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Anonymous
Evolution of intelligence needs very special conditions. The right kind of animal must have the right kind of diet in the right kind of environment. For instance elephants pass the mirror test of consciousness and they have very useful trunks, but they have no reason to use tools. There are also animals that have evolved tool use through instinct rather than learning, because they lack the brainpower to just be creative and learn from each other. Generally having a brain proportionally as big as ours (or that of apes, corvids, dolphins or parrots) is merely a liability for an animal that has other, more efficient survival mechanisms.
There is of course an apparent trend of intelligence growins slowly through time. In the Cretaceous dinosaurs and mammals were pretty much equals in the brains-department, and today... corvid dinosaurs and primate mammals are again pretty much equals in smarts. I bet there are going to be even more intelligent species in the far future, unless we manage to kill all of their would-be-ancestors.
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