Om firstly. My point on complexity was in reference to creatures in spore rather than dinosaurs.
And the reason why we are "amazing" as a species (i believe but this has been disputed heavily in current litrature) that we can talk. And by talk i mean converse with content. Animals do not talk with content, and i'm afraid even the likes of alex dont have content. Yes he can respond in situations with certain behavioural characteristics which appear to us to be conversational but this is memetics at its finest.
I think a problem here could be what we catogorise as intellegence. Because certainly things like octopus's have a great ability to problem solve, finding their way through mazes etc. But i would not count them as intellegent in the same way i would count great apes and us as intellegent.
Great apes however lack something that parrots have in abundence, they lack memetic skills. (watching apes try to copy each other is hillarious) However they have complex social structures, and cognative abilities similar to a 4yearold human.
Our memtic skills are probably not as good as an african grey's, but they are far better than our ape cousins. And other cognitive abilities (such as folk physchological,) are far better than both.
Sorry i'm rambling here rather than making a point. If we are going to talk about intellegence in a meaningful way, where the "intellegent" species can achieve what they can in spore, then i believe we have to use the term intellegent to mean self conscious; tool using; language speaking; able to connect belief and desire as concepts that cause action amongst oneself and others.
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