174-175: Got milk?

[RockB]

@bunnyboy - Thanks for the Big Picture. So I was somewhat off, but (arguably) at least looking in the right direction

Cool! Here it's only cow milk.

I would be careful before switching to another form of milk, especially if you drink a great deal of it. There are risks associated with soy milk

My, putting it like that is like saying that you shouldn't go out during the day too much because there are risks associated with sun light (also there is skin cancer) and that's not even in doubt, unlike the health issues that might be caused by replacing other milk with soy milk for infants, as described in the article you linked to. Also, I bet one could find "health risks related to cow milk", too, I didn't bother to look.

Unfortunately, like corn syrup, soy is used freaking everywhere in the West, especially in the US.

Not contradicting that, alas:

I don't know that we have enough data to quantify the health risks of the large amount of cumulative soy in the western diet, and to me it seems prudent to avoid overloading on it.

Since soy is much more common in eastern/asian countries, you could get some hints about the general health risks from there, plus westerners would hardly be at risk of overloading on it, obviously not in comparison to easterners. (<-- I understand that all this looks like I'm defending the soy industry, which was not my intention, instead I wanted to place a counter-point against your argument of "too much soy in westerners diet might be a health risk" when even the health risks of too much soy in one especially sensitive case (infants) is in question.)

Now all that said, being allergic to soy or some component of soy would be a complete game changer: Then any amount of it would be too much and the soy being used freaking everywhere would be a very serious issue. I'm glad that I'm not allergic, I wouldn't know what to use instead of soy sauce to go with sushi.

I personally use almond milk if I need an alternative to dairy.

Here, cow milk is by far the cheapest, all the possible alternatives are quite expensive in comparison and I can digest cow milk, so I buy some alternatives (soy, oat and almond) only very rarely to get a variation.

Ahem...

Considering the cut throat characteristics of the time period after the collapse of the ecosystem I find it far more probable that the small mammals simply out competed and annihilated the smaller breeds of dinosaurs. As I said above, when size and intelligence are similar then mammals are both the faster breeders and have a shorter maturation period (when taking the closest dinosaur analogue we have into consideration).

[/quote]
OK... that might be one (major) factor to explain the rise of the mammals over the lizards. All this happened before remarkably higher intelligence even entered the game, so intelligence it was not needed, only the physical properties of being a mammal made the difference. Was it that mammals could adapt faster to the (very) suddenly harsher conditions? I can't believe that faster breeding and whatnot by itself would give mammals an edge because it didn't do that when conditions were good for the dinosaurs. Unless the dinosaurs had already filled all ecological... niches/places to the brim and the sudden collapse of the ecosystem hit them a lot harder because they had "maxed out their options" and the mammals, who were the underdogs of the ecosystem back then, were greeted with their biggest competitors suddenly struggling and vanishing and could fill in the free niches faster than the dinosaurs could recover from the ecological hit by evolution, which would have amounted to basically starting over.

Tl;dr: It was not (or little) to the mammals credit, it rather was that the dinosaurs were too "successfully adapted" to the rich ecosystem before the collapse.

Maybe I'm splitting hairs but what do you thing, y'all?

(Hnnng, took me too long... All the stuff above doesn't take Arioch's comment into account.)

[RockB]

But my point is that birds appeared 85 million years before the extinction, not after. Birds and pterosaurs and other dinosaurs coexisted for almost the whole dinosaur period.

That was something that I found surprising as a youth: I had thought of flight as an advanced feature that must have appeared very late in the dinosaur period, but actually it's a basic feature that appeared fairly early, in the Jurassic, and evolved separately in two different groups, as pterosaurs and birds are not closely related, and have different adaptations for flight.

I had no idea. School's out for me since some decades, I even learned that birds are dinosaurs only several years ago.

...
I don't think there's any question that the meteor was involved; there is a distinctive ash layer at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, above which there are no non-avian dinosaur fossils at all. So it appears that the dinosaurs died very quickly, rather than lingering on and being out-competed by the mammals.

Unless they (or the overwhelming majority of them) were outright killed by the impact, IMHO that wouldn't contradict my idea about them being too fitted to the rich conditions before the impact and then dying out very quickly because they couldn't sustain themselves when conditions became suddenly much harsher.

(There's no argument that the meteor event didn't happen, but some researchers point to intense volcanic activity at the time and suggest that this was a more important factor in the extinction. However, it seems obvious to me that the vulcanism was caused by the meteor impact, as the epicenter of the volcanic activity was exactly where you'd expect it to be, on the exact opposite side of the Earth in the spot where the shock waves from the impact would have converged.)

So on top of the devastation caused by the meteor itself, it also caused a volcanic winter (not unlike a nuclear winter), the Krakatoa did that all by itself, just not as bad. - yeah that adds up.

