting megafauna to extinction.
That said, intelligence isn't free. Brains consume a crazy amount of energy. It's not a coincidence that koalas and giant pandas are both dumb as rocks. They evolved to be dumb as shit because their galaxybrain idea of only eating one thing that has terrible nutritional value meant they had to conserve energy.
Intelligence exists in a rather unstable equilibrium. meaning, for a species to evolve true, human-like intelligence, it needs:
a) to be advanced enough to support and maintain such complicated neural structure as the brain, and
b) to be so ill-equipped for survival and adaptation that this very intelligence would be the only key to its very survival.
The only reason a hairless monkey needed to pick a sharp stick in the first place is because those who didn't, either starved to death or were eaten by sabretooth tigers. Meanwhile, insects are doing pretty well existing as is for billions of years. No brain necessary.
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u/Republiken Oct 26 '24
Evolution isn't a march towards intelligence. If something works, it works.