Talk:Dinosaur intelligence

Encephalization quotient
One approximation used for the intelligence of dinosaurs (as well as with other organisms) is their encephalization quotient (EQ), or brain-to-body mass ratio. This measure assumes that the animals with the greatest EQs and proportionally largest brains were the most intelligent. By this measure the most intelligent dinosaurs were small–bodied theropods ("coelurosaurs") like Troodon, with EQs of about 5.8. The dinosaurs with the smallest EQs were basal sauropodomorphs ("prosauropods"), with EQs of about 0.05.

Is this accurate? This appears to suggest (when compared to the figures on the wiki EQ page) that Coelurosaurs had a higher EQ than dolphins, and many dinosaurs have higher EQs than some well-known mammals.. 94.8.21.89 (talk) 23:57, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

The EQ was designed for mammals only, so the results won't be accurate for any other animal.

EQ is also class specific. The EQ you see for Dinosaurs is adjusted by a factor of 10. A 5.8 Theropod EQ is equal to 0.58 mammalian EQ. It isn't comparable at all. 98.208.19.245 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 14:44, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

EQ Problems
This table screws up the entire page and I don't know what's wrong with it, so I'm moving it here. Abyssal (talk) 23:02, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Intelligent for reptiles?
"as being very intelligent for reptiles, but generally not as smart as mammals."

I have some serious qualms about this phrasing. Dinosaurs were not reptiles and were far more closely related to modern birds. The sentence makes it sound like dinosaurs were intelligent reptiles that were not as smart as mammals. That is not accurate and there's no reference to make that argument. It could be said that dinosaurs were far more intelligent than reptiles, but not as intelligent as most modern mammals. I'm editing the intro to say just that. The Cap&#39;n (talk) 22:59, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Dinosaurs were reptiles; see Dinosaur. mgiganteus1 (talk) 23:22, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Rather late to the game here, but have to agree with Mgiganteus1. I believe what he's citing from the Dinosaur article is this line: "dinosaurs are not lizards. Instead, they represent a separate group of reptiles..." So if it's good enough for that article, seems good enough for here, too. (Probably not important at this point, but the above comment piqued my curiosity.)

Our minds have been poisoned by the Linnaean classification system. We just can't seem to help but draw lines between groups, but evolution doesn't work that way. Keep in mind that all life on Earth sprung from some single-celled bacterium billions of years in the past, so technically speaking that would mean we are all bacteria, and yet at the same time we are not. This kind of stuff isn't exactly black and white. --24.36.130.109 (talk) 02:31, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Please elaborate on why brain mass to body mass is a valid measure for estimating intelligence
Can someone please discuss in the article why brain:body ratio is the correct way to measure potential intelligence? What is the logic behind this? The reason why I ask and tend to doubt it is because neurons are all basically the same size in all animals. Therefore, it seems logical that intelligence is directly proportional to absolute size of the brain, not the relative size of the brain to the body. Thanks. 67.6.204.12 (talk) 18:24, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I think a large proportional brain size might demonstrate that a large brain was selected for by evolution. Abyssal (talk) 17:00, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

% of non avian brains to avian ones?
Can someone explain what is meant by t rex being just out of the 95% confidence limits of non-avian reptiles. Also it says that troodon's cerebrum-to-brain-volume ratio was 31.5% to 63%, and Archaeopteryx had a cerebrum-to-brain-volume ratio 78%. Does this mean archaeopteryx was smarter than troodon? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sergei Debrovski (talk • contribs) 11:35, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't claim to be especially knowledgeable about this, but I'll give it a shot. If you averaged the cerebrum-to-brain volume ratios of samples of modern reptiles the same size as the sample the scientists who wrote the paper I cited used, then 95% of the average cerebrum-to-brain volume ratios in your repeated samplings would fall into a specific range of values. Let's just pretend it was 0.1-0.2. If that was our 95% confidence interval and T. rex was falling just outside it in the avian direction, it would have a cerebrum-to-brain-volume ratio of something like 0.25. As for Troodon and Archaeopteryx, you actually misread the article. Troodon doesn't have a cerebrum-to-brain volume ratio of 31.5% to 63%, instead its cerebrum-to-brain volume ratio is 31.5% to 63% of the way to an avian value if you take the reptile cerebrum-to-brain volume ratio as a starting point. Archaeopteryx definitely had a higher value. I'd say that's a hint that it was probably smarter, but I also wouldn't read too much into it. There's a lot of uncertainty here. Abyssal (talk) 16:03, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Technicality of Theropod section
I labeled the Theropod section with the Technical template. It reads like a paper from a scientific journal. I'm taking a university course on dinosaurs and I had trouble with it. It's at the Master's or PhD level, I'd say. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mhults7791 (talk • contribs) 03:36, 25 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Personally, I don't think templating is a good remedy, unless someone picks it up fairly quickly. Plenty of WP science articles are overly complex, and driven more by (unattainable) completeness than helping the reader to understand. You could always glance at the Simple English version, which might have a different angle on the topic. Macdonald-ross (talk) 10:30, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

West of Eden in the "in fiction" section
It is surprising that Harry Harrison's "Eden trilogy" (West of Eden, Winter in Eden, Return to Eden) is not included in the "in fiction" section. This is a significant and well-known work of fiction, in which the development of intelligence in dinosaur descendents is the central premise. According to the West of Eden article, the Yilanè were descended from mosasaurs, which may not be considered true dinosaurs, but would be close enough to fit into the category of this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.221.22.71 (talk) 16:03, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
 * No, mosasaurs are not "close enough". Abyssal (talk) 16:13, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

The Sapient dinosaur list are not fictional; they're about scientific speculation. Yes the first guy was a scifi writer but he was working off the ideas on a zoologist.  Serendi pod ous  17:12, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

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Speculation Concerning the Evolution of Human-like Intelligence
The following assertion needs a citation, and probably shouldn't be in the introductory paragraph because of its speculative nature: "Some have speculated that if the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event had not occurred, the more intelligent forms of small theropods might have eventually evolved human-like levels of intelligence."