Excluding our ape and monkey cousins , chimps are already getting

Corvids, possibly. Perhaps dogs. African Grey Parrots? Whales and Dolphins, rats.

>>2217878
Id love this sort of concept to be explored more in fiction really, taking their general behaviour and trying to imagine how a society of those creatures would develop.

>>2217878
>Corvids
Maybe. Will have a hard time manipulating anything that's not a stick. That goes for any bird.

>dogs
Nope.

>Whales and Dolphins
Can't manipulate tools, can't start fire under water which arguably was what got our civilization going.

>rats
Very short generation time, might be too short to pass complex ideas. They can't have elders around that are no longer actively involved in survival that develop and spread ideas in all their free time.

Chimps are also not a very good candidate either because they figured out lying before they figured out language. Language depends on honest signals to develop. Chimps deceive each other by making false alarm sounds for example. They use too many of the false signals for a complex language to form, they can't communicate complex ideas. This is why chimps in captivity can be trained to express complex ideas but never do so in the wild. The potential is there but their social structure ruins it.

Intelligence like ours seems to have been a very unlikely and pretty lucky chain of events.

Octopus certainly has the goods to manipulate the world. But I guess they aren't very social.

None, humanity got where it is because of God.

We have dominion over every single species listed in this thread for a reason, it's our divine right.

>>2217943
They also have very short lifespans, a year or two at most.

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the smartest animal, of course

rabbits

>>2217900
Good explanation.

>>2217900
What about raccoons and squirrels?

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>>2217856
Whales and dolphins are pretty much some of the most intelligent animals of all time. They easily rival monkeys and apes (excluding humans, of course).

Orcas are amazingly smart and seem to be above them all. But considering you only need to be smarter than your prey and they tend to hunt whales and other dolphins, well...

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Lions show great signs of intelligence based on demonstrating complex cooperative strategies and advance social intelligence similar to apes

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Though ravens are evidently smarter, parrots are still smart and have feet that seem to have an opposable toe (3rd front toe can move all the way front and back and rotate more freely than normal bird toes)

It is possible the feet can overtime developed more handlike in terms of how well it can manipulate physical objects. This potentially making it learn better and perhaps developed smarter

Bonobos all the way, as soon as they stop fucking everything that moves

Crows

>>2215646

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>>2217856
Octopuses are almost alienlike creatures surprisingly advance animal intelligence, quick learning abilities, high curiosity, and great at problem solving.

Plus they have eight tentacles which can be used to manipulate the world around them. Over time, they may be the next super brain power.

>>2218188
I meant to compare parrots to crows, but the point still stands

>>2218216
Octopi*

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>>2218221

>>2218216
Aside from it being pretty impossible to do that underwater?

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>>2218225
Do what?

Be smart?

Have you never asked yourself, how smart giant squids are.

We barely have some death specimens, and there's a lot of rare squids down there.

With complex bioluminescent signals, curiosity and learning skills.

Given the extreme biodiversity of the ocean, it may be a super intelligent squid in the deeps.

Waiting to be discovered,

>>2218180
>be you
>on safari
>get lost in the Savannah
>lion approaching
>it wants to talk.
>what do?

>>2217856
octopusses (octopi?)

>>2218896
Octopussies

>>2218888
Lube up and prepare for some hot lion dick.

>>2217959
>You WILL be able to fuck the bunny
I hope we discover the secret to immortality soon.

>>2218896
Octopodes.

Anybody mentioned elephants yet?

>hold funerals
>recognize their own reflection
>can into painting

Pretty sure we could teach one to read, write, and draw dicks on bathroom stalls

>>2218928
A noble undertaking.

>>2217900
Lots of animals understand deception, I think it's pretty unlikely that humans learned to communicate at a sophisticated level before we learned to lie. Besides, chimps do have fairly complex communication systems, they are just mostly based on gestures and body language rather than vocalization, which presents a new set of problems and advantages

>>2217856
We need to start exploring novel conceptualizations of what it means to be "intelligent" and what intelligence actually is.

I think a hive mind could function just as well as a more traditional singular intelligence, and anyway, even though humans are significantly less social than eusocial organisms, most of what we regard as human (intelligent) accomplishment is the result of a hive mind.

So taking this train of thought to its logical conclusion, I think eusocial hymenopterans, particularly the more derived ant species, are good contenders.

Individually intelligent (most solitary) animals like cephalopods have lifespans which are too short to foster advanced cultural evolution.

