In 2011, scientists used a technique based on patterns in the number of species at each level of biological classification to estimate that there are around 8.7 million species of plants and animals in existence, including the human being.

However, only around 1.2 million species have been identified and described so far, most of which are insects. That means we still have 7.5 million species that are yet to be discovered or studied. Yet one specie, the human being, claims to be the most intelligent without the approval of others.

In this planet Earth where humans continue to deceive themselves that they are the ones dominating, 71 percent of the Earth’s total surface is covered with water which humans have not explored beyond 15 percent. The total land area is only 29 percent.

The creatures in the oceans and rivers alone, both the known and unknown, own three quarters of the planet. Not humans. Yet one specie, the human being, who owns only a small parch of the planet, claims to be the most intelligent without the approval of others.

Out of the 29 percent land area which is about 57,308,738 square miles, 33 percent is desert and about 24 percent is mountainous; making both uninhabitable.

Humans only have a meagre 15.77 billion acres of habitable land on earth. Yet from that small space, we humans muster the audacity to keep claiming we are the most intelligent creature without the approval of others.

Globally, there are estimated to be 3.04 trillion trees on Earth and 3.5 trillion fishes in all the oceans combined. This is according to a study published in the journal Nature.

We have only 7.2billion human beings on earth. Yet, even without studying and knowing the whole truth about all these numbers of our competitors here on Earth, we have already concluded presumptuously that we are the most intelligent creature.

In which conference or summit or gathering did the over 8 trillion other species on Earth concede to the human being that truly, we are most intelligent and smarter than them or did humans just set the test themselves, prepare the marking scheme and did the marking themselves and released the result to massage their own ego against other creatures?

If the accumulation and utilization of culture is relevant enough to distinguish humans as most intelligent from other creatures as Robin Hanson postulates, how are humans so sure that no other specie possess better cultural accumulation and a higher intelligence when more than 7.5trillion species have not even been discovered or studied?

Humans continually live on earth under the morbid fear of astral and extra-terrestrial creatures that our regular senses are incapable of perceiving or deciphering. Even creatures as familiar as apparitions, we fear them because they posses certain possibilities that we humans do not. Yet we live in the delusion that we are the smartest.

Methinks that the consensus on who or which creature is the most intelligent in creation isn’t out yet. The jury is still out there and they are not about to return. For now, it is the case of “if na your mama soup, na him sweet pass.”

This is not a dialogue to win an argument of wit. It is food for thought.

Yours sincerely,
Citizen Agba Jalingo.