Perhaps there was room for only one species to cross the threshold to collective learning. There is an evolutionary mechanism known as competitive exclusion that explains why two species can never share exactly the same niche. One will eventually drive out its rival if it can exploit the same niche slightly more effectively. So we can imagine several species gathering near the evolutionary threshold to collective learning, but then one broke through and began to exploit its environment so efficiently that its numbers multiplied and grew fast enough to lock out its rivals.23 This may help
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