What kinds of creatures would be likely to evolve sapience?

This isn't anything I intend to use right away, just something I've been thinking of: people often mock the idea of Human Aliens as overly humanocentric. It would be slightly more fair (if somewhat overly mystical) to say that certain species repeatedly evolve on life-bearing worlds, and on most worlds one of those develops tools and culture. Monkeys, dolphins, and ants seem like good choices for "common lifeforms"—but are there any other species that seem like they could have become intelligent if they'd evolved in a slightly different environment?

edited 14th Jul '11 5:15:27 PM by feotakahari

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

I hear corvids (crows, jays, and iirc gulls) are the third smartest group of species on earth, so you might want to look into that.

But honestly, Starfish Aliens have always made more sense to me.

edited 14th Jul '11 6:08:56 PM by TheEarthSheep

Still Sheepin'

I'd avoid useing earth species as a measuring stick if I were you, but, assuming that a creature lives in a gravity well like a planet then they would develope an up and a down; assuming they need to move it would behove them to have a front, some kind of actors such as limbs with muscles, and some sort of symmetry for energy efficiency; arguably they would need some kind of sensors like eyes in a forward direction as well as modified limbs for manipulation especially if they can comunicate with each other.

while it's probably a good assumption that brains are useful and more brains would be more usefull (well perhaps not literally more, but more complex brains) they will also take up a lot of energy. also for a sophisticated alien, or alteast one we could have a hope of talking to, they'd have to have a way of comunication and a society of some note.

there's a lot you can pack into the above package and that's before talking about biology, machines, etc.

Also, to directly answer you're question. Birds, Cephalopods (the brainiest of all invertibrates), Sharks, Worms, Some of the big mammals but mostly the simpler things really.

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Ninja'd

edited 14th Jul '11 6:02:37 PM by GiantSpaceChinchilla

I've heard musings about Octopus and Squid intelligence.

There was apparently a very intelligent dinosaur that paleontologists believed could have become a sapient had the dinosaurs not been wiped out.

Cuttlefish are also said to be very intelligent.

edited 14th Jul '11 7:38:52 PM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

Any creature of already high intelligence, with a social nature, facing a lot of rapidly changing challenges in its environment. In us, at least, sapience seems to be a by-product of needing to model the behavior of other members of a large, close-knit group.

Elephants and Cetaceans (dolphins and whales) are alright candidates, and some parrots are pretty smart.

Large avians, mammals or therapsids (warm-blooded reptiles).

You exist because we allow it and you will end because we demand it.

I'd suggest you start by reading about Transhumanism and Uplifted Animals.

Games like Eclipse Phase or Transhuman Space both have uplifts (the name for animals that have been modified to give them sapience).

Octopi are very popular in that kind of work, it would seem. Primates would be of course prime candidates (although obviously they don't answer your question, since they did evolve). Amongst the birds, the raven and grey parrots would be at the top of the list. Orcas and dolphins for the cetaceans, etc.

But that's just transhumanism! If you go further away, there is no particular reason you should limit yourself to anything. Those examples are common and popular in that genre because it generally deals with what's just around the corner in our world, right now. But if you're gonna go for sci-fi, well, the sky's the limit :)

I would argue against Ants (and othe social insects), but that's just me, because their intelligence is decentralised, and there is clear evidence that they have not evolved for hundreds of thousands of years, meaning they don't need to! They're just fine the way they are :)

edited 15th Jul '11 10:22:19 AM by fibojoly

What is this I don't even

I would argue against Ants (and othe social insects), but that's just me, because their intelligence is decentralised, and there is clear evidence that they have not evolved for hundreds of thousands of years, meaning they don't need to! They're just fine the way they are :)

I don't know if you know about these, but there are some pretty seriously amazing examples of ant societies.

Honestly, I see no difference real difference between ants today and humans pre-historically. I mean, ants have agriculture!

AGRICULTURE.

Still Sheepin'

Is a sapient Hive Mind too weird?

What book was it that I read with the sapient-hive-mind mutated roaches?

"This thread has gone so far south it's surrounded by nesting penguins. " — Madrugada

Lessinath : could it be George R R Martin's Sand Kings ? One of the most famous Outer Limits episode, as well as being an excellent novella of its own :)

Earth Sheep : don't misunderstand me, I love ants and social insects! I read up quite a bit specifically about the swarm behaviour of a few social insects (ants and wasps, mostly) a few years back for a M Sc thesis and discovered even more stuff like the crazy hives some species of wasps build, or how the termites build the inner sanctum around a queen (nothing to do with telepathy, sadly :P ) There is some amazing stuff out there!