Obviously elephants, with their long lives, intelligence, and dexterity (tool-making is important), make superb candidates.

Parrots, starlings, corvids, are all good candidates. Parrots especially are long-lived, intelligent, and fairly dexterous.

>>2218955
What about lions, wolves and chimps/silverbacks.

I think dexterity is the bigger issue, or for marine mammals being underwater where resource usage is much more limited.

One thing I'm seeing pop up a lot in this thread is anons are equating the anatomic ability to use tools with the mental capacity to do it, which isn't quite logical.

Look at Steven Hawking. He's arguably the smartest human alive today and can't hunt, gather, or make fire. Dolphins may not be able to throw spears, but there's a bay (I can't remember the location) where the local dolphins have formed a cooperative partnership with the fishermen. The dolphins herd fish into the netting and in return, the fishermen throw a share back out to the dolphin shepherds. The fishermen didn't train them; the dolphins came up with it on their own and have been doing it for generations.

>>2218983
Stephen Hawking gets by using technology made my other humans with functional limbs. If we were a whole species of Stephen Hawking things wouldn't go so well.

>>2218888
>ayyyylmao

>>2218254
Squids and octopuses die way too quickly to accomplish anything.

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>>2219003
http://futurism.com/scientists-discover-longest-living-and-longest-brooding-octopus-guards-eggs-for-4-5-years/

The Graneledone boreopacifica has a brooding time of 53 months.

I bet there's cephalopods that live longer, the colossal squid reaches a size over 39 ft, I assume that it takes some time, to grow that big.

>>2218959
Silverbacks aren't a species. Chimps and gorillas at exclude by the OP but are superb nominees for future human-like sapience, naturally.

Lions are obligate carnivores and so could not exploit high-energy, numerous food sources required to sustain post-agricultural societies. Wolves could, but neither animal has grasping hands.

I guess wolves could go places, but they will quickly meet an impasse, and lions I don't see going very far at all; too ecologically precarious with no real need or means to become human-like.

>>2219011
Also they will need to live long enough to raise their babies.

>>2218987
Well yeah, but the topic is sentience, not survival. Plenty of hominids went extinct, but it wasn't (always) because they were potatoes.

Elephants?

can manipulate, live for long time, good cognitive functions already. Few natural predators.

They might have a shot provided we stop shooting at them

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>>2217856
Varanids dude.

>>2217900
What about crows?
They are pretty smart are they not?

>>2217856

we've been through this /an/

cephalopods

all hail the mighty octopus

>>2218983
>Hawking
That's the social factor, you can have both types of people, brain and brawn, because they help each other. Brawn may not be necessary in the future (alien grays) but to get there you need it.

>>2218216
This reminds me of that Animal Planet or Discovery show about humans vanishing and these animals evolved with the ability to swings trees like monkeys using their tentacles.

>>2217856
none of them.

most of them have existed for tens of millions of years longer than humans have and still aren't close. Some of them have been around for hundreds of millions of years without showing any improvement in that regard.

human-type sentience has happened once.
There's no reason to think it will ever happen again.

and you're still using "sapient" wrong.

Ferrets

>>2219896
I always found this argument to be extremely close minded.

Human-type sentience, it's exclusive to humans by definition.

If you dissect sentience you can see elements of that in many animals.

Any animal than can recognize itself, it's sentience, any animal with communication skills, (not human lenguague, it's own) it's sentience, animals that build and develop technology, like social insects or complex nest builders, development of a relantionship with other species, learning by observation, future planning, farming, deceit, and a long etc...

All of the animals in current earth have gone to the same evolutionary path than us, because of convergent evolution and the fact that they are forced to interact with other species, including us.

If you want to feel superior to the animal kingdom, if you want to think that they are here to serve you or die by your hand if you will it, that's just you and your ego having a party, but in no way a reflection of how sentience an animal is.

>>2219985
They are literal retards dude

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Well, this just came out.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37354588?SThisFB
Apparently 93% of the Hawaiian crows entire species immediately knew to use tools such as sticks in order to get food. The rest were either taken off the test for health reasons or took a little while to do so. They even showed dissatisfaction with certain sticks and either threw them out or reshaped them. That said there are only 130 of them left.

Foxes are brighter than some people, to be honest. I observed one as it figured out how to operate a latch with a stick in order to get into my garden. But they might be too well-adapted to their niche to get anywhere without help.

>>2220007
This gets me so fucking depressed.

Some of the smartest animals in the world, and in the absolute edge of extinction.

And whose fault it is?

