dexterity they showed in manipulating objects with their feet. For 

 technological competence, such birds would obviously have to be 

 very much larger, and the interesting image of a parrot with human 

 brain proportions is certainly an interesting and perhaps achievable 

 one. given appropriate selective pressures. 



Among mammal candidates, dolphins and whales immediately 

 come to mind. Dolphins particularly deserve attention, for they are 

 very encephalized. social and make use of an intricate communi- 

 cation system. Body size is not a problem and their rudimentary 

 pelves would easily allow the birth of large-headed offspring. What 

 I see as a serious disadvantage is that they have no manipulative 

 appendages: the forelimbs having become so highly specialised as 

 flippers that they may be beyond evolutionary recall. But just how 

 evolution can "tinker"" with an already specialized forelimb is ex- 

 emplified by the well-documented case of the giant panda's "pseu- 

 do-thumb"* (Gould. 1978: Endo et al., 1999), which came about after 

 a dietary change from a bear-like omnivorous carnivore to a spe- 

 cialised feeder on bamboo. The necessity to manipulate bamboo 

 shoots with hands already specialised for walking saw the modifi- 

 cation of both the radial sesamoid and accessory bone to form **a 

 double pincer-like apparatus in the medial and lateral sides of the 

 hand, respectively, enabling the panda to manipulate objects with 

 great dexterity*' (Endo et al.. 1999). Among carnivores, this kind of 

 object manipulation is not an isolated case: Californian sea-otters 

 have long been known to pick up whole stones and rest them on 

 their bellies, which are then used as anvils against which they break 

 open mollusk shells. Given considerable increase in brain and body 

 size, a variety of carnivores could conceivably become technologi- 

 cally competent in the human sense. I sometimes regret the fact that 

 we humans had not, in fact, emerged from a good carnivore, rather 

 than primate stock. I suspect that, as a species, our natures might 

 have been less devious. 



A Final Comment from Raymond Dart 



In this lecture. I have told a story, as I see it, of predation's role 

 in the evolution of sense organs and intelligence throughout the span 



27 



