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We humans are used to assuming that we are always the smartest ones in the room. I appreciate the distinction which Jane Goodall makes in her quote, that we are “the most clever species.”
Because clever is a short-term form of intelligence — it’s fast and facile. It’s not the sort of intelligence needed to be good caretakers, or to solve the huge problems we’ve created for ourselves and most of the rest of Life on Earth. Clever is often also self-congratulatory, and contemptuous of other forms of intelligence.
So maybe the scientists who study the intelligence of other species are more on the right track than many people think. You never know where the ideas that just might save us from ourselves will come from. I don’t think we can afford to overlook any possibility.
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