Damn dumb humans.

We had to fuck with their enviroment, we had to bring invasive species, and now there's only a small group of them.

Next stupid bastard that claims, that outdoor cats don't do damage, get's a free punch in the face.

>>2220005
Right on man, this 100%

>>2220410
But anon, it's natural selection!!! They were too stupid to survive so they're going extinct, it's just Darwinism bro!

>>2220410
Well we are driving 100 to 1000 species extinct each year, do you think that's going get better? No, it'll get worse. I don't see any light at the end of the tunnel for the next 100 years.

Oh well, it's not going to be the end of the world and probably among the least of the problems ahead... just a damn shame.

>>2219447
>I don't understand what a Corvid is

>>2217856
Consider the following:
>river otters
>elephants
>opossums
>raccoons

>>2217856
Urban raccoons are developing such different behaviors from rural raccoons that there is speculation we are creating a new raccoon species. However, the urban myth that a series of raccoon skulls built up since colonial times shows a marked increase in brain case size turns out to be an urban myth.

Still, raccoons are pretty bright, and assuming the Burmese pythons in the Everglades don't somehow spread and eat them all, they might be going somewhere.

>>2217856
cate

Everyone ITT that said elephants go it right. If they'd developed speech/language as we know it, they'd be the civilization builders. Too bad humans all but wiped out every elephant species that was around.

>>2217959
>literal shit eaters

>>2220537
Gotta remove the competition

>Implying that elephants woudnt become the Elcor from the Mass Effect Series

>>2219895
The Future is Wild

That show was amazing but man the creators sure hated mammals

The problem with this thread is the assumption that these animals, beyond being intelligent, would be able to use tools/do anything useful without sufficient graspers.

While an elephant could be smart and use the trunk to manipulate objects, it's a far cry from a hand. How are they supposed to build wheels with that trunk? Hammer iron into armor? A fucking rocket ship?

Even corvids are the same. You need monkey/rat hands to get anything dumb. Aquatic animals are also unlikely unless they start beaching on the land like seals and act as amphibious. They could do crafting and fire up there, and keep to the sea for farming and hunting.

>>2222154
Yeah, but tool making isn't the endgame.

If you as an animal could succesfully communicate with a human, the human could do all of those things for you, Stephen Hawking was married three times.

As long as you can develop your intelligence to the point that you can keep a conversation with a human and tell him what you need, you could bet, that there will be humans willing to do things for the animal.

Even taking him to space.

>>2222166

Oh sorry, I thought OP's was an assumed 'all humans disappear' scenario or something similar.

In that case, I see animals having humans produce tools for them but being useful as scouts in different areas. Corvids for the air and dolphins for the water obviously, but beyond that minor ability I don't see much point. It's like adding to a population of humans but humans that can't produce their own tools or do much of anything that a human with sufficient technology couldn't.

>>2222171
It may be a small step for mankind...

https://youtu.be/ZOUyrtWeW4Q

Without narration/ music.
https://youtu.be/VWpe8wQhIhw

>>2217900
>Language depends on honest signals to develop


Making some pretty big assumptions there

How do you know our ancestors didn't lie?

>>2222691
Actually oral lenguague makes it easier to lie, than body lenguague.

Theoretically you can lie with any form of communication, even with chemical signals, and deceit has always been an important skill for survival.

I do think that lying developed lenguague even further than any honest signalling, because deceit requires a lot toughts, and secondary toughts. You need to depict an event and change it.

>>2218928
too bad we fuck elephant society completely up by "culling" the elders, or culling in general

you can't just cull an animal that feels and grieves and get away with it doing no harm

>>2222154
and you assume sapience have to imitate human intelligence, and have to go through the same inventions

intelligent animals:
dolphins
crows
octopi
elephants
parrots
are massively different both physicaly, in their social structures, liespan and diet yet all achieved high animal intelligence

>>2220441
Opossums aren't very intelligent iirc.

>>2222764
>and you assume sapience have to imitate human intelligence
Probably because he used the science fiction definition of the word, where a "sapient" species must be able to build spaceships.

the biggest problem with consciousness is that most animals we like don't have it.

Hive minds will control the world

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>>2223549
Consciousness in the sense, that I feel guilty for what I do, or in the sense that I know what's going on?

I have pet jumping spiders and they seem pretty aware, you can even play peek a boo with them.

I always feel like people confuse, minding their own bussiness, with beign dumb.

You can't blame an insect for not having the same priorities as you do.

