It's my belief that originally, nature creates a set of animals on a planet without any thought to how they wind up. You get a group of stupid creatures, a group of smart creatures, a group of killers and a group tastys. There's no law which dictates that any two of these four groups must coincide.
Now, if you're a killer, there's really very little room for advancement. You're already at the top of the food chain, or very near the top, so there's no need for evolution to take a hand. The Kilrathi are obviously a fluke in this respect.
If you happen to be prey, however, there are options open to you. Only the smart prey (at least prey somparitively smart next to its respective predator). So let's say you're a mammal, as mammals are usually the most advanced creatures on both sides of the predator/prey wire. And let's say you're abnormally smart, and you get smarter as time passes while your species in general manages to evade extinction. You'll be able to accomplish this by establishing some sort of fortification or finding a suitable defensible spot to live, like a cave.
From there, you can go and forage, and hide if there happens to be any predators about.
So time passes and you evolve.
Now you stand up straight and run on two feet. However, one day, you're dumb enough to be caught off guard by a leopard. You think to run, but you know you're too slow, you think to attack with fists and teeth, but you know you're too weak, but you see a stout stick on the ground by you, so you pick it up. All this happens in less than a second bu virtue of your superior brain, which lends itself to quick and logical thought and accurate fine motor control. As the intellectually slower beast lunges forward you deftly clup it in the face with your stick.
While you may not be strong in comparison to the leopard, you certainly aren't feeble, and the stick adds enough bite to the swing that the cat falls unconscious. HAHA! You've discovered another secret to survival. This you teach to all your equally intelligent bretheren, and your species flourishes more than ever.
But then comes the drought.
Your crude farms and foraging grounds wilt and die, and you begin to starve. You've observed monkeys eating rodents before, so you try your hand at hunting them. In your persuit, however, you attract another leopard onto your trail. This one you club just as harshly as the first, but in your deperation, you cut it with a sharp stone. The meat is vile, but you think perhaps it might be better cooked, like some roots are. You take a hunk of meat to your family and cook it, it begins to smell muchn better. As you bite it again, you realize that meat is far better than foliage.
The bloodlust sets in.
In your craze over this new food source, you quickly develop newer faster and easier methods of killing. With your superior mind and superior weapons you quickly establish yourself as the supreme hunter on the planet. As time passes once again the original objective of weapons and study is lost, but new purposes are found to drive the species to greater intellectual evolution and lethality. Wars, conquest, exploration, always the taking and the consuming.
Your humble beginning is lost, and for the better.
You are now the ultimate force, the very top of the evolutionary pecking order.
Were you a hunter to start? No.
Did being the hunted cause your mind to decay and deteriorate into a slothful and lethergic state? No.
My point is that intelligence and predatory status have no bearing on each other, at least not initially.
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Hats off to the new-age hairstyle made of bones,
Hats off to the use of hats as megaphones...
-Frosty