Well to be truthful, a chicken is just as highly evolved as us humans.  We just evolved differently.  The idea that humans have reached some pinacle of evolution is simply egoism and is patently false.

Also, a lot of studies suggest that Dolphins may be more intelligent than humans, the neurons in their brains are much more densely packed than our own.  Dolphins have names for one another and it has even been observed two dolphins talking about a third that is not present at the time.  Who knows how intelligent they really are?

Really the main thing that makes us humans such a pain in the butt of the animal kingdom is that not only are we an "intelligent" species with abstract thought, but we have also retained full use of our upper limbs when we have become bipedal (as well as evolving an amazing level of dexterity with our hands).  I have even read one auther describe humanity as a type of natural centaur since we only use our hind legs for locomotion and have our hands free to manipulate our environment.

The biggest problem with us humans is that our knowledge has advanced far more swiftly than our wisdom.  We're still a young species having only existed roughly 200,000 years or so.  The average lifetime of a mammalian species is 10 million years.  I'd be glad for us to survive for a thousand more years.  Maybe by then we can get off this rock and establish an independent colony on Mars or in a space station by then.

It's a little misleading to say one species is "more evolved" than another. About the only thing you can do is say, "Better adapted to suit their environment." You might also say that a particular adaptation is "more primitive" than another, in that one may not have all the workings of the other. But really, it's all just life adapting to its environment.

It's the whole "God giving man stewardship of the world" from the Christian faith that leads to the idea that we are "more highly-evolved." In truth, there is nothing that special about us. We are more specialized in problem-solving skills, but really, that's no more highly-evolved or special than a cheetah's excellent running skills, or a Liger's skills in magic, or a giraffe's long neck.

We just do abstract thought better than most.

Dolphins have been observed to kill juvenile dolphins from other groups simply to sharpen their hunting skills.  I don't think anything on this planet has become intelligent enough to live in harmony with all other life.

Well you don't see much philosophy, civilization, technology, etc. in nature going on either.  We could have stayed living like our distant ancestors and stayed nomadic hunter gatherers.  And we probably would have survived for millions of years.  The only problem is that we would have been confined to living day to day completely at the whim of any sort of devastation that may occur.  (meteor impacts, world wide volcanic eruptions, and so on)

I'm sure we would have made a good run of it, but where would we ever end up?  The Neanderthals had brains larger than our own, yet they failed to survive.  Maybe it was loss of habitat that did them in at the end of the last glacial period.  Maybe we helped push them into extinction.  Most likely it was a combination of factors that led to their demise.

Us Homo Sapiens are attempting something new here on earth.  Maybe this experiment will result in our annihilation.  But maybe we can progress beyond the confines of this one planet.  Who knows?  However, for the first time, among all the millions of species that ever existed (and which 99% of have already died out) we alone have at least the possibility of taking control of our destiny. 

We would never have that if we weren't able to move beyond just surviving from day to day.

Slight nitpick before moving onto the real error. Take out the word "learn"

Eh...this is not how sexual selection works. Cast your mind back to basic evo. 101. There are four major processes in evolution. Mutation, gene flow, genetic drift and natural selection. By definition, natural selection is a process operating on the mutations which produce variations. Because natural selection operates on phenotypic variation, there are four central natural selection processes: Stabilizing processes, distruptive processes, directional processes and sexual processes. This should not be confused with the fact that there are technically three types of selection: Sexual, artificial and natural selection. Sexual selection is distinct from natural selection. Bear this in mind for what follows. Now, the problem with what you've written above is that you've made it sound as if sexual selection is arbitrary and based on the organisms in question "deciding" that they like certain sexually selective traits. This is very wrong. It is reminiscint of creationists asking how giraffes can "decide" they want to reach taller trees when the example of giraffe neck length is provided as an example of natural selection. In many sexual selection processes, the selectors (female) tend to prefer males with particular exaggerated morphology such as, well, the peacock's feathers. However, this is not arbitrary. Although the underlying principles behind sexual selection are not fully understood, theyre are two key hypotheses for why there would be sexual selection for morphologies that would probably be naturally selected against (remember, natural and sexual selection are not the same). The first states that such morphologies are indicative of resistance to disease, so the selector would tend to select a mate with these morphologies. As a consequence, a tug of war develops between the naturally selective processes which make a peacock an easy target for predators, and the sexually selective processes that make it more likely that the offspring of the peacock will survive. This is quite a common interpretation. The second major interpretation was proposed by the Israeli biologist Zahavi. Dawkins discussed it for a short while in TGD. Zahavi's handicap principle is that the ability of a male to survive despite the exaggerated morphology making it more likely the trait will be selected against is indicative of the fitness of the individual. In other words, for the individual to have survived despite the handicap indicates to the selector that he is a fit individual and therefore their offspring will have a greater chance of reproductive success. Any principle which attempts to explain why sexually selected exaggerated morphologies survive must account for the tug of war that will result between the naturally selective and sexually selective processes.