>>2217900
Nice, learn something new everyday

>>2224218
Holy crap I knew that they painted, but I have never see them paint before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uypIj_BYzAw

I'm fucking crying.

>>2224265
They are wonderful creatures, but as usual, you should have doubts when it comes to people trying to make money. The first result off Google:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1151283/Can-jumbo-elephants-really-paint--Intrigued-stories-naturalist-Desmond-Morris-set-truth.html

Yes it's DailyMail, but the article seems solid .

>To most of the members of the audience, what they have seen appears to be almost miraculous. Elephants must surely be almost human in intelligence if they can paint pictures of flowers and trees in this way. What the audience overlooks are the actions of the mahouts as their animals are at work.
>This oversight is understandable because it is difficult to drag your eyes away from the brushes that are making the lines and spots. However, if you do so, you will notice that, with each mark, the mahout tugs at his elephant's ear.
>He nudges it up and down to get the animal to make a vertical line, or pulls it sideways to get a horizontal one. To encourage spots and blobs he tugs the ear forward, towards the canvas. So, very sadly, the design the elephant is making is not hers but his. There is no elephantine invention, no creativity, just slavish copying.

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>>2224283

God dammit. Part of me knew that was too amazing to be true though.

Elephants

>>2224283
Ha.

It doesn't work that way, the elephant it's holding and using the brush by himself, there's videos of elephants painting freely and looks like modern art but there's still something to it they make vertical lines or use matching colors.

The way the handler gives directions it's not different from the way you teach someone to paint, but the elephant itself decides the pressure to use, like when it's coloring the inside with subtle brushes, you can't signal that, the elephant knows what it's doing, it has a sense of the thing that it is painting, and it reflects on the painting.

>>2224265
Imma go post this on /ic/ and make them feel bad.

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>>2224283
TOP KEK

ELEPHANTS AND ALL OTHER SUB-HUMAN SCUMFORMS #BTFO

>>2223549
isnt it curious that since the very beginning of mankind we precieve creatures like sabretooth tiger, mammoth, horse, etc. conscious when none of them are?

>>2224297
Yes the article mentions chimps have this ability to paint abstract things. I think that is possible for elephants.

But I believe to paint a tree means it has ability to think symbocally and build worlds inside it's head, but I'm no expert on theory of mind.

>>2223549

Every animal is already fully 'conscious' you dumb shit. The brain of a human and most animals work the exact same way, the difference is humans have advanced societies because of language and high natural intelligence, where as animals don't. Consciousness is the phenomenon generated by being alive with sensory organs. Every animal sees out its eyes and hears with its ears and feels with its skin. Animals feel pain and (uncomplicated) emotion. Get over your dumb special pleading meme and realize the world isn't simple like you think it is.

>>2217959
Sorry pal, Zootopia will never be real.

>>2217943
>>2217956
If they could live longer and raise their young, I vote octopus.

>>2225977
>Consciousness is the phenomenon generated by being alive with sensory organs
kek

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It's not a lottery. Let me help you out /an/: Whichever species' younglings consume the most psilocybin mushrooms, peyote cacti, or acid strip sheets stuck to trash can cheeseburgers consistently along life and concurrently among generations.

>>2227993
Please OD already.

>>2220435

to be honest friend I've already fantasized about spending most of my life trying to preserve biodiversity.

there are only so many things one individuals can do, but it is a noble undertaking.

>>2222154

>every civilization ever will invent the wheel, medieval armor and rocket ships

you're retarded.

>>2224283
>>2224285

actually, that painting of a tree looked likes hit anyway

when you let elephants paint freely it looks like some lesser form of a Pollock. yeah, it's no Rembrandt, but still better than what your 8 year old daughter does in art class.

>>2217856
None because they dont have fucking hands. Also chimps will never change unless they leave the rainforest.

Octopi, orcas and crows

>>2219011
humboldt squid go from the size of a rice grain at hatching to 6 feet in 2 years. the reason why deep sea cephalopods live for so long is because their crazy metabolisms slow down in the cold. but the Pacific Striped Octopus apparently does care for its young and form small social groups.

>>2219341
fuck yeah, except they might need endothermy before they become super smart

>>2221522
the giant elephant landsquid killed all suspension of disbelief i had for that show

>>2217856
Dolphins and Orcas.
Parrots and Parakeets.
Octopus and Squid.
>>2217900
>Can't start fire underwater
Mate, if it's an entirely aquatic species it's sapience isn't going to develop the same way humans dude for fuck's sake.