That's a thing I find quite interesting: The dinosaurs "ruled the earth for much longer than the humans, but they didn't develop the intelligence that was necessary to develop into the homo sapiens. What were the conditions to get that going? The dinosaurs must have had their chances, it was a rich world, suitable for all kinds of creatures, small and big, and they hat much more time, but they didn't develop any kind of society and didn't build, at least not to the best of my knowledge.

It's possible that dinosaurs (and birds) of the period lacked brain features necessary to develop human-style sentience, and some theorize that sentient dinosaurs would eventually have arisen given enough time. There are birds today that are pretty smart, so I think it's certainly possible.

Not agreeing here, simply because no other species on earth does things on the level of the Neanderthal humans now, nor is there any hint they would. Some birds are smart, there is a story of a raven that "adopted" a starving kitten and fed it, and there is a story of some researchers creating a fake "threat" to a family birds and the next generation knew about the masks the researchers wore and attacked them outside of a threatening situation, thus showing that the bird parents were able to tell their young about this specific threat. That alone proves some smarts, cognitive processing and the ability to communicate about an abstract object. Not too shabby at all! But even though (on top of that) birds can use tools, they don't intentionally create or improve them, AFAIK. And IMHO it's a big step from selecting a certain stick out of many and using it to poke something to building a fence or a hut. Or even just a spear.

So... At how many junctions did our ancestors make the right turn to finally enable us to discuss this here?

But even if you consider rain forest tribes with no access to (and no immediate need for) a certain level of technology, they are clearly humans who build, at least fences and huts and tools. Or create paintings on the walls of their caves. AFAIK, no animal does that now.

Back to the dinosaurs: They had some millions of years give or take, much longer than the humans up to now. We find their bones and sometimes their full dead bodies but we have not found anything they built, am I right?

But I think that sentience is not an inevitable end-product of evolution, and it probably requires a very specific (and probably unlikely) set of circumstances.

Hah! Fully agreeing to that!*

There have been complex life forms with brains on Earth for roughly 500 million years, but sentience has arisen only once in a single group of species (genus homo). Large brains are very expensive metabolically, and present all kinds of additional challenges (fewer offspring that take longer to develop, longer and more difficult live births, greater requirement for learning vs. instinct, etc.). Intelligence is not always the best survival strategy.

And agreeing to that.*

*: I think we slowly get ready for "So where is everybody?" While I'd be very interested in going there, maybe we shouldn't, for the sake of the story

[Arioch]

I'm sure there are many barriers to human-like sentience, but a key one seems to be the need for fine manipulators for tool use. We have a variety of very smart animals on Earth that are essentially precluded from tool use by their body plans: birds need to use their forelimbs for flight and their hindlimbs for perching or standing, and so it's very difficult to modify either for fine manipulation. Whales and dolphins have developed sophisticated brains for echolocation and complex social interactions and rudimentary language, but their finned aquatic body profile more or less precludes the development of fine manipulators. Elephants are probably the most intelligent non-primate land mammals, again with complex social interactions, long lifespans and excellent memory, but their size and weight means they need all four limbs to support them, and there's only so much you can do with a single trunk.

The need for free limbs is a strong bias for bipedalism when it comes to tool use and sentience. The theropod dinosaurs were already bipedal and had their forelimbs free, so if the conditions were right they might have developed their forelimbs into manipulators. But of course, we'll never know.

The other group of Earth animals that are highly intelligent are cephalopods. Octopuses and cuttlefish can be very clever, with larger brains and more complex nervous systems than any other invertebrates, and the need to control their very complex dynamic camouflage patterns. Their tentacles and beak could theoretically evolve into fine manipulators for tools, but they have a more basic problem: the cephalopod brain forms a ring around the esophagus, and so there is direct competition for space between the esophagus and the brain; the brain can only get so large without choking off the animal's ability to swallow food. Alas, poor cuttlefish... they're about as adorable as a squiddy-tentacled-thing can get.

[Fotiadis_110]

It seems odd that mammals should evolve a baby food that appears to be so problematic to digest, but I'm sure there's some logical biochemical rationale for why the system works.

*inner Biochemist itching*

So why is milk MILK? Why lactose? Why do we lose the ability to digest lactose and why do we get ill if and when we consume it?

Odd questions yes but: Milk is nutrient and energy rich, packed with proteins needed for growth including almost every hard to synthesize amino acid and mineral a given baby animal needs as well as holding massive concentrations of Calcium sodium and potassium which are needed for bone growth along with magnesium and others to maintain metabolic stability.

Basically it's rocket fuel for baby animals. Skip the whole energy intensive and slipshod process of 'build a good digestion track, then grow' Nope: just grow. Mum will do the heavy lifting of making something for you to eat.

