reply to post by CriticalCK
And I'm not saying that they wouldn't have a social structure. Unless the thing in question is a hive mind like Mass Effect's Geth, they very likely
will have social networks. But beyond writing and art, what more does evolution need to produce a space capable species? And in either case, they
don't have to look human.
A super crow for non social creatures? Well no. Even Dinosaurs showed social behavior and all birds have this social behavior embedded in them. Their
social behavior simply isn't a parallel to ours. Social behavior doesn't have a one road track. Let me give you an example, for speculation sake. The
next time you are traveling down a long highway in a region populated by crows, keep an eye out for how often you see them, and in how large groups.
If you get into a traffic jam, observe them. What I have observed is that crows very often organize into 2-3 hunting parties. You will always see at
least one in the field. If you do, keep looking. You'll find a spotter in a tree or high ground. Even at their primitive level, they are already
developing the concept of "work shifts" for mutual gain. If you keep looking long enough, you might even see them switch places, and one of the
hunters going to the high ground, and the spotter going to go hunting.
So not really a suprcrow, no. Crows are about as social as a tree full of excited monkeys. Most Corvidae are, to be honest. A designer by the name or
nemo ramjet rejected the notion that dinosaurs would eventually evolve into humanoid species if they were ever to gain intelligence, and went about
designing his own brand of avian intellect based on tracks and common evolution they have shown in the last 65 million years. He thus created the
avisapien. Quite an interesting look at a legitimate attempt at an intelligent dinosaur, mixing our own cultural and artistic past with the pathways
avian species took in their evolution. By hybridizing the two, rather than being lazy and just putting some scales on a human skeleton, one actually
comes up with some real, plausible, speculation. Have a look if you wish.
Science
scienceblogs.com...
Art
th04.deviantart.net...
In addition, other instinctive social structures exist. Like ant colonies, or termites. Species that don't question their place in society, but do as
they have evolved to do. This would generate species with intellects not so advanced, but with unquestioning slaves that would do anything. Thus we
might even speculate this type of species is most common because they basically skip the whole endless internal strife that brings down nations.
Furthermore down the road of wild speculation Imagine a species that actually had a super evolved brain in Which its neurons literally mass produced
themselves, creating pockets of information. Basically, a tumorous brain. The species would either die of old age, or when its ever growing brain got
too big to support itself. For any given situation, the species cannot immediately understand it. It has to go comatose for a few days, and organize
its neurons to solve that specific problem. Essentially here, we apply what a sloth is to a brain. Such a species would essentially be, for all
intensive purposes, retarded. Incapable of higher intellect. But if it stopped what it was doing and actually let its mind think, it would solve any
problem in the world. Such a species would more or less be interesting. It's just wild speculation, but imagine the social and inventive nature of
such a species in which gaining intelligence led to death faster.
With 23 you bring up a most interesting point, as you can use common statistical numbers to give a guess. But statistics end where culture and
intelligence begin. Like I said, I don't think it's impossible for humanoid life forms to exist. But if we use what we know from our own
civilizations, think for a moment. How many times have we almost exterminated ourselves in our history? In the last 100 years alone? Now imagine how
lucky we are. Statistically, if is really plausible for all of them out there to be equally lucky? Even if we count the fact that we basically had a
high chance of blowing each other up into nothingness virtually every day of the nuclear part of the cold war, statistics demands that every day we
didn't blow each other up, somewhere out there somebody did.
Personally, because of my own religious beliefs, I would not be surprised to find most life forms are humanoid out there. But science does not back
this up. Furthermore, if I were to apply my own beliefs to reality, we're talking about the high likelihood of basically every other star system
having a radio-logical dead zone planet filled with ruins of carious time period.
edit on 22-7-2011 by Gorman91 because: (no reason
given)