Did Intelligence Evolve “At Least Twice”?

A recent article highlighted the intelligence of many bird species, stating,

Birds have been shown time and again to have advanced cognitive abilities. Ravens plan for the future, crows count and use tools, cockatoos open and pillage booby-trapped garbage cans, and chickadees keep track of tens of thousands of seeds cached across a landscape.

But the brains of birds look different from mammalian brains. As the article says, “They’re smaller and lack the highly organized structures that scientists associate with mammalian intelligence.” A researcher quoted in the article noted, “A bird with a 10-gram brain is doing pretty much the same as a chimp with a 400-gram brain.” And, of course, the big evolutionary question is how did intelligence evolve in these two different groups of animals?

One hypothesis is that birds and mammals both inherited the foundations for intelligence from a common reptile ancestor—but their very different brain structures don’t seem to support this idea. So other evolutionists believe intelligence evolved separately for these two groups. And two new studies supposedly “confirm” the idea that intelligence arose at least twice in vertebrates (this, of course, does not account for intelligence in invertebrates, like the octopus!).

These studies used a special technique, single-cell RNA sequencing, to compare the neural circuits of birds and mammals from their early embryonic development until adulthood to “see where the cells started growing in the embryo and where they ended up in the mature animal.” Based on the results, they believe that intelligence must have evolved separately in birds and mammals.

Now, the actual study is observational science: they are tagging and observing individual cells in the present. But the claim that this “developmental journey” can “reveal evolutionary pathways” is an interpretation. The evidence says nothing about evolution, common ancestry, or historic development of intelligence. That’s an interpretation of the evidence because of an evolutionary starting point—and it’s a ridiculous interpretation!

Intelligence in animals didn’t evolve. It was created by God at the very beginning.

We don’t fully understand intelligence, but we do know it’s highly complex and varies widely across species. The idea that this complex (and somewhat immaterial and intangible) thing we call intelligence could evolve not once, but “at least” twice, is nothing more than a fairytale. It’s certainly not based on the evidence or any direct, observational study but rather on evolutionary interpretations.

Intelligence in animals didn’t evolve. It was created by God at the very beginning.

And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. (Genesis 1:24)

Get More Answers on Answers News

This item was discussed Monday on Answers News with cohosts Patricia Engler, Dr. Tim Chaffey, and Dr. Marisa Tillery. Answers News is our weekly news program filmed live before a studio audience here at the Creation Museum, broadcast on our Answers in Genesis YouTube channel, and posted to Answers TV. We also covered the following topics:

• Can Planned Parenthood rewrite science?
• Evolutionary-creation group BioLogos launches “Science is Good” campaign
• What do the “earliest known reptile footprints” reveal?
• And more!

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Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken

This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.