Had the dinosaurs not become extinct, would they likely be as intelligent today as we humans are?

Question

explain more...

Answer 1

no - no one is as intelligent as the human race (except for frogs!!)

Answer 2

maybe?

you know i wanted to write a sci-fi story like that, its always on my mind that Catholics believe in holy water but also holy oil that most people don't know about and that not only does the water keep evil away but the oil traps evil spirits and that Satan was the serpent of the garden of Eden and was in fact a dinosaur that some speculate was then converted into a snake,

and that petroleum has the spirits of all those dead dinosaur/serpents trapped in a kind of h**l and that people in the petroleum industry are serpents in disguise like the movies `arrival ` and `v` ,

of course i said this is a scifi story like i said before,

Answer 3

Yes, and if you need proof ask your grandmother.

Answer 4

There is nothing to explain. Obviously the dinosaur has lived in you.

Answer 5

They might, they might not have - look at birds, they are for all intents and purposes modern dinosaurs.  They certainly aren't as smart as humans, but for animals, they are reasonably so - particularly the predatory ones.

Answer 6

One Measure of Dino Intelligence: EQ

Since there's no way to travel back in time and give an Iguanodon an IQ test, scientists have developed a new way to evaluate the intelligence of extinct (as well as living) animals. The Encephalization Quotient, or EQ, measures the size of a creature's brain with the size of the rest of its body, and compares this ratio against other species of roughly the same size.

Part of what makes us human is the enormous size of our brains compared to our bodies; our EQ is a hefty 5. That may not seem like such a big number, so let's look at the EQs of some other creatures: on this scale, wildebeests weigh in at .68, African elephants at .63, and opossums at .39. As you might expect, monkeys have higher EQs: 1.5 for a red colobus, 2.5 for a capuchin. Dolphins are the only animals on the planet with EQs even close to those of humans; the bottlenose comes in at 3.6. (EQ scales vary considerably; some set human EQ at about 8, with the EQ of other creatures scaled proportionally.)

As you might expect, the EQs of dinosaurs (based on analysis of fossil remains) are spread across the low end of the spectrum. Triceratops weighs in at about .11, and he was the class genius compared to lumbering giants like Brachiosaurus, which don't even come close to hitting the .1 mark. However, some swift, two-legged dinosaurs post relatively high scores--not quite as smart as modern wildebeests, but not much dumber, either.

Answer 7

The way education is going they'd be a lot brighter  

Answer 8

Intelligence is one of the last great experiments attempted by evolution and there is some evidence that it was developing towards the end of the dinosaur period.  When they went extinct, the mantle passed to mammals.  Had dinosaurs survived in the form that we know them, it is unlikely that they would have been possessed of any great intelligence beyond that of, say, modern lions and tigers.  Although that would represent a huge leap forward in intelligence capability by the standards of 60 million years ago, it would most likely have been a reptilian equivalent of hominids that evolved as the superior intelligent life form.

Answer 9

no they have not got a big enough brain  

Answer 10

A lot of animals still exist today that were around during the dinosaur era.  Alligators are a good example but they are a good example of a species that has evolved perfectly to suit their environment and haven't changed at all in millions of years.  They didn't need to.  The main reason humans developed a more and more complex brain is because the ability to problem solve became more and more important.  They still needed to hunt for food but they didn't have the speed that the big cats have or the sharp teeth that the dogs have so hunting became a game of out-witting the prey and co-operating with other humans.  If one species of dinosaur found themselves in a similar position the chances are they might be around today and as smart as us.  

The thing is, without a civilised society and the ability to communicate effectively, does a specie's intelligence really make a difference.  They say if a Lion could speak we still couldn't understand it.  Animal's brains, hormones, social structure and outlooks are wired up completely differently.  It would be like trying to use the insides of a microwave to run a personal computer.  Dolphins are intelligent but until they evolve a hand to write with they'll never write Macbeth.

Answer 11

Depends really, species' evolve in accordance with what is best. In the case of these big tough lizards, they survived best if they were strong and able to fight off the predators, or if they were herbivore's then the same thing except something like long neck or better teeth.

In our case, it is thought that there were three species' that came from a monkey like thing; which are the human, the neanderthal, and the primate (which also comes in many forms).

There was supposedly a big war many thousands of years ago, between humans and the neanderthals, we were smarter, they brawnier. Obviously we won, they're extinct now, but thats an example that different traits can be the best in different circumstances - we made clubs, weapons make a person more effective than several people without weapons - so naturally our intelligence won out.

I'm not saying NO like other people do, because we truly don't know, it is possible, but i would have to stamp it with a big unlikely. But thats simply due to the way of life of the dinosaurs, they didn't need to be smart so the smart ones wouldn't have had a better chance of surviving, therefore no evolution towards being smarter.