Counterpoint: The Cost of Smarts

This whimsical, insightful item and counterpoint to my 5/1 post (Uniquely Human?) was forwarded to me by L.A. lawyer and Montana fishing buddy, Roy G. It is a short, pointed op-ed piece from yesterdays N.Y. Times, noting that studies on fruit flies reveal that those taught to be smarter had notably shorter lifespans. What an interesting trade-off! He muses that if "dimmer bulbs burn longer," couldn't there be an adaptive survival advantage to limited intelligence? But then, what if the tables were turned and the animals were doing the experiments on human subjects? What would they be trying to learn about us? This is what he concludes:

I believe that if animals ran the labs, they would test us to determine the limits of our patience, our faithfulness, our memory for terrain. They would try to decide what intelligence in humans is really for, not merely how much of it there is. Above all, they would hope to study a fundamental question: Are humans actually aware of the world they live in? So far the results are inconclusive.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/opinion/07wed4.html?_r=1&oref=slogin