His answer is the octopus. What say you?
But they
- Have extremely short lifespan so a limited capacity to learn (1-2 years)
- Don’t raise their offspring, in fact after mating/laying eggs they naturally die, so no knowledge sharing
- Are extremely solitary and don’t have social bonds or do anything socially, so little communication/passing of knowledge
On top of that, they might not even survive the CO2 and consequent ocean acidification. If humans were to get eradicated by some super plague, then octopi might still stand a chance, but the points you mentioned are going to make that journey much harder.
I worked as an intern at a lab studying octopus vulgaris.
They are extremely sensitive to all sorts of things in the water. Keeping them well is very difficult. Although I would imagine if there are big but gradual changes in water environment, they would have a chance of adapting faster due to short life cycles and the fact that mating creates hundreds of thousands of eggs.
If we assume that they somehow survive all the way to the very moment when humans get a permanent ban to the Earth Server, then the changes should be gradual enough after that. The bad news is, humans love to play this game by recklessly exploiting every bug and glitch, so rapid changes (in evolutionary scale) are the norm.
See also: Peppered moth evolution
I’m not even convinced that intelligence is a requirement to be the dominant species. Intelligence is so expensive that nature rarely ever selects for it.
Trilobytes did pretty damn well for a hell of a lot longer than we have so far. I think we need a stronger working definition of “dominant” in order to judge any candidates.
But the reason he gives for them becoming the dominant species is their intelligence.
Eighteen paragraphs of throat clearing to get to the point of the title.
It’s unlikely an aquatic species can achieve technological breakthroughs needed to spread like humans can. It would be very difficult for them to build fires, smelt metal, and create the advances based off of those tools.
While they can be extremely smart and adaptable, it’s difficult to imagine how a species like that could develop machines.
Sure, there’s possible ways around it, like natural vents and geothermal power, but why would they utilize these resources without a benefit like cooking?
Shells or coral could serve as early tools, but (just my opinion) I feel it’s a little human-centric to assume fire and metallurgy are required to progress. Just because we did it that way, doesn’t mean another species would have to.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this exact subject, and I dunno. As much as I consider it, as abstractly as possible, I have considerable difficulty finding an alternate route to significant human-like dominance. Fire and metallurgy are just so incredibly useful across so many domains. I challenge you to present a reasonable alternative route.
Yeah, but we did all of our discoveries as a land-based species. It’s totally possible some water-based species would find other crazy useful early techniques, then eventually discover stuff like “fire” much further down the line with access to more robust technologies. Their scientific roadmap would look very different from ours, but there are so many weird tricks and techniques that would eventually lead towards some of the dominating processes we have.
They are marine which makes fire impossible which severely limits industrial advancement. Similarly they are not social animals which negates a lot of the division of labour advantages of a society. While a species of octopus might advance intellectually to ponder its own existence I doubt it could achieve the infrastructure necessary to significantly control its environment.
Don’t forget that they only live 1-2 years. 3 tops. I think this is even more limiting than fire. And if evolutionary pressure leads to longer lifespans somehow, they must overcome the whole dying after mating thing.
They could use the underwater volcanoes to smeltle the meltle though, thought of that? Checkmate.
Their lifespans are very short and that whole ocean acidification thing might be a problem.
