There have been a few times when we were just intelligent beings meeting other intelligent beings. But mostly something happens to cause problems, although what exactly it is differs. The most common one is simply that we're not often capable of . . . I think the word is metacognition? The ability to think about thinking. It's surprising how much plotting you can do without ever wondering if you need to do it. *He shakes his head.* The dogthing, for example. Definitely smarter than a real dog, capable of plans within plans, but the idea that someone might not be a threat to it? A real dog would be much more capable of figuring that out. And the idea of trying to explain itself never occurred to it at all that I know of.