I agree, though the tests for sentience is a whole topic in itself. And a
very important
one I admit.:)
>Cephalopoda: the Pacific giant octopus is a quite likely possibility.
>[snip]
>Avian: with our current understanding of how brains work, it seems
>unlikely that a flying creature on this planet could bear the weight
>of a brain capable of sentience. The flightless avians also do not
>look at all promising.
But I've heard owls represent as close as we can get to an intelligent
bird. It might be that connections are more important. If we can
redesign their brains to be more efficient... faster, more compact, less
conserved wetware, more to-the-point (i.e., info processing) stuff...
then it might be possible.
I would much rather experiment initially with organisms that have a
short development cycle, which makes, out of Warrl kyree
Tale'sedrin's list avians and invertabrates very likely candidates.
We can take a page from the MIT robot lab: start simple, then add
more stuff.
Vivamus!
Daniel Ust