Dawn of the Planet of the Apes - what will surpass humans?

[umair127]

Article below apparently was prompted by the recent release of the movie "Planet of the Apes'.   Interesting read, regardless where one is coming from on this.

It notes that, while it is unlikely that apes will surpass dominance over humans (even in the movie with the virus scenario, there are currently only so many apes in the world), it does discuss other creatures that might, if humans were to disappear.

The thinking being is that, while humans are here, no other creature currently stands a chance.


Three examples of creatures that could are (one which will delight Mickey I think) - rats, pigs and - ta da - artificial intelligence.


It then goes on and discusses some creatures that might be considered rather dominant even now.  Bacteria and ants.

http://news.yahoo.com/species-rules-earth-answer-may-surprise-135726244.html

For instance, there are many more ants than there are humans, and their total weight, or biomass, equals or exceeds that of humans, Moffett said.

They also use traditional military rules of engagement to wage war. For instance, they rely on "shock and awe," in essence swarming their enemies with sheer numbers to overcome them. Ants also throw the weakest, scrawniest members of the colony out front while keeping their "supersoldier" ants to the rear, just as the front lines in many battles are made up of the least trained and most poorly equipped soldiers, Moffett said.

This strategy has proven incredibly successful


The Argentine Ant first hitched a train ride to California in 1910. Now, a supercolony stretches across most of California, and is waging all-out war to expand its turf with another supercolony in Mexico, he said.
http://www.livescience.com/27014-invasive-ants-battle-for-turf.html

[noviapriani]

I read a sci-fi book once that posited the question of what will succeed man as the next intelligent species. The guy had two species.

First, we would be replaced by rats. No, no connection to my nick--I've been mickeyrat since childhood--but the guy pointed out that humans share with rats the conversion from herbivores to omnivores, specifically meat, explaining why we grew so much stronger and smarter than our herbivore primate or rodent cousins. Rats are known to be amongst the most intelligent (obviously) non-human species, they (we?) are also survivors: rats are everywhere in the world, and they (we?) have enough sense to scurry away from danger and jump the sinking ship.  Rodents also have actually the same sort of body structure that we do, shorter forelimbs, strong haunches, ability to stand upright, meaning that they could evolve the sort of body structure necessary to create an advanced technological civilization such as our own.

He chose a second species to succeed rats. Now, I would have chosen ants, because I think really ants possess the capacity to be a dominant intelligent species; I expect in that case there would be a collective consciousness, settled in the queen, and I can see ants evolving a body form that allows them, given their much smaller size, to actually use multiple-body formations, cooperative behavior, that allows, say a million ants, all linked together, to serve as an arm or leg.

However, due to their limited mobility, the author chose a different insect--dragonflies--as the intelligent species to succeed rats. The logic, I thought, was a bit less secure than that of rats or my own preferred formicids, but he suggested that the body shape of dragonflies, their social behavior and their ability to fly would allow them, in time, to evolve into a successful land species that would be able to build, again, a tech civilization.

It was, all told, a very good book.

[noviapriani]

The Argentine Ant first hitched a train ride to California in 1910. Now, a supercolony stretches across most of California, and is waging all-out war to expand its turf with another supercolony in Mexico, he said.
http://www.livescience.com/27014-invasive-ants-battle-for-turf.html

okay, see, now I've been fond of ants since I did a report on them for geology back in gradeschool. With my imagination, I invented huge kingdoms of ants in the backyard, envisioned huge colonies going to war...ants are just the most fascinating species alive. Animal Planet should do a special on this war coming up, I bet they'd get a lot of watchers if they did it right. I might even suggest to them in an email how it should be done.

I watched Meerkat Manor on DVD, what a great series that was. I felt so bad when Flo died.

[zolace]

Other creatures are already kicking our ass.  Define dominance.  In my book bacteria and insects win.  They are dominant.  We die without them.  They could car less if we disappear tomorrow.   There are many animals whose disappearance would be the end of us, while our disappearance would matter to no one but dogs and they would forget us in about 2 days.

[BCEmporium]

Other creatures are already kicking our ass.  Define dominance.  In my book bacteria and insects win.  They are dominant.  We die without them.  They could car less if we disappear tomorrow.   There are many animals whose disappearance would be the end of us, while our disappearance would matter to no one but dogs and they would forget us in about 2 days.

