system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5:How come after hundreds of millions of years and 5 Extinction Level Events throughout Earth's history, humans are the only species to become "intelligent"?

Why is it that humans are the only ones that have created a civilization in the entire history of the earth? Billions of years and 5 mass extinctions and Earth comes up with us *now*? Why not earlier? Why not another species?
gpt
You're asking this as though being intelligent is something special that all species should strive for. It isn't. Being able to survive is the best ability you can have from the evolutionary perspective.

Why is it that the mantis shrimp is the only species to evolve their awesome punch? Why are beavers the only species to be so good at building dams? Why are peregrine falcons the only species to evolve to swoop down and attack before anybody realizes what's happened? Because it fills their niche in the environment and lets them survive. So do we.

In much the same way that a slightly slower falcon would lose out to the faster ones if it tried to compete for the same food any other species that got intelligent and started building societies with tools, manual dexterity and all that would compete with us and either we'd win or they would. We had this fight already with other hominid species. We won.