[pentachoron]

So, the traditional counter to this is that they have: the crows/ravens and parrots all have member species who are pretty smart, there's plenty of smart aquatic molluscs (squid, octopuses and cuttlefish), and then there's dolphins, etc. No, none of them have developed technology to the extent humanity has - but it's not inconceivable that they would, if humanity weren't already around to mess with them. They just need another hundred thousand to million years of the right evolutionary pressure...

[TechBro8615]

I've sometimes thought about how, if humanity goes extinct in the future, then some other intelligent species will replace us on earth. And that species would likely be descended from some pair of animals that is alive today.

There could be a couple of elephants in Africa right now who are the ancestors of a future intelligent species on Earth!

[intrasight]

Today I learned that cephalopods are molluscs