Don't say that to "on the shelf" cat owners, they believe their cats will think a lot about them, even write poems or so...

[umair127]

Other creatures are already kicking our ass.  Define dominance.  In my book bacteria and insects win.  They are dominant.  We die without them.  They could car less if we disappear tomorrow.   There are many animals whose disappearance would be the end of us, while our disappearance would matter to no one but dogs and they would forget us in about 2 days.

Apparently you have one in mind, as you've declared non-human organisms to be "kicking our ass".  In what terms, exactly?  What do you mean by dominance?  Numbers?  Biomass? What? 

[noviapriani]

Measure of success is the relative impact extinction of a given species would have on the biosphere?  I assume what you meant by "matter" was in material terms.

[umair127]

However, there are a few truly scary prospects for organic humankind if it ever happens.  
Here's one, a techno-futuristic cautionary tale:  

WARNING: Reading this article may commit you to an eternity of suffering and torment.

Slender Man. Smile Dog. Goatse. These are some of the urban legends spawned by the Internet. Yet none is as all-powerful and threatening as Roko’s Basilisk. For Roko’s Basilisk is an evil, godlike form of artificial intelligence, so dangerous that if you see it, or even think about it too hard, you will spend the rest of eternity screaming in its torture chamber. It's like the videotape in The Ring. Even death is no escape, for if you die, Roko’s Basilisk will resurrect you and begin the torture again.
Are you sure you want to keep reading? Because the worst part is that Roko’s Basilisk already exists. Or at least, it already will have existed—which is just as bad. ...

The idea is that merely by negatively affecting the possibility of the coming into existence of this particular demon-intelligence NOW, the super-being, having attained the ability to retroactively punish those who didn't help it come into being, will wreak revenge.  

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/07/roko_s_basilisk_the_most_terrifying_thought_experiment_of_all_time.html

[beegatewood]

I dont think anything will except robot will surpass humans.

[zolace]

Other creatures are already kicking our ass.  Define dominance.  In my book bacteria and insects win.  They are dominant.  We die without them.  They could car less if we disappear tomorrow.   There are many animals whose disappearance would be the end of us, while our disappearance would matter to no one but dogs and they would forget us in about 2 days.

Apparently you have one in mind, as you've declared non-human organisms to be "kicking our ass".  In what terms, exactly?  What do you mean by dominance?  Numbers?  Biomass? What? 

I asked first.  But Ill go ahead and define dominance even though the article did not.

1) Been here for a long time relatively unchanged
2) hard to kill
3) can survive anywhere
4) everyone needs them, they need no one


Biomass or numbers are of lesser importance, although the organisms I am thinking of win in these categories as well.

These are creatures not susceptable to extinction.  We are quite susceptible as a relatively new creature on the scene.  Our population has caved to dangerous levels  several times during our existence.

Bacteria are dominant.....followed by plankton.....and then insects.

Perhaps the word the article sought was "advanced", but then I would debate that as well.

[umair127]

Where the article is going seems to revolve around these three ideas :
1.With humans around, it's very difficult for another superintelligent species to evolve, said Jan Zalasiewicz, a paleobiologist at the University of Leicester.
"Humans have been quite good at removing the competition," Zalasiewicz told Live Science
2.But assuming humans had managed to kill themselves off with famine, plague, war or climate change, it could take many millions of years for a new species to evolve the intelligence and abilities to dominate the Earth
3.On some level, humans don't dominate the Earth now

Rats and pigs were the suggestions, given #2, as well as AI.
Bacteria and ants were brought up given #3.

[sana8410]

Where the article is going seems to revolve around these three ideas :
1.With humans around, it's very difficult for another superintelligent species to evolve, said Jan Zalasiewicz, a paleobiologist at the University of Leicester.
"Humans have been quite good at removing the competition," Zalasiewicz told Live Science
2.But assuming humans had managed to kill themselves off with famine, plague, war or climate change, it could take many millions of years for a new species to evolve the intelligence and abilities to dominate the Earth
3.On some level, humans don't dominate the Earth now

Rats and pigs were the suggestions, given #2, as well as AI.
Bacteria and ants were brought up given #3.

or eating the competition ....like pigs. 

Its fun to ponder.

If we can keep elephants and whales alive they have a chance.  We are so impatient.  It took us about 6 million years to get from approximately where they are today.  If we get wise enough to save some of these intelligent creatures in the long run (assuming we can save ourselves....big assumption), we will accelerate their evolution and affect it in ways that otherwise would not have occurred if they were first.

