Militaristic Carnivores and Pacifist Herbivores, Brainbug?

[Sea Skimmer]

I think in most cases intelligence is tied more to social complexity than diet, the big exception being octopi, who are freaks. Elephants and gorillas, while not on our level, are both herbivours and in addition to being in the MENSA of non-human animals are far, far bigger than humans. Dolphins are also on that intelligence level and they're carnivores.

First off, Gorillas are most certainly omnivores, so are chimps, orangutans and most other apes and monkeys. Meanwhile an awful lot of animals have very complex social structures and yet aren’t particularly intelligent and have only limited ability exploit the intelligence they do have because they can’t manipulate there environment, wolfs being one example. Social structures evolve to improve survival, but in many cases they actually work against the individual becoming smarter. Just look at an ant colony, every ant has a tightly defined role with a massive scale of coordination, and yet the individual ant is dumb as shit. Its not likely that somthing is going to become more intelligent just so it can have a more complex social structures anyway.

[Imperial Overlord]

I think in most cases intelligence is tied more to social complexity than diet, the big exception being octopi, who are freaks.

Octopi have a whole bunch of useful manipulator limbs which helps them take advantage of increased intelligence so you can see how selective pressure would have rewarded high intelligence.