What more than sentience do you need from a species for its intelligence to be recognizable by humans?
It's becoming obvious from how could humans recognize another species as sentient / intelligent that recognizing another species' intelligence is very complicated. There are no universal tests, no common definition of intelligence...
Let's go with one assumption: wherever we go in space, we'll be looking for extra-terrestrial life, and if we do find it (and recognize it as alive), we'll always try to learn if it is sentient.
Now what traits does a species need, to be recognized as intelligent by humans, beyond the fact that it is sentient and recognizable as alive by humans?
Differently put, this question could also be: what type of sentient species will we miss out because of our inability to recognize their sentience?
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/14518. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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