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Evolution of intelligent life. Questions.


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I'd like some opinions on something if that's okay. I've been thinking about evolution and how it leads to intelligent life. Basically, I'm just curious if all intelligent life gradually evolves into a humanoid type of creature. Is there a progression of life and evolution that all leads to the same point? For example, on a planet like ours somewhere else, would all the same animals be there that are on earth? If not, even though they had variations, would they all still lead to something that appears to have ape-like ancestors? Personally I think its stupid to believe that there are strange creatures on other planets, I would think that anything intelligent would have our form, because our form seems to be the best suited for thinking, and also working. Sorry if this sounds confusing, I'm a bit confused myself trying to put my weird thoughts into words.

 

P.S. I already know slight variations in the environment cause different reactions, and may be different than ours, but i'm mostly talking about a planet almost indentical to ours.

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There is a great deal of convergence in biology, so given that this planet you are describing has almost identical properties to Earth (right down to localised weather, soil composition, UV penetration etc) it's likely that there would be very similar organisms.

 

Although to be frank it's not like there's anything I can use as an example, except maybe the life forms which have evolved around sulphur vents on the ocean bed - separated from the rest of the life on the planet by millions upon millions of years of independent evolution - and still look and function in similar ways to other organisms save for the differing biochemistry.

 

As for intelligent life, there's no reason to assume primates would come out on top if an Earth-like life pattern developed. Mammals only thrived here because the dinosaurs went into decline - remember that it has taken aeons to reach the stage life on Earth is at now - it could have gone along so many different paths and, on other worlds, probably has.

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As far as I'm aware there are generally 2 schools of thought on this subject. 1- that life is an inevitable biological imperative. 2- that intelligence is just a "fluke".

 

In support of the first theory we have us -humans- and we're just starting to understand the level of intelligence of some primates (chimps) marine mammals (dolphins). The fact that we and chimps share a general physiology (hands, fingers etc) could support your idea that intelligence can only manifest itself in a humanoid but then we have dolphins - who many people believe are more intelligent than chimps - and they do not have the ability to intimately manipulate the world around them as we and other primates do. But, then again, we are all mammals and the seed, as it were, for intelligence may have been embedded in the dolphins before they returned to the oceans.

 

One thing that might be worth considering is that, going back in time a fair bit, we as a species would have had very little advantage over contemporary predators - we're slow, relatively weak and climb badly. A spark of intelligence may have been the only thing that gave us a chance at survival - so we outwit our predators rather than out-run, out-climb or overpower.

 

:)

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Intelligent life would resemble it's predecessors :)

 

I don't really see why it would have to share our form. There are many animals that have dextrous limbs which would do a fine job in the place of our hands.

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I agree that they would represent their predecessors, I also agree with the fact that Dolphins are intelligent. Maybe I'm thinking more of something that has a civilization or technology of some sort. Maybe something more like us. I'm guessing simple life does exist on other planets, but will it eventually end if the conditions are not perfect? Our planet seems to have characteristics that are perfect for what we evolved into. I guess to have a civilization and technology one would have to be able to build and manipulate as you say. I guess what I think is that intelligent life could only eventually evolve on a planet like ours, with something that resembles our form. Or, like Sayonara said, there are so many different paths of evolution that an intelligent life form does not have to resemble humans.

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I'd like to point on some BIG issues with your post.

 

1. evolution leads to 100% nothing. There is no path to evolution at all whatsoever.

 

2. Even if it did "lead" to something - there is absolutely nothing it will always lead to. So saying evolution leads to intelligent life is completely and totally wrong.

 

3. The answer to your comments on evolution being similiar on another planet is absolutely not. Life would not have to be anything like at all.

 

4. Every single issue of environment and experience over billions of years makes up what occured as of this very day. None of this would be similiar at all on another planet.

 

5. Your comment on "anything intelligent would have our form". Now I don't mean to sound rude but this is very egotistical. HUmans are by far no more adapted or able than any other creature on our planet. ....

 

...every single creature on this planet is the product of billions of years - we're all just as adapted and able as eachother.

 

we have two legs because it suits our environment. Some animals have 100's of legs because it suits there environment.

 

You are no more adapted and able than a mosquito, than E.Coli, or than a potato plant....

 

Sorry if I sound assertive but this issue is a big one with us biologists...

 

 

Even if a planet was identical to ours as in your comment - this means little to nothing. Evolution does occur strictly, or even mostly, because of physical non-living environment. It is a result of interactions with other life.

 

To answer your question - No, intelligent life (whatever you mean by that) would have as much a chance of looking like a praying mantis as it would looking like us.