My point was that social insects were not intelligent as individuals, but as a group. They are the very definition of a swarm intelligence, where what we humans perceive as complex decisions and structures occur by emergence. I'm just kinda sad that instead of trying to explore their very alien nature, instead of celebrating this wonderful phenomenon of emergent intelligent, we always try to anthropomorphize them, is all :P

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it would be a bit sad to go with the "ants thinking like humans" routine, for the purpose of this thread, when ants are really Starfish Aliens in disguise :)

P.S. Intelligent Gerbils looks like it could provide some inspiration, btw.

edited 15th Jul '11 6:55:23 PM by fibojoly

What is this I don't even

Alright, it's cool.

For some reason, I'm reminded of the (Ray Bradbury? I don't know who the author is) story of ants going nuts and destroying all society as soon as they discover weapons, and the human military dispatches but can't fight them because seriously, you can't hit no ants with an AK-47 and everyone dies.

Good times.

Still Sheepin'

Do not use Intelligent Gerbils. I'd say they're even more preposterous then Humanoid Aliens, really. It's reasonable to say that there's going to be some traces of a being's evolutionary ancestors in its psychology. Doing it to the extent it's done in that trope, though, is laughable.

edited 15th Jul '11 7:08:50 PM by nrjxll

So you think guy with a non-human face is more realistic than a creature with a non-human body plan? You realise that unless you go seriously starfishy then most aliens are going to be gerbilly to some degree right? Come to think of it, unless you want to throw out the biology book then the chances are an alien is going to resemble something from this planet it one way or another.

edited 15th Jul '11 10:28:55 PM by MattII

I'm not talking about aliens with some resemblance to creatures from this planet. I'm talking about this:

That is what an Intelligent Gerbil is defined as, that is what I consider totally ridiculous. The Intelligent Gerbil does not have a non-human body plan - that's why it's so ridiculous. I don't consider humanoid aliens terribly likely, no, but I do think they're infinitely more likely then anthropomorphic Earth animal aliens.

Then they go and give us a picture of a Ssi-ruu, which may be slightly anthropomorphic, but isn't just a human with scales.

Aaah, I might have misunderstood Intelligent Gerbil then, because that picture is definitely how I understood the trope. I assumed it was something along the lines of the dinosaurs from Dinotopia, you know? So it would be more like the Lizardmen from Warhammer Fantasy, then?

What is this I don't even

Take it up with Image Picking, then - personally I always thought that picture would fit much better on Lizard Folk or something. Although if it was a Intelligent Gerbil, it wouldn't be a "human with scales", it would be an anthropomorphic lizard whose whole culture was based off of traits of normal Earth lizards.

Actually, now that I look at it, Intelligent Gerbil seems to have a lot of misuse along the lines of what you thought it was. To the TRSMobile, away!

edited 16th Jul '11 8:48:42 PM by nrjxll

Okay, so if Intelligent Gerbils are more-or-less human, WTF comes between Intellectual Animals and Petting-Zoo People?

edited 17th Jul '11 1:58:55 AM by MattII

Who knows. That's one reason why I intend to take Intelligent Gerbil to the Trope Repair Shop.

Want ideas? Take a look at the Uplift series (and, by extension, GURPS Uplift).

edited 17th Jul '11 9:31:23 AM by FarseerLolotea

I also don't see the point of Intellectual Gerbils. It really does come across a "oh look, an author made a unique term! Let's tropify it!"

By my understanding, two of the key contributors to human evolution favoring intelligence were 1: Adaptability, as we were a species who were surviving in a great variety of changing climates, thus pushing us to be born with more open-ended programming to take in whatever information would be needed for the unpredictable environment our genes would have to manifest in, and another being that we are a highly social species, and had to evolve complex mechanisms to be able to maneuver around each other to get priority breeding and also to optimize our ability to cooperate against greater challenges, understanding what other members of say a hunting group would be doing to contribute towards a unified effort where each individual wouldn't necessarily just be doing what they would be doing if they were alone. The autonomous actions of other people who aren't necessarily within sensory range is a pretty abstract thing for a lot of normal animals to grok.