How would intelligent life on aquatic worlds came to be?

[magnemoe]

On 16.4.2016 at 9:08 PM, lude said:

Due to lack of an atmosphere (they live in) that supports fire, they'd never develop past a certain point that requires certain tools, also in an aquatic environment it would be much harder to build and maintain.

-- edit --

There are quite a few very intelligent life forms that have developed a different "oxygene solving" strategy, on our world they developed hemocyanin which is far superior to hemoglobin in such cold environments and doesn't even require the upkeep of a red blood cell.

much like we can make assumptions of the colors of plants depending on the sun their planet is orbiting we can make assumptions like that they'd develop hemocyanin or similar solutions.

How intelligent? Human brains are far more resource demanding than animal ones, 

[Darnok]

Spaceship filled with liquid would be better, in any way, than ship filled with gas?

 

[lude]

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

How intelligent? Human brains are far more resource demanding than animal ones, 

I'd be amazed if you could even find a single study confirming that view.

Tho if time was a ressource I'd agree with you.

 

That statement is so general and wrong in so many ways.

There are quite a few mammalian examples where the ressource demands are far higher than ours and they probably will not differ much if it's per weight/mass.

 

But intelligent enough to use a mirror to look at themselves, open cans, solve logical puzzles untrained people can not solve, learn how to pick locks even if not taught that specific lock and so many other things.

 

Our evolutionary demand for a long genesis of our brain is due to the sheer amount of social stuff we have to learn.

Intelligence as we 'know it' is something that is almost exclusively done by what we'd refer to as the neocortex and in general, the more social an animal the more intelligent and if more social it will have a neocortex or developed an analogue complex as in birds for example.

 

I don't know what kind of intelligence you're looking for in terms of a hypothetical aquatic life form but there are plenty of studies about the intelligence of marine life (or other) and especially since there are a lot less anthroposophs in science the view that animals are particularly dumb or incapable of feelings and emotions is getting more and more scarce.

 

First of all: Humans are animals and there are mammals whose brains due to their composition and the biochemical pathways involved pretty much use the same amount of ressources per mass.

 

Quote

Scaling of Brain Metabolism with a Fixed Energy Budget per Neuron: Implications for Neuronal Activity, Plasticity and Evolution

 

 

Quote

The Remarkable, Yet Not Extraordinary, Human Brain as a Scaled-Up Primate Brain and Its Associated Cost

 

are just two studies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormyrinae

 

I could go on but I expect you to inform yourself and research that topic.

 

Perhaps find out why certain biochemical pathways that are the same in species need exactly the same amount of energy in a set environment with a set temperature....

 

inb4 highly social equals eusocial

Edited April 18, 2016 by lude

[magnemoe]

44 minutes ago, lude said:

I'd be amazed if you could even find a single study confirming that view.

Tho if time was a ressource I'd agree with you.

That statement is so general and wrong in so many ways.

There are quite a few mammalian examples where the ressource demands are far higher than ours and they probably will not differ much if it's per weight/mass.

But intelligent enough to use a mirror to look at themselves, open cans, solve logical puzzles untrained people can not solve, learn how to pick locks even if not taught that specific lock and so many other things.

Our evolutionary demand for a long genesis of our brain is due to the sheer amount of social stuff we have to learn.

Intelligence as we 'know it' is something that is almost exclusively done by what we'd refer to as the neocortex and in general, the more social an animal the more intelligent and if more social it will have a neocortex or developed an analogue complex as in birds for example.

I don't know what kind of intelligence you're looking for in terms of a hypothetical aquatic life form but there are plenty of studies about the intelligence of marine life (or other) and especially since there are a lot less anthroposophs in science the view that animals are particularly dumb or incapable of feelings and emotions is getting more and more scarce.

First of all: Humans are animals and there are mammals whose brains due to their composition and the biochemical pathways involved pretty much use the same amount of ressources per mass.

are just two studies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormyrinae

I could go on but I expect you to inform yourself and research that topic.

Perhaps find out why certain biochemical pathways that are the same in species need exactly the same amount of energy in a set environment with a set temperature....

inb4 highly social equals eusocial

Brain as faction of weight and energy use is generally true with exceptions, like smart and large animals having large brains while small mammals  and birds having higher brain / weight faction, also that bird brains are far more efficient than ours.
Did not know about the Mormyrinae, pretty cool.

Being social is important fist as other humans are the most complex thing we faced until modern times. 
Its likely that intelligence became an selection criteria among early humans, few would select the stupid mate  causing an selection for smarter humans, this only payed of later. 
Being social is also an requirement for civilization. 

