As achievements of human intelligence and technology. But considering ants have all of these same adaptations maybe they are a function of massive cooperative populations, rather than intelligence.
@futurebird .. massive cooperative populations are intelligent though? in the same way massive groups of cooperating cells are also intelligent (humans) .. human intelligence is nature's intelligence also ?
@futurebird
it's worth remembering that many cephalopods are great problem solvers, and very creative, and yet, don't do any of these things. And most of them are not especially cooperative.
@futurebird
The size differential of the individuals involved is interesting. The biggest eusocial animal is the damaraland mole-rat, slightly bigger than the naked mole-rat.
Both species have complex burrows and specialized labor, at least naked mole-rats manage regenerating tubers as harvest, with only up to 300 individuals.
So perhaps the population doesn't need to be as massive? Is large scale cooperation harder with larger individuals with bigger brains?
@futurebird there are also some preconditions for them, like intergenerational climate stability (the last 10,000 years have been a special time which we have probably ended),