Do you mean a 'night crawling, egg sucking rat' like our common ancestor?

That's the one thing I dislike about evolution: people we find really distasteful turn out to be relatives. In some cases I'd prefer the night crawling, egg sucking rat. [Was that a James Cagney line?]

In our typical hubris we call ourselves the 'wise men' or Homo sapiens. I am torn between the more realistic cognomens of 'ungreat ape' or 'ingrate ape' as more proper genus species names.

 

aguy2

I remember seeing a program on the discovery channel about this. They seemed to think that, in the event of human removal, then squid would evolve out of the oceans and take our place as the intellegent life form. Any thoughts?

"I remember seeing a program on the discovery channel about this. They seemed to think that, in the event of human removal, then squid would evolve out of the oceans and take our place as the intellegent life form. Any thoughts?"

 

That was on discovery (not that we'd get more discovery channel than about one show a week here)? Squids coming out of oceans... Err, sounds a bit Lovecraftesque.

This may have been one of a series of programs that looked at possible evolutionary paths if we suffered a major bolide impact that eliminated most terrestrial life. The cephalapods come onshore where they evolve into a variety of forms, including a primate analog - the squibbon - swinging through the trees on eight arms. I think it was intended as a plausible rather than probable view of events and as such it worked for me. With trilobites long gone cephalopods are about the only invertebrate I'd pass the time of day with.

That, that sounds like what it was. Just some fancy computer animations for the general public. I do believe it was offered as a possible evolutionary pathway, and not the only one.