[WinkAllKerb'']

On 13/4/2016 at 9:18 PM, Rakaydos said:

For there to be NO land mass, there's only a couple possibilities:

An ice world with a subsurface ocean, ala Europa.

A world with no geological activiy to speak of.

Either one shuts down a lot of possibilities for development.

- Life find a way.
- Time take it's time.
- human lifespan and environement are meaningless as reference for such a case.

so on if they had to make it to orbit for whatever or not reason:

- surfacing and managing densities variation at some point ( liquid, (atmo), vacum, )
- 3D printing alike (eventually @ a molecular level) to "rearange" part of their environnement and celestial body existing atoms into a spaceship that fit there need.
(solid are not especially required within the environnement* as long as various atoms are floating within the liquid environnement, mostly a matter of ratio and amount of each atoms, en energy/knowledge/tek required to process them into a spaceship)

Not really a big deal, in fact, just a matter of time, generations after generations, and lifespan sum to achieve orbit a way or another.

*(planet core stratification or not & core heat/or not // distance from this celestial bodies system star(s) so even a full liquid celestial body could eventually do it // diameter, gravity and all imho // various distances and overall balance within the said star(s) system)
(( low probality, may be, but such an equilibrium remain possible anyway statisticly speaking same as the probabilities such an equilibrium could host living beings able to build a spaceship at some point ))

Edited April 18, 2016 by WinkAllKerb''

[lude]

I can think of one animal that by evolution became very smart and it's coevolution to our social traditions and features.

 

The God

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/canine-corner/201103/do-dogs-know-mathematics

working dogs are quite a marvel

but also dogs that by bad treatment (in my humble opinion it is) were too humanized evolve deep psychological problems and develop similar needs like we do for our emotions

and some smart birds outperform all human apes in certain logical and perception 'thingies'

that probably is because a lot of birds are also in coevolution to the tools they use

just a few days ago I watched a raven position a dead rat so it would get rolled over by cars (which I still don't completely get, I guess it liked it's meat tender, I'm more used to birds using cars to crack nuts)

There's an evolutionary effect called neoteny that 'makes smaht'

In berlin there's  quite a few foxes and they are different in form and brain size from their rural cousins (there's two extensive studies over long decades one is about neoteny in foxes and the other was the successful domestication somewhere in russia (unlike taming where you just tame a single entity, domestication has a far wider scope and effect))

these foxes in berlin wait when the traffic light shows red, tho this is not a very remarkable feat I think it's pretty awesome.

We are also a product of a neotene evolution path and in dogs and other canine it's imho the easiest to track/realize what neoteny does with an entity.

The most neotene human ethnicities I know off are some mongolian and some genetic pocket of southern japanese people, they live extremely long in average and have far less sexual dimorphism (in humans it's not strong dimorphism anyway) and are less 'adult' in form and function compared to others, this bestows them with a longer life due to less damaging effects by the very very "volatile" sexual hormones as well as the ability to grow smarter in average because sexual hormons love with that as well.

Anyway in terms of marvelous I really think that dogs in general are underappreciated in their mental capabilities but they've been coevolving since the ice age at least and they display great capabilities for communication and learning.

I personally think the greatest impact on our intelligence is by culture as a vessel to transmit information from generation to generation. And this might be one of the hardest parts on an aquatic world where everything is just so volatile and reactive because it's suspended in an aquatic medium.

But not having fire is also a pretty stunting thing for a culture bent to go to the stars.

Edited April 18, 2016 by lude

[RocketSquid]

I just want to note that cephalopods are certainly smart enough, they use tools, have reasonably high brain-body ratios, solve puzzles, communicate and hunt in groups, and will eat just about anything. Additionally, cuttlefish have highly advanced camouflage, octopi build houses out of rocks and coconuts, and squids coordinate attacks and are JET PROPELLED!!!

[SinBad]

Biotech. Starting with selective breeding, then eventualy developing into genetic engineering.

Squidy wants a house? Bore a door into a giant clam with a handy rock = food + house. Eventually. At some point someone notices that a specific population has a thin shell that is easier to bore into. These start to be cultivated and eventually selectivly bred. Within a few generations theories regarding the mechanism of inheritence of physical traits start cropping up.

Go one further where the boring tool used isn't a rock, but a natural parasite of the clam that squiddy finds and places on the clam to make a hole. These would also end up in an accidental selective breeding program as the better (acording to squiddies needs) borers would be used more often and get more food = live longer and have more offspring. so there is the possability of biologicaly based tools as well.

I imagine similar instances with usefull plants.

