A Serious Look At Human Intelligence
By Tom Slattery
It used to be more wild and rural here by the shore of Lake Erie, but
wildlife has managed to maintain a quiet presence amid the insidious
encroachment of human sprawl. There are the squirrels, rabbits, chipmunks,
and various birds who have long ago learned to adapt. Sometimes out the
window I see deer. And at night, and occasionally during the day, there are
raccoons, opossums, groundhogs, and skunks.
All of them betray levels of intelligence that could remind us of our
ancient ancestral animal past.
Consider this for example. A few weeks ago a raccoon got on the roof and
took note of a speckled starling nest built on top of a steel awning that
was mounted back under the eaves of the roof. This raccoon, clearly,
conceived of a reasonably good hypothesis that it could access that nest
from the roof. It therefore might enjoy a delicious raw omelet of speckled
starling eggs.
So this mentally agile furry creature tore back some of the roofing
directly over the nest. Alas for that hypothesis some thick hardwood boards
remained between the raccoon's appetite and the potential raw omelet.
If I were attuned to raccoon grumbling, I might have heard a grumbling
raccoon descend from the roof. If raccoons might be attuned to human
grumbling, it might have heard me grumbling as I put up a ladder, climbed up
with roofing goop and repair material, and patched my roof.
Humans and raccoons appear to resist abandoning hypotheses. This raccoon
revisited this hypothesis one last time before abandoning it. It tore back
an adjacent section of roofing. Since it was simply revisiting a hypothesis
that had not worked out and thus only needed a quick confirmation of its
initial scientific investigation, it tore back only enough to satisfy itself
that there were, indeed, impossibly thick hardwood boards all along the
roof. The raccoon, being a reasonably intelligent animal, never again wasted
its energies on this hypothesis.
As it so happened, several days after patching up this final raccoon
confirmation and abandonment of an otherwise good hypothesis I was
peacefully sitting in a lawn chair contemplating animal intelligence. My
eyes were charmed with an aesthetic intermix of white gulls and whitecaps on
the blue waters of Lake Erie. A soft sultry summer breeze off the lake
soothed my mind almost into a dozing off.
All of the sudden the serenity of the scene and my calm was shattered. My
contemplation was broken by noisy Coast Guard helicopter hugging the
shoreline. Its rotors were straining near maximum as it chopped its way
through the sultry air, obviously toward an emergency of major proportions.
My first thought was a national security. Would terrorists attack the
beaches of Lake Erie?
No, it wasn't quite an emergency like that. The evening television news
cleared that up. Here is what happened.
Public parks and private docks rent out rowboats to folks who like to fish
or who might like to try their hands at fishing or who might just like to
row about. And these rowboats have plugs inserted into the bottoms of the
boats for easy cleaning of fish scales and fish odors after the fishing
enthusiasts are finished with them.
Two gentlemen with a casual interest in fishing and from a town inland -- I
would hesitate to call them landlubbers -- had taken one of these small
boats out into Lake Erie. The lake was choppy -- which had made those
charming whitecaps -- and water had been splashing over the side and into
the bottom of the boat.
I relate the following only to enlighten you about the nontrivial ability
of the human mind to put two somewhat distant related observations together
and create a whole new concept. As for example: there in the bottom of the
boat were two elements of (as it were) a truly watershed breakthrough.
Specifically, there was a plug in the bottom of the boat, and there was
water in the bottom of the boat. Given only this, a human mind began to
concoct a marvelous hypothesis.
"I'll just remove this plug and let some of the water out," one of the
gentlemen announced to the other. The other, recognizing a sheer genius of a
human mind at work, offered neither objection nor rebuttal.
So out on the choppy waters of Lake Erie the gentleman removed the plug to
let the water out of the bottom of the boat.
Lake Erie, of course, did what Lake Erie would do. In it flowed, and
quickly. In no time the small boat was filled with water. Not surprisingly,
it sank.
Well, it did not totally sink. It had wisely been filled with foam between
the outside and inside hulls just for such an occasion. So it only partly
sank and thus could be recovered by the dock proprietor. The two gentlemen
may have been filled with liberal quantities of beer, but that did not serve
to save them. They did, however, have presence of mind enough to cling to
the half-sunken boat.
The story has a happy ending. The Coast Guard rescued them from the chilly
and choppy water in the nick of time. As for their hypothesis, I suspect
that they both may now agree that it was all wet.
And as for the raccoon and me, we may be free to wonder if the theory of
evolution applies equally to all members of a species.
© Tom Slattery 2005 Republished by Karisable.com