 

 

 

Originally posted by matter

I'd like some opinions on something if that's okay. I've been thinking about evolution and how it leads to intelligent life. Basically, I'm just curious if all intelligent life gradually evolves into a humanoid type of creature. Is there a progression of life and evolution that all leads to the same point? For example, on a planet like ours somewhere else, would all the same animals be there that are on earth? If not, even though they had variations, would they all still lead to something that appears to have ape-like ancestors? Personally I think its stupid to believe that there are strange creatures on other planets, I would think that anything intelligent would have our form, because our form seems to be the best suited for thinking, and also working. Sorry if this sounds confusing, I'm a bit confused myself trying to put my weird thoughts into words.

 

P.S. I already know slight variations in the environment cause different reactions, and may be different than ours, but i'm mostly talking about a planet almost indentical to ours.

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I'd like also to comment on this because you brought up the intelligence is a fluke thing.

 

BTW, just to clarify I am a neuroscientist....

 

...intelligence is a weird used for ao process that involves a massive amount of small processes.

 

Let me give an example. Physics could indeed be used to describe the entire mating cycle of a man and a woman. One could explain through physics alone the entire process of impregnation, conception, embryonic growth, and birth.

 

However this task would be so detailed and difficult to display. This is why we have other means through biology, of describing this task

 

The same thing goes for intelligence. There is nothing mysterious about it. It is a very large and complex dose of physical processes. However at the current time this is "beyond our reach" and so we summarize for ease.

 

But ultimately it can be explained and it is no mystery. We advances in brain science - we have the structure to take the stand point that intelligence is not really anything special, but is perhaps something WE happen to only notice in certain creatues for a purely subjective reason....

 

So my point is that if one takes an objective approach, one would have to fully understand the details of the process we call intelligence. And in this most people who get the ability to physically study this find that what we call intelligence is merely a very complex form of some much simpler fundamental processes that even "unintelligent" creatures perform every second of the day.

 

Thanks for listening.

 

 

Originally posted by Kettle

As far as I'm aware there are generally 2 schools of thought on this subject. 1- that life is an inevitable biological imperative. 2- that intelligence is just a "fluke".

 

In support of the first theory we have us -humans- and we're just starting to understand the level of intelligence of some primates (chimps) marine mammals (dolphins). The fact that we and chimps share a general physiology (hands, fingers etc) could support your idea that intelligence can only manifest itself in a humanoid but then we have dolphins - who many people believe are more intelligent than chimps - and they do not have the ability to intimately manipulate the world around them as we and other primates do. But, then again, we are all mammals and the seed, as it were, for intelligence may have been embedded in the dolphins before they returned to the oceans.

 

One thing that might be worth considering is that, going back in time a fair bit, we as a species would have had very little advantage over contemporary predators - we're slow, relatively weak and climb badly. A spark of intelligence may have been the only thing that gave us a chance at survival - so we outwit our predators rather than out-run, out-climb or overpower.

 

:)

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Well I dont really agree with anything you typed. One moment your a biologist, the next you're a neuro scientist. Sounds 'funny' to me. I think you're insane. Sure, we may only be slightly more intelligent then some animals but atleast we are that more intelligent. We created things that help our lives, I think that makes us intelligent. And I already know it all boils down to physical reactions in our brain and bodies. It's no myth that our brains are different from say, a crocodiles. But those differences led to the human time on this planet. Elephants react to each other if one is in distress, but they don't harness technology.

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Originally posted by matter

Well I dont really agree with anything you typed. One moment your a biologist, the next you're a neuro scientist. Sounds 'funny' to me. I think you're insane. Sure, we may only be slightly more intelligent then some animals but atleast we are that more intelligent. We created things that help our lives, I think that makes us intelligent. And I already know it all boils down to physical reactions in our brain and bodies. It's no myth that our brains are different from say, a crocodiles. But those differences led to the human time on this planet. Elephants react to each other if one is in distress, but they don't harness technology.

 

You are a complely and totally worthless.

 

A neuroscientist IS A BIOLOGIST for fuck sake.

 

Neuroscience is a branch of biology. Holy christ.

 

Whether or not you agree with me or not does not change the truth.

 

I suggest you attempt to disembody your idiotic need to please your emotions and instead realize when the truth is NOT WHAT YOU WANT IT TO BE.

 

Seriously troll - get some education or go to the following site which is geared more towards you:

 

http://www.disney.com

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Intel makes some very good points. I think it would help if I cleared up some of what I said because I did not explain as fully as I could have done, which makes his analysis of the evolution of off-earth life appear to conflict with mine.

 

First off, Intel's point about evolution not leading anywhere is very true. There is no "eventual goal". At best there are only temporary goals (although the word 'goal' itself implies directed effort exists, which is not the case). Actually this is a FANTASTIC point that really needs to be understood in order to grasp most of the possible answers to your question - I'll sticky an article thingy when I have some time (prolly next week, have a funeral this weekend).

 

Understanding how natural selection works is vitally important to understanding how evolution 'moves' a species, although it is by no means the whole story. Species do not evolve towards a phenotype (the expressed result of genetic combination) in the way that, say, a racing car is designed and redesigned to be more suited to the task at hand. Rather, species are continually stripped off to leave the best examples in place of individuals who are not susceptible to the majority of high-level risks for that species.