Building on that, there are bacteria that concreate minerals into corals and metal nodules. If the squid don't mind waiting a little longer, they could use these bacteria (again, accidentaly bred for speed and purpose) to '3d print' mineral and metallic objects by encouraging bacterial growth in some places, and retarding it in others.

as for leading into genetic engineering, I imagine they would use viral vectors as these can be bred rather than engineered as we would. it would take more time to develop an appropriate virus to have the desired result on the candidate organism, but once this tech got going they would have a large 'library' of viruses to draw from, each designed to change one small specific sequence, so that engineering a novel organism would be a matter of selecting from the library which virus tools to use to get the desired effect.

humanity has already resequenced wheat to produce insecticides, and are researching ways to get plants to produce other compounds like animal growth hormones, ensymes and drugs that have nothing to do with the survival of the plants.

I don't see that a lack of human style metalurgical processes would hold them back. if anything, they might get ahead of us in a few areas. whats to say their spacecraft won't be some chimera of a giant clam with sponge decks and biologically produced fuels.

[RainDreamer]

It is indeed difficult to imagine a biological spacecraft...and how such a thing would came to be.

[Rakaydos]

59 minutes ago, RainDreamer said:

It is indeed difficult to imagine a biological spacecraft...and how such a thing would came to be.

I can only imagine it requires an astronomical coincidence to create favorable launch conditions- say, a small europa-type ice covered ocean, but close to the parent gas giant's roche limit, where if something gets to far from the surface it'll go flying off into space.

[RainDreamer]

3 hours ago, Rakaydos said:

I can only imagine it requires an astronomical coincidence to create favorable launch conditions- say, a small europa-type ice covered ocean, but close to the parent gas giant's roche limit, where if something gets to far from the surface it'll go flying off into space.

Huh, so in such a place you can use a balloon to go to space?

[WinkAllKerb'']

15 minutes ago, RainDreamer said:

Huh, so in such a place you can use a balloon to go to space?

basically call that a photon or alike xDr

and as usual, for now technically ; ) technically leave it to the next gen ; ) may be ; )

Edited April 26, 2016 by WinkAllKerb''

[RainDreamer]

Laser propulsion huh...might make sense for a world without fire. They use light instead to heat things.

[WinkAllKerb'']

the question is do they use some cargo bay ; ) and drop some stuff here and there

Edited April 26, 2016 by WinkAllKerb''
colors & skins & that's all really ?

[KSK]

On 26/04/2016 at 7:24 AM, RainDreamer said:

Laser propulsion huh...might make sense for a world without fire. They use light instead to heat things.

Although melting the sand to make the lens to focus the laser would be a real trick without fire. Never mind manufacturing any sort of lasing medium.

[RainDreamer]

1 minute ago, KSK said:

Although melting the sand to make the lens to focus the laser would be a real trick without fire. Never mind manufacturing any sort of lasing medium.

Can't they use ice to do it? At least in beginning.

[luizopiloto]

The "squids" from Crysis series?

[SinBad]

Never played crysis, I figured it was safer to say squiddy than a concatenation of OCTOpus and astroNAUT for copyright reasons (I have small kids so my mass media exposure is rather narrow atm). I agree that a biological spacecraft is very unlikely to naturally evolve. just like a merino. those are basicaly man made factories for makeing textile fibres known in the industry as wool. The merino wool factory converts cellulose and water into this fibre. The fibres have no natural benefit beyond a certain point. In fact if too much of the product is allowed to accumulate in the output buffer, it can lead to damage to the factory. Extreme chases make the factory permanantly inoperable.

Basically, we bred sheep to grow fur so thick and long that if we didn't keep cutting it off for them they would overheat and die. The merino is a tool that humans created. It, like a space craft, could not evolve naturaly

[RainDreamer]

10 hours ago, SinBad said:

Never played crysis, I figured it was safer to say squiddy than a concatenation of OCTOpus and astroNAUT for copyright reasons (I have small kids so my mass media exposure is rather narrow atm). I agree that a biological spacecraft is very unlikely to naturally evolve. just like a merino. those are basicaly man made factories for makeing textile fibres known in the industry as wool. The merino wool factory converts cellulose and water into this fibre. The fibres have no natural benefit beyond a certain point. In fact if too much of the product is allowed to accumulate in the output buffer, it can lead to damage to the factory. Extreme chases make the factory permanantly inoperable.

Basically, we bred sheep to grow fur so thick and long that if we didn't keep cutting it off for them they would overheat and die. The merino is a tool that humans created. It, like a space craft, could not evolve naturaly

I wonder though, even if it's specifically bio engineered, how would a biological spacecraft came to be. Can life be redesigned so aggressively that it is capable of leaving the one environment that is hosting it? Or maybe biological spacecraft will only be done at a material level, and the spacecraft is merely an assembly of said materials?

