It’s also important to consider the selection pressure keeping intelligence low, namely, the fact that most animals chronically have trouble getting enough calories, combined with the high caloric needs of neural tissue.
It is no coincidence that human intelligence didn’t start rising much till humans were reliably getting meat in their diet and were routinely cooking their food, which makes whatever calories are in food easier to digest, allowing the human gut to get smaller, which in turn reduced the caloric demands of the gut (which needs to be kept alive 24 hours a day even on a day when the person finds no food to eat).
It’s also important to consider the selection pressure keeping intelligence low, namely, the fact that most animals chronically have trouble getting enough calories, combined with the high caloric needs of neural tissue.
It is no coincidence that human intelligence didn’t start rising much till humans were reliably getting meat in their diet and were routinely cooking their food, which makes whatever calories are in food easier to digest, allowing the human gut to get smaller, which in turn reduced the caloric demands of the gut (which needs to be kept alive 24 hours a day even on a day when the person finds no food to eat).