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Intelligence Evolved at Least Twice in Vertebrate Animals | Quanta Magazine

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Did the neural circuits that support intelligence evolve once in vertebrates, or independently in birds and mammals? Samantha Mash for Quanta Magazine Staff Writer April 7, 2025 Humans tend to put our own intelligence on a pedestal. Our brains can do math, employ logic, explore abstractions and think critically. But we can’t claim a monopoly on thought. Among a variety of nonhuman species known to display intelligent behavior, birds have been shown time and again to have advanced cognitive abilities. Ravens plan (opens a new tab) for the future, crows count and use tools (opens a new tab) , cockatoos open and pillage (opens a new tab) booby-trapped garbage cans, and chickadees keep track (opens a new tab) of tens of thousands of seeds cached across a landscape. Notably, birds achieve such feats with brains that look completely different from ours: They’re smaller and lack the highly organized structures that scientists associate with mammalian intelligence. “A bird with a 10-gram br

Intelligence Evolved at Least Twice in Vertebrate Animals | Quanta Magazine Home Intelligence Evolved at Least Twice in Vertebrate Animals Read Later Share Copied! Comments Read Later Read Later evolution Intelligence Evolved at Least Twice in Vertebrate Animals By Yasemin Saplakoglu April 7, 2025 Complex neural circuits likely arose independently in birds and mammals, suggesting that vertebrates evolved intelligence multiple times. Read Later Did the neural circuits that support intelligence evolve once in vertebrates, or independently in birds and mammals? Samantha Mash for Quanta Magazine I

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