His answer is the octopus. What say you?
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?
A symbiosis between octopi and dolphins 🤔
Every RPG has taught me that coral swords are a thing.
Their lifespans are very short and that whole ocean acidification thing might be a problem.
They will evolve to have gills and walk on land
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.
True, also they do not raise offspring which means zero communication of non-instinctive knowledge between generations.
They could use the underwater volcanoes to smeltle the meltle though, thought of that? Checkmate.
We have terrestrial volcanoes, how far would human civilisation advanced if they were our only source of fire.
I think we will screw up this planet even more before the end. So, probably bugs.
Crows and ravens. Highly adaptive. At home in a deep forest or the remains of a burnt out city. Social. Predisposed to intelligence.
The whole concept of a “dominant species” is also a bit ridiculous and probably shouldn’t be bought into whole cloth. If what we mean by “dominant species” is 'the most radiatively expansive single species before allopatric speciation takes over…", then pick any one of the many many invasive we’ve spread around the planet. Our intelligence has allowed for a massive and basically instantaneous geologic layer globally, but it’s not something that can be handed off in the way that a vasculature did for land plants or the ability to decompose cellulose and lignin did for fungi… unless we want it to be.
If you really want intelligence to make it’s mark on the earth we need a way to move it from our species into other species, because we’re not long for this world. Move the genes specific to human nervous tissue and neurons into bees, ants, termites, any formian creature. That’ll get this party started.
I think there’s a solid argument to be made for ants as the world’s dominant species. There are even supercolonies that span multiple continents. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3352483/
They will likely continue to thrive in the post-human global environment. Their success does not rely on human development (like, say, rats), nor are they severely threatened by human development (like…well, most things).
Was talking about this earlier with the s.o., we’ve both got pretty substantial biology training (phds, ms, bs etc). We both agreed that “dominant species” is a bit of a term looking for a definition, as in, it’s not something extending from biology or ecology but rather something being imposed upon them. We were between nostoc and rhizobium, with fungi capable of digesting lignin in third place, for the most “world dominating” species, in the sense that those species, through their biology, have carved the planet into a place much more suited for themselves.
It strikes me that humans aren’t even really doing that, but rather, we’re selecting for an environment less suitable to our own survival. So I don’t know that humans would even rank for dominance over the environment because we really don’t have any sense of control over the matter, whereas, some other species clearly do.
Ants. The hive mind structure will be hard to beat.
Ants are Fascinating
I’ll bet 90% of people commenting on the internet immediately thought: “octopi!”
Twelve ponderous paragraphs into the article, this brilliant scientists finally says: “octopi.”
I’d bet on racoons or some primate. They aren’t going to get far though until there’s enough continental subduction to reveal fresh metal and fossil fuel deposits, and that could take a very, very long time.
Serious question:
How difficult is it for octopus to change via evolution so it becomes more like a primate?
They can already breathe on land for up to an hour.
I think they just need a few key mutations to live longer and nurture their young.
Fun fact: octopuses* respond to MDMA, and become social and cuddly. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/scientists-gave-octopuses-some-molly-heres-what-happened
I seem to recall a similar story where drug exposure reversed the octopus’s usual behavior of simply waiting for death after mating, but I couldn’t find a reference from a quick search so perhaps I am misremembering this story, about the biological mechanisms behind that behavior: https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-close-in-on-why-octopuses-tragically-destroy-themselves-after-mating
My best guess? Probably another primate. Bonobos and Chimpanzees seem like the ideal candidate to take over the husk of Human civilization the quickest. Another species might have a shot, but then it’s a question of how many millions of years it’s going to take for them to evolve and if they can survive the cataclysmic events that will no doubt hit Earth in the meantime.
If not primates, I would bet on one of the following species:
Corvidae - Extremely intelligent, highly adaptable, tool-users, social, pass down their knowledge to offspring.
Canis Familiaris - Highly social, apex predators, genetically diverse, spread throughout every corner of the world.
Loxodonta - Extremely intelligent, highly social, adaptable, builders and tool-users, long lifespans.
Crows! Oh. Are we taking guesses? Dogs! Any creatures who have lived close with humans? Cockroaches!
Dominant at what?
Yeah, nature is not good with a “dominant” species. Not for the whole planet at least.
I think they could become dominant if they acquired language. Maybe do some crazy sign language with their 8 tentacles. Also their short lifespan could be overcome if they worked together as a group or a hivemind, like the way ants do.
Interesting way to spell Daleks. EXTERMINATE!!
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Humans most certainly would be it by almost any intellectual qualifier you chose to use. Grading every species we have encountered with regards to intelligence and ability to control its environment humanity is a wildly insane outlier. To point of absurdity, to the point where we do not fit to such an extent that some agency other than organic evolution might be suspected.
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Intelligence is a qualifier unlike other physical qualities, it allows humanity to dominate its environment while not being physically superior to many of the species surrounding us. Intelligence is a quality we recognise and calibrate in other species and seek out in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and the development of artificial intelligence. Unlike flying or walking intelligence is universally accepted as a uniquely separate attribute, although not of course by you, so this is where I will end my discussion with you.
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Human beings can, of course, fly. We can fly much faster and further than any owl could even conceive. However we did it through intelligence, knowledge sharing, tool use, rather than physical evolution. Human flying dominates all other flying life, because of intelligence.
For pretty much anything most creatures have adapted to do, you could argue so can humans, but because of intelligence, not just narrow physical adaptation. Intelligence is a supreme trait
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Yeah but we literally are changing the planet and affecting other species. We’ve developed nukes that could take out the whole world
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True but we’re one species. This is comparing one species to all the bacteria
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We are in no way special when it comes to impacting other species or the Earth as a system.
We do it on purpose, with intent. Heck, we do it for multiple reasons! We also massively impact all parts of the ecosystem at the same time.
purpose, with intent
allegedly.
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Because it opens up doing so many different things that impact the world as a whole. Beavers instinctually damn moving water and build homes, but that has been their limited behavior for thousands of years. They don’t expand out and change things even more and more over time like humans do, because they don’t actively choose to do new things that continuously expand their impact.
That intent and conscious decision making by humans to change the world around them is what makes them special.
