VI. Life’s Cerebral Cognizance Becomes More Complex, Smarter, Informed, Proactive, Self-Aware

1. Animal Intelligence, Persona and Sociality

Whiten, Andrew. Cultural Evolution in Animals. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics. Volume 50, 2019. The University of St. Andrews social psychologist contends that recent field and laboratory studies quite indicate that contrary to past beliefs, all manner of Metazoan creaturely groupings do indeed possess what could be seen as relative culture-like qualities.

Wirthin, Morgan, et al. Parrot Genomes and the Evolution of Heightened Longevity and Cognition. Current Biology. 28/1, 2018. As the abstract details, a 21 person team from the USA, Brazil, and Argentina including Claudio Mello achieved a novel genomic-based explanation of why this Psittacine order is more effectively intelligent than any other avian species. The findings merited a New York Times item The Genes That Make Parrots into the Humans of the Bird World by JoAnna Klein (Dec. 7, 2018).

Parrots are one of the most distinct and intriguing groups of birds, with highly expanded brains, well developed cognitive and vocal communication skills, and a long lifespan compared to other similar-sized birds. To address this question, we have generated a high-coverage, annotated assembly of the genome of the blue-fronted Amazona aestiva and carried out extensive comparative analyses with 30 other avian species, including 4 additional parrots. We identified several genomic features unique to parrots which support a range of cellular functions, including telomerase activity; DNA damage repair; control of cell proliferation, cancer, and immunity. Intriguingly, parrot-specific changes in conserved regulatory sequences were associated with genes that are linked to cognitive abilities and have undergone similar selection in the human lineage, suggesting convergent evolution. (Abstract)

Wuketits, Franz. Evolutionary Epistemology and Its Implications for Humankind. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990. In the 1980’s the endeavor that studied cognitive abilities in an evolutionary light was known by this name. Reviewed more in The Spiral of Science, it is noted here since by this view an emergent scale of animal intelligence gains veracity.

“…evolution is a universal cognition and learning process and there is a nested hierarchy of such processes from unicellular animals to humans.” (8)

Zacks, Oryan, et al. The Futures of the Past: The Evolution of Imaginative Animals. Journal of Consciousness Studies. 29/3-4, 2023. Tel Aviv University philosophers OZ, Simona Ginsberg and Eva Jablonka continue to propose and articulate life’s apparent tandem proclivity to develop a cerebral acumen which allows all manner of entities to learn and gain relevant knowledge. See also Evolutionary Transition Markers and the Origins of Consciousness by Marta Halina, et al in the same issue

We discuss the evolution of imagination in vertebrate animals within the framework of an evolutionary-transition approach. We define imaginative consciousness and the neural architecture from which it arises and contend that this facility which enables future planning is a major transition in the evolution of cognition. We explore its presence and scope as a core capacity in non-human vertebrates by way of actual behaviors. We conclude that these vital faculties arose in parallel several times through cerebral enrichments, A general correspondence between enhanced capacities and hippocampus complexity during vertebrate evolution is thus revealed which supports prospective responses. (Edited excerpt)

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