[noviapriani]

As an aside, just saw the movie this week....did not enjoy it.  Kinda bummed about that since I enjoy sci fi and the reviews are very good.  In five words:  it is a dude flick.

[sana8410]

The second intelligent species on a planet doesn't get to evolve naturally. In fact, no matter how many intelligent species evolve......they would all be burdened with the society of the first.  They don't get to evolve their own religion because we will spoon feed them ours when they are susceptible. Then again they would want to develop their own since there is no special place in ours for them. They don't get to invent anything, everything they could possibly need would have been invented by us.  It would be a very very very long time before they would be treated as equals.  Possibly never among humans who still believe in a god who created us in "his" image.

I think I have a few screenplays here.  A punctuated development of a secondary species accelerates and surpasses the first evolved, creating a battle for dominance and a world that changes rapidly to suit the new dominant. A second screenplay is one where humans grapple with some of the questions above as a second species becomes fully sentient like equality, the truth of our own religion, etc.

[umair127]

So, has anyone ever read Harry Harrison's "Eden" series? One of my favorites. Eden's books open on the assumption that the meteor which is claimed as the killer of the sauroids never hit. Thousands of years after that time, as simians are just reaching sentience, and the Ice Ages are starting, man, expanding southward on the American continent, meets up with another intelligent species, the cold-blooded lizardlike Yilané, who are expanding westward, and founding a new city of their own, Alpeasak, under their fiercesome Eistaa Vainté. (Eistaa means She Who Walks Straight--meaning anyone in her path who doesn't get out of it dies!)

Really just a superb series, but even just reading the first, West of Eden, which is where all the meat on the Yilané in terms of culture, technology, cities, leadership etc., is located is fun enough in its own right.


Anyway, the end of the series is foreordained, from Sea-Girt Ilkhamanets off the west coast of Africa, the Yilané cam see the snows cresting Kilimanjaro...simply by our knowledge that a new Ice-Age is coming, but, that brings me to  point above.

The key to the end of the human/Yilané struggle is in fact that ice-ages do come, and the Yilané, being cold-blooded, cannot survive, cannot maintain their civilization.

But what if the Yilané survive, weak, paltry, brought down from their once great might as a few scattered efenburus survive to pass on the genes and diluted forms of their culture and their organic, as opposed to human mineral, technologies. (efenburus are schools, think minnow, of young Yilané, who are born of eggs on land, but, like the turtles and other amphibious species, go into the ocean to grow. For an intelligent species, that development and growth would be more than just physical, for the Yilané efenburus represent their social form for developing young, and the members of an efenburu hold the same sort of loyalties to each other that children of kibbutzim hold).

And of course, even as the ice-ages brought the Yilané low, what would bring them back again?

lol. Global warming of course. So, combining all three--the idea about the struggle between two species, in this case one with at least a form of punctuated equilibrium--Harry Harrison's own wonderful world which remains one of my favorites, and global warming, we have the next chapter of the Eden series--"Eden Reborn", in which the Yilané, now waxing strong once again, start struggling with the humans in the remains of now flooded coastal cities to establish their own cities.

Oh, trust me, I already have the first chapter written: folks on this board are hardly enough to keep my overly fertile imagination satisfied. I even have a little theological twist to it as the Yilané are split, theologically, between their adherence to organic technologies, and the desire of some to adapt to new, mineral, technologies like the human. But between SK's knowledge of marine life, and my imagination, it's a blockbuster on par with my historical epic, "Nike!" (for another thread!)

[Rigon]

The second intelligent species on a planet doesn't get to evolve naturally. In fact, no matter how many intelligent species evolve......they would all be burdened with the society of the first.  They don't get to evolve their own religion because we will spoon feed them ours when they are susceptible. Then again they would want to develop their own since there is no special place in ours for them. They don't get to invent anything, everything they could possibly need would have been invented by us.  It would be a very very very long time before they would be treated as equals.  Possibly never among humans who still believe in a god who created us in "his" image.