 

I'd like to point out right now that this is a very crude and amazingly dramatic way to describe it, but it will do for these purposes (also I am quite tired, so screw you hippies). To extend our racing car example, imagine a fleet of cars were built - all with slightly different attributes - and raced during the Grand Prix. Those that aren't suited to such driving would crash, and only the best-suited would finish in good time (if at all). Therefore the lunatic who made the weird car fleet in the first place would base all his next batch of wacky cars on the common attributes among the winners.

 

Oh my god, this is the crudest explanation of anything ever.

 

Anyway... back on track... although I said that there would be "similar organisms", do not take this to mean that you would find tigers, dolphins and men on your alien planet. It is true that there are certain attributes that provide an advantage, such as camoflauge stripes, a streamlined body or an opposable thumb. However, these can be expressed in innumerable combination and with such vastly wide-ranging properties that two animals sharing the same basic principle in an adaptation can be fantastically different beasts.

 

I do have to question "The answer to your comments on evolution being similiar on another planet is absolutely not", because if we are talking about life on other worlds we have to assume some small degree of convergence at some point purely due to the numbers involved. Most of population biology and ecology is maths. Yes, evolution is a lot more likely to take a disimilar path than a similar one, but there's a good chance (due to carbon chemistry and the 'limits of reasonable adaptivity') that the distribution of adaptations and life form compositions across the galaxy fall along a curve, and we don't yet know where we appear on that curve.

Who knows - maybe we are the freakiest mutazoids in the universe?

 

On the 'intelligence via adaptation' issue, there is a pitfall in saying that we are no more adapted than E. Coli or mosquitoes. Sure, we are (most likely) no more well-suited to our environments than those organisms are to theirs - but we are better adapted to riding scooters or cooking a nice roast. This is where adaptation tends to make a big difference, because the selective pressure acting on pre-human primates clearly did bring about conditions that were conducive to the formation of cogent and abstract thought process. Mosquito evolution obviously took no such turns.

However, as Intel says there is a lot more to intelligence (ho ho ho) than simply the best adaptations at the right time. While there is some evidence that bipedalism, advanced communication, and the ability to fashion, use and co-ordinate tools all contributed greatly to the development of our intelligence, it's not an easy thing to study.

 

In short, what I am trying to say is that there is a chance that we will find similar adaptations if there is other complex life out there. There are only so many ways to overcome certain problems biologically. However, if we do find it the way those adaptations are expressed physically might not be what we recognise or expect. In fact in all likelihood it would look... superfreaky.

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I agree with banana man.

 

"Evolution" is merely a side effect result of "evolutionary agents".

 

So the fact that guys look for certain attributes in chicks to mate with means that chicks with those attributes are more likely to pass on those genes and thus more women in the future will have those.

 

This is an agent known as natural selection which as a side effect causes EVOLUTION.

 

An evolutionary agent is a PROCESS. But evolution is not a process unless you mean to use it as a summation of all agents.

 

Usually evolution is used to describe looking at the processes, such as saying the evolution of fish...

 

....i think that looking at the most fundamental early life would lead to an understanding of similiarites you MIGHT find...

 

Let me list a few too help matter troll

 

1. bacteria have flagellum which allow the to move. before this no life could move itself. these of course can be called legs and arms

 

2. the ability to sense the environment. There are innate universal qualities in the universe. matter and waves. the ability to sense these and respond is essential

 

3. life requires energy which could be gotten in common ways by purposelly putting energy in teh form of "food" into ones body, or to have a part of the body that automatically turns a wave or matter on the life to get energy such as photosynthesis.

 

4. reproduction. essential to life obviously. or is it?

 

That's all I can think of at the moment.

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First of all, your insults mean nothing to me because you mean nothing to me lol. Second, I think you're wrong and I think I'm right. I never meant that all evolution of life leads to one common point, all I meant was that evolution always leads to the species that is best suited for the environment, and that species ends up controlling parts of the environment. We may not be extremely powerful thinking machines but we can control certain aspects of our environment. We control the environment (wind for planes, water for boats, animals and plants for food and so on) and now we have our time on this planet. I think the thing that will keep us from going extinct though is our intelligence. The Dinosaurs didnt have any and look at them. Now, I think that this could occur anywhere else in the universe, just as it did on earth. And I think where it does occur, the intelligent species that will master their planet will be something like us, if the planet resembles earth. I dont think thats too unlikely either. There is probably a planet with a composition like ours, at the right distance from the star.

 

P.S. stop being so angry you turd.

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There can never be mastery of a habitat through evolution.

 

Let's say we finally overcame some hypothetical barrier to ultimate greatness as a species by evolving to be perfectly adapted to living with it. Are those conditions going to stay the same forever?

 

No.

 

That's why evolution can't ever lead to anything in particular.

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