I found an old thread!!
Yes rats are quite intelligent, i'm convinced that in some ways they are more intelligent than people.
Why are ELEPHANTS so intelligent?
Elephants have a rather unique story, they started evolving to be aquatic mammals when water was everywhere, but just as soon as they made those changes water started drying up.
Technically they should have gone extinct but the smarter individuals found ways to survive against all odds and this continued over quite some time.
Naturally now we have pretty smart elephants because strictly only the smartest survived.
Indeed, all the very intelligent animals(including humans) have descended from animals who were faced with overwhelming adversity where the only way around it was to use your head.
Only the smartest bears can store enough fat during the summer to survive hibernation. Only the smartest elephants can navigate through miles and miles of desert to find waterholes and food. Only the smartest raccoons can find food all year round in varying conditions.
All these animals are just getting smarter and smarter.
Cetaceans got their large brains by making the adaptation from land to water first and foremost, that is a huge adaptation to make that demanded much intelligence from the pioneers that originally survived the change.
Even in cases where this adaptation is quite simple, the brain needed to increase. Manatees have very basic lives and their move from land to water was the least demanding intellectually. All they do is eat sea grass. But they still got bulked up a little in the brains department from the change. Juts because its a vastly different environment.
Humans must have faced quite a few hard times in their history to get the brains they have. This also could explain why they are so instinctually bitter at the natural world
It must have been tough break after tough break just barging in like the waves of the ocean.
We humans have obviously been tested greatly in our past, with only super genius's making it through some of the hard times.
But, we have well and truely stopped getting smarter now, unlike bears and elephants and raccoons.
This could lead to a revolution in the future, oh god I hope that happens. I can see it now.
Retarded dysgenic future humans walking into traps set up by genius grizzly's, super smart raccoons making people think their food is cursed which makes them keep giving it to the raccons untill the people starve, elephants with human slaves...
Sweet.