@scathach i've actually heard the hypothesis that cetaceans are more intelligent than humans in terms of raw intellectual power, it's just that due to certain physical limitations (namely the inability to manipulate their environment to the degree that we can with our hands) they were never able to build up to the necessary resource abundance / population density necessary to create the conditions of runaway cultural development that humans underwent between anatomical modernity and the neolithic revolution. humans really aren't as smart as we think we are, we just have the right combination of traits that allow us to accumulate culture and push it forward through time to our progeny.