[SinBad]

42 minutes ago, RainDreamer said:

I wonder though, even if it's specifically bio engineered, how would a biological spacecraft came to be. Can life be redesigned so aggressively that it is capable of leaving the one environment that is hosting it? Or maybe biological spacecraft will only be done at a material level, and the spacecraft is merely an assembly of said materials?

Imagine a clam, re-engineered to be symetrical, really big, and have areas of it shell transperant. If the meaty part of the clam only fills 10% of the enclosed volume, you could fill the rest with water. Get a bit of a surface growing algea going on the transperant patches to oxygenate the water. Have some sponges and small shell fish filtering waste, some small fish to eat the sponges and larger pieces of floating debris, then the crew eats the fish. All of the above bred and engineered specifically for their roles. Basically the whole lot becomes a micro-ecology inside the protective shell.

Selective breeding over a long enough period can turn a wolf into a pomerenian. I think a few thousand years of it would produce some fairly specialised critters that couldn't live without assistance because their useful traits have been enhanced to the point where they inhibit the ability of the organism to feed itself or maybe even breed without assistance. add 500 years of genetic engineering to that...

I actualy think that aquatic life would make good astronauts. wightlessness, 3D thinking and orientation, an intuitive understanding of pressure, low metabolic rates, etc.

[kerbiloid]

Not a spaceship, but have you read Harry Harrison's Eden cycle?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_of_Eden

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_in_Eden

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Eden_%28novel%29

Ph.J.Farmer, "The Wind Whales of Ishmael"

http://www.amazon.com/Wind-Whales-Ishmael-Grand-Master/dp/1781162972

B.Aldiss, "Hothouse"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hothouse_%28novel%29

 

Also movies:

"Babylon 5" series - Vorlon and Shadows ships

"Lexx" series - "Lexx" and its descent crafts ("Moth")

Edited April 28, 2016 by kerbiloid

[SinBad]

7 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Not a spaceship, but have you read Harry Harrison's Eden cycle?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_of_Eden

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_in_Eden

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Eden_%28novel%29

 

Also movies:

"Babylon 5" series - Vorlon and Shadows ships

"Lexx" series - "Lexx" and its descent crafts ("Moth")

the eden cycle is one of my favorite series of books

not really a fan of farmer. I read the riverworld and while it was well written and an interesting idea, his approach (mainly the way his characters interacted) didn't apeal to me.

also a fan of the biotech in Peter F Hamilton's Nights Dawn trilogy, though they are very sy-fi, its an interesting approach.

Edited April 28, 2016 by SinBad
added stuff

[RainDreamer]

By the look of this, it seems like our aquatic alien must need a longer life span. We human prefer seeing the results of our actions as soon as possible due to our limited lifespan , which limit some things like experimenting for many decades on long living species.

[SinBad]

11 hours ago, RainDreamer said:

By the look of this, it seems like our aquatic alien must need a longer life span. We human prefer seeing the results of our actions as soon as possible due to our limited lifespan , which limit some things like experimenting for many decades on long living species.

Blame democratically elected leaders and capitalism for that one. Bear with me for a moment, this isn't a propaganda rant. Politicians are reluctant to start long term (greater than 3 years), expensive projects as the payout in votes won't benefit them. Investors are less likely to put money into a high return long term project than a low return short term one.

I don't think either would apply to aquatic life. In a school of fish there is no leader, each indevidual acts according to its own needs. As a result the whole school benefits.

Wiki for shoaling behavior -interesting read

So I think their social/political system would reflect that.

As for capitalism, its hardly the most efficient method of ensuring resources go where they are needed. I imagine that the above mentioned social structure would result in more of a socialist system. Its an ocean, food is everywhere waiting to be pulled off a rock or plucked out of the water. There really isn't any centralised agriculture to be controlled or distibuted. Nor would the availability of other resources as just about any element you could want is already dissolved in sea water. Which corals and sponges already harvest, so any squid with a garden has access to them.

I'm not sure how all this would effect their future planning, but I like to think it would make for a less self interested society that was  more willing to dedicate spare time and resources to projects they would not directly or immediatly benefit from.

That said, aquatic animals do tend towards more efficient metabolisms and have healing capabilities beyond land animals,  so they could very well have long life spans.

[FleshJeb]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocheworld

The first two books were a really fun and engaging read. I haven't read the others yet.

Edited April 29, 2016 by FleshJeb