What Is Intelligent Life? But without understanding and going beyond war, Homo sapiens cannnot call itself an intelligent species. The difference between Homo sapiens and genuinely intelligent species, and perhaps the reason there has been no direct contact, is that an intelligent species has an abiding insight into the nature of thought. Of course, given the strangeness of past and present lifeforms on Earth, intelligent life may not look at all like us. So does all potentially intelligent life pass through the same basic stages?