Lactose? Produced from Galactase and Glucose, Glucose and Galactase are both really easy to metabolize which would cause problems if say bacteria snuck into the glands producing the Milk substrate. Lactose on the other hand is a stabilized form that is difficult to turn back into the raw materials and is found only in mammals. In a world filled with bacteria trying to eat EVERYTHING picking a soluble store-able form of easy to digest food source is a winner only if you don't get a bacterial infection before you can feed your offspring. How exactly we evolved the pathways to first produce and then digest a novel food source. That is a question for folks with a paleo-metabolic degree.

Oooh i found a research paper! https://jbiol.biomedcentral.com/article ... 6/jbiol139

Uuuuh if my skim read is correct: we invented sweat glands that dumped antimicrobials onto eggs O_o Maybe live young licked antimicrobial out of tasty spots of fur? Maybe they helped with calcium accumulation for bone formation? Interesting that Lactose metabolism actually harnesses some of the enzymes known to have antimicrobial properties.

Anyway: so that is how we invented lactose, How did we invent the digestion? probably more jury rigged proteins. I mean other than cheese making bacteria nothing else in the environment could digest the stuff. Possibly we invented lactose then Yogurt producing bacteria got involved and we could digest that till later when we invented a way to digest it directly? Leaving us with the very bacteria that actually cause the unpleasantness of Lactose intolerance today as a by product of the path to independent lactose digestion.Z

As for WHY we stop digesting lactose? The reason is simple: protein synthesis is energy intensive and relatively slow. It takes DAYS for us to fight off simple viruses and bacterial infections. To maintain enough protein to break down lactose into something we can absorb through our gut we have to produce the enzyme in large volumes all of the time. If you turn it off your metabolism can turn that same energy to just about any other process in the body of your choice, say breeding or growth or fat storage or surviving starvation.

If you aren't producing it however and consume more than a small amount of lactose? Your gut is a reservoir of millions of bacteria hitching a ride for the free food. Some of them do useful things like break down otherwise toxic compounds in food, some make vitamins, and others just make carbon dioxide and methane. So Lactose digestion by bacteria dumps a lot of gas into your gut which tends to have deleterious consequences, while also throwing off gut PH which your gut usually uses as an indicator you've collected a stomach bug. So off you run to the loo. Bad day. Please note the same can happen to a person who drinks milk all the time suddenly consuming large volumes for the same reason (one glass a day will not leave you immune to the sudden consumption of 2 litres at once, as i recall a farm employee found out to his horror at one point in my life).

So Milk is a biologically (mostly) inert food storage system that feeds offspring and remains a strong contender for nutrient intake even as adults, although most species of mammal decide that eating a raw food source is a better bet for survival than depending on feeding on other members of mammalia for the rest of their life surprising? Probably not. Interesting side note: cows don't make milk tailored for humans or even calves, because artificial breeding pressures totally ignore what the animal needs at the cost of external gross estimations. Thus there is controversy over odd things like A2 milk which MAY leave you developing a milk milk allergy due to dodgy proteins in cows milk.But if you are lactose intolerant A2 isn't going to help. Needless to say the matter is complicated.

[dragoongfa]

OK... that might be one (major) factor to explain the rise of the mammals over the lizards. All this happened before remarkably higher intelligence even entered the game, so intelligence it was not needed, only the physical properties of being a mammal made the difference. Was it that mammals could adapt faster to the (very) suddenly harsher conditions? I can't believe that faster breeding and whatnot by itself would give mammals an edge because it didn't do that when conditions were good for the dinosaurs. Unless the dinosaurs had already filled all ecological... niches/places to the brim and the sudden collapse of the ecosystem hit them a lot harder because they had "maxed out their options" and the mammals, who were the underdogs of the ecosystem back then, were greeted with their biggest competitors suddenly struggling and vanishing and could fill in the free niches faster than the dinosaurs could recover from the ecological hit by evolution, which would have amounted to basically starting over.

Tl;dr: It was not (or little) to the mammals credit, it rather was that the dinosaurs were too "successfully adapted" to the rich ecosystem before the collapse.

Maybe I'm splitting hairs but what do you thing, y'all?

(Hnnng, took me too long... All the stuff above doesn't take Arioch's comment into account.)

Don't underestimate faster breeding and maturation in terms of a species capability to annihilate competition in quick order. The most invasive species in the world are rats, followed closely by cats and then dogs.
Rats are extreme breeders, their offspring taking a little more than a month to sexually mature and due to the size of the litters that means that their breeding females can increase by several factors depending on the size of the litters. Rats also die obscenely quick due to predators and to each other, very few of them reach 1 year of age.
Now lets say that the ancient mammals of 65 million years ago were rat like in their behavior and mating characteristics. Suddenly all the main predators they had to deal with disappeared in a short amount of time due to the aforementioned ecological catastrophe. Without natural predators these ancient rats would see a population explosion which would cause them to go in a feeding frenzy within months. A feeding frenzy that would target everything within easy reach; land based small dinosaurs would probