According to evolution, are monkeys smarter than dolphins?
Evolution addresses how intelligence could appear, but doesn’t directly address whether one species is more intelligent than another. Whether monkeys are smarter than dolphins is a question for ethologists, behaviorists, and probably anatomists; evolution’s role is simply one of explaining how behavior and anatomy originated and what purpose they serve(d) in that organism’s environment. In terms of the question “which is smarter”, then dolphins are probably smarter than tailed monkeys, and may be roughly on par with chimps, although chimps are for obvious reasons more adept at tool use — this being based on behavioral observation and problem-solving tests. However, it can be tricky to make any absolute determination, since in some ways it is comparing apples to oranges; see http://www.sciencenetlinks.com/sci_update.cfm?DocID=76 for a discussion of the evaluation of dolphin intelligence, with a little bit of comparison to primates.