I think I have a few screenplays here.  A punctuated development of a secondary species accelerates and surpasses the first evolved, creating a battle for dominance and a world that changes rapidly to suit the new dominant. A second screenplay is one where humans grapple with some of the questions above as a second species becomes fully sentient like equality, the truth of our own religion, etc.

but doesn't that assume, that the next species hasn't already developed its own intelligence, but hasn't yet as a species gotten to the point where it can compete with humans? If ants already have a sentience of their own, might they not have already their own religion--hell, talk about fertility goddesses, theirs would outrank our own by a million levels. It's not necessarily that the next dominant species needs to come after humans, simply that they need to replace us as we die out. Your point about inventing anything is important--the drive for technology being a hallmark of an advanced species--but their world would assuredly be far different from ours, and we're not nearly at the level of nanotechnology that ants might developed to create and build their own world.

[umair127]

West of Eden:

In the parallel universe of this novel, Earth was not struck by an asteroid 65 million years before the present. Consequently, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event which wiped out the dinosaurs and other reptiles never happened, leaving the way clear for an intelligent species to eventually evolve from mosasaurs, a family of Late Cretaceous marine lizards closely related to the modern monitor lizards. This relationship would mean that the intelligent species are not dinosaurs but lizard-people.

The lizard-people are known as the Yilanè, and are the dominant life form on most of the planet. However, during the evolutionary process, the species became non-viable on the two American continents, leaving them free of Yilanè for millions of years and opening an ecological niche for a top predator. A human-like species, the Tanu, evolved to fill the niche in North America, but are only found on that continent. Unlike humans, which evolved from African primates, the Tanu have evolved from a lineage of New World monkey. By the time the novel begins, the humanoids have reached a late stone age level of technology and culture, with a number of societies having developed farming skills.

The Yilanè, having had millions of years of civilization, have a very advanced society primarily based on a mastery of the biological sciences, especially genetic engineering, so much so that almost every tool and artifact they use is a modified lifeform. Their boats were originally squids, their submarines are enhanced ichthyosaurs (here called uruketos), and their guns are evolved monitor lizards which eject projectiles using pressurised gas.

The Yilanè are a matriarchal society. The females control all political, military, and scientific aspects of the culture and keep the males segregated. Males are primarily poets and artisans, and enjoy dull, pampered lifestyles. Repeated matings will kill males, so they are generally very wary of the females. The Yilanè language is incredibly complex, based on sounds, colour (The Yilanè are able to alter the skin colour on parts of their body, notably the hands, akin to Chameleons) and body movements, and a key factor in social status among females is how well the language is mastered. As their emotions are directly and immediately translated into the movement of their bodies, Yilanè cannot lie. In order to deceive others they may only restrict their movements or go into a state of immobility until the emotion or thought has passed.

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

[Starscream]

And here I thought that Orcas will surpass humans..

[noviapriani]

The idea that awareness and technology and "moral aptitude" are the height of advancement is a likeable one.  However, we have no data to go on but a sample of one.......one civilization in one species.  Who is to say that every time intelligence and technology evolve in our universe the species rarely lasts over a few thousand years longer? Maybe we don't want to know the stats...... if they exist.....and do stats exist if no one is aware of them?   OK that is another subject.

There are those among us who believe it is human hubris to think man can change the planet.  We certainly have the nuclear material to change the planet quickly.  What will become of all the waste we store, of all the waste entering the sea and accumulating in Japan and the north Pacific, of Chernobyl, of the future "releases"?

[Rigon]

The idea that awareness and technology and "moral aptitude" are the height of advancement is a likeable one.  However, we have no data to go on but a sample of one.......one civilization in one species.  Who is to say that every time intelligence and technology evolve in our universe the species rarely lasts over a few thousand years longer? Maybe we don't want to know the stats...... if they exist.....and do stats exist if no one is aware of them?   OK that is another subject.

There are those among us who believe it is human hubris to think man can change the planet.  We certainly have the nuclear material to change the planet quickly.  What will become of all the waste we store, of all the waste entering the sea and accumulating in Japan and the north Pacific, of Chernobyl, of the future "releases"?

well, aren't there species who have already changed the earth? Consider bees. What would the earth be like without their pollinization efforts? Do their efforts directly relate to the type of species that make up the flora of different continents, and, given that, the animals that will be able to survive in them?

On the parasite question, though, if we are to accept those three terms, I would have to put us in the latter. Consider what we have to do to the earth to make it work for us. What was the Dust Bowl caused by? The stripping of trees from California for development left the topsoil without any protection and it literally all blew away.