Wrong word. A smartass is someone who shows off their cleverness by asking a clever question.

The correct word here is "idiot".

I don't know. This is not my area of expertise (as you can imagine, this thread The Third Revolution is the one where I can discuss principles with the understanding of a specialist), but I subscribe to the other interpretation anyway.

I wouldn't trot that definition out at dinner parties.  It's not what the average non-scientist thinks it means, and it's certainly not what the average scientist thinks either.  I think you'll just get blank stares from most people.

The total number of adaptations in a genome doesn't really have much to do with anything, at least not in this context.  Sure, it takes a lot of adaptations to get from a single cell to an elephant, but something that's still a single cell hasn't been evolutionarily stagnant.  Bacteria mutate all the time, and they have very short generations.  Many of the adaptations that propagate in the population are the result of adaptations in hosts.  That is, the bacteria infect the monkey, the monkey develops immunity, the bacteria adapts.  The thing is, it's not a linear progression "forward" or upward.  Supposing that a parasite  uses enzyme X to invade a host, and the host adapts such that X is no longer effective.  If the parasite develops enzyme Y that is effective, parasites producing X will either disappear or will be reduced to a small percentage of the population.  The host, after reproducing for enough generations, may lose the ability to protect against X.  (After all, X isn't around anymore, so that part of the gene will be gradually filtered out.)  When this happens, the parasite may very well "rediscover" the ability to produce X, and the host will have to "rediscover" the same or another way to defend against it.  (With props to DG, discover is definitely a metaphor.)  Evolution can definitely go in circles.

In other words, it's possible for thousands or even hundreds of thousands of adaptations to occur while little actual "forward progress" occurs in terms of complexity.  Think about it.  We still have bacteria, which are quite simple compared to elephants, and yet they've been around much longer.  Evolution most definitely does not have to move towards ever increasing complexity.

Well, there's no such thing as evolutionary perfection.  If you subscribe to the theory of punctuated equilibrium, you believe that there are periods of relative stasis in natural selection, but regardless of your position, there is no such thing as an end to evolution.  It is true that sharks and crocodiles have changed very little in recent geological time, and it's true that the primary reason for this is a lack of selection pressure, but regarding any point in time as an endpoint is foolhardy, unless of course that point is the total annihilation of life on earth.

(By the way, the debate between "gradualism" and "punctuated equilibrium" has been largely avoided thanks to the due diligence of a few writers who have exposed the fallacies inherent in the debate, which was largely invented by people who had no idea what they were talking about.  Daniel Dennett did a pretty good job of explaining it, but I can't remember which book it was in.  Maybe Darwin's Dangerous Idea?)

Evolution is driven by pressure, but there are limits to how much pressure can be exerted.  Conservatively, ninety nine out of a hundred mutations are negative or neutral with regard to survival fitness.  In other words, most mutations will reduce an organism's reproductive success or have no effect.  Because of this, an organism can reach evolutionary dead ends of a sort.  The laws of physics prevent giraffes with 90 foot necks or cheetahs that can run three hundred miles per hour.  Furthermore, evolution can't backtrack.  In other words, human eyes are what they are.  If you gave an engineer the task of designing a better eye for humans, he could probably do it.  We have blind spots and poor night vision that could be corrected with better engineering.  The thing is, the eye is so complex that it's impossible for humans to regress to the point of starting a new eye from scratch.  So, we are stuck with myopia and cataracts, even though technically, we could have done better had we taken a different evolutionary track.  The evolution of the human eye is such that there is a real limit to how good our vision could get.  

It's not to say there isn't room for improvement.  There probably is, but as complexity is added, the odds of getting a significant improvement go down.  Consider a simple organism that has the faintest degree of light detection and tends to move towards light sources.  The light detection is very simple.  It's just one chemical in one cell (the precursor of a rod, perhaps) that reacts when exposed to light.  There are lots of ways we can improve on that, and each improvement would be highly significant.  If we allow for a single mutation that says, in effect, "make two light sensitive cells instead of one" we have effectively doubled the effectiveness of the rudimentary "eye."   This is a huge improvement.  The human eye, by contrast, has around 120 million rods and 6 to 7 million cones, which go with a very complex set of other optical mechanisms, like the lens, the iris, the cornea, etc, all of which work together to facilitate our vision, which is very complex in its own right.  (Note that you think you see a coherent full picture, but what you really see is an approximated conglomerate filled in "guesses," recent memory, motion detection, etc.)  If we add a few rods or cones, we're not really doing much.  In other words, the more complex the organ, the more specific a mutation has to be to cause a benefit significant enough to cause evolutionary selection pressure.

I say all of that to say that sharks aren't perfect.  They are, however, probably pretty damn close to the limits imposed by their own evolution and their environment at this time.  Could you build a better shark from scratch?  Probably.  Would a change in their environment produce selection pressure?  Yep.  And that would mean there was a new direction for evolution to take.

I agree.

I almost can't believe that nobody responded to this. This is damn funny.

This sounds extremely reminiscent of Douglas Adams's extrapolations of why a common hand towel is among the most useful items one can have on their person while venturing into space. As a result I think I'm rather fond of it.

...Oh, sorry. You were discussing real science.

Carry-on.

I've always thought that dolphins very well might be more intelligent. They too have language, something we often pride ourselves on.

Do they commit homicide? Do they torture one another? I'm not sure, but they seem to be doing very well and are capable of higher reasoning. I'd be interested to see more studies on their intelligence.

Here's something which may lead the discussion in an interesting direction. I can't believe I didn't post this until now.

Although there is no eschatology to the evolutionary process, there is a fundamental limit on the biological complexity that the process can generate. That complexity limit is directly related to the random mutation rate. The concept of the molecular clock is based on the principle that all nucleotide sequences are subject to more or less the same probability of random mutation, and number of nucleotide substitutions in orthologous diverging sequences versus the time when the two populations diverged from their common ancestor therefore reflects the degree to which that sequence is conserved. In other words, its sensitivity to mutation in terms of how crucial it is for the survival of the organism (the steeper the slope, the more conserved the sequence is. A highly conserved sequence is therefore one which is highly resistant to point mutations because organisms incurring them tend to be eliminated by natural selection because that sequence is crucial to their survival. It is important to stress that these random point mutations are not the major driving force between descent genes in evolutionary processes, innovation of which is driven primarily by homologous duplication, recombination, and the shuffling of modular genetic sequences. Nonetheless, the study of conserved sequences indicates that low point mutation rates are crucial for survival of biological life. The process of evolution is a balance between adaptation and the preservation of genomic integrity. If the mutation rate is too fast, the organisms in question are rapidly destroyed. Too slow, and the population of organisms cannot adapt by natural selection and die out. The mutation rate of the germ line must be low to preserve the genomic integrity of the offpsring, and that of the somatic line must be low to preserve the functioning of the organism itself. The crucial point is that this balance is thought to put a limit on the number of coding sequence it is possible to maintain before the existence of so many highly conserved sequences makes the organism fall outside the fine balance of mutation rates. This limit is thought to exist at about 60,000 proteins (the human genome contains 30,000). A mutation rate four times as fast would mean that the evolutionary process would have halted in complexity at something like a mouse. 10 times as fast and it would have stopped at the fruit fly. Twice as fast and it would have stopped with us.

Oooooh... That's a more precise way of saying what I was getting at earlier, that increasing complexity limits the available number of beneficial mutations.

Ummm.....can a chicken get a squirrel to water ski? I didn't think so.  Until a chicken can get a squirrel to water ski then we humans will remain the supreme rulers of the universe. Case closed.

Rick

oh god damn that was just to perfect >.<