Authors
Nicola S Clayton, Nathan J Emery
Description
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, Charles Darwin suggested that mental characteristics are subject to natural selection in much the same way as morphological traits, and, thus, we would expect some characteristics of human intelligence to be present in other descendants of our primate lineage (Darwin 1872). By mental characteristics, we mean more than just the ability to learn and remember. For the purposes of this chapter, intelligence refers to the ability to think, reason, and solve novel problems. Specifically, intelligent beings can think not only about the here-and-now, but they can also reminisce about their past and plan for their future (so-called “mental time travel”). They can also think about what others might be thinking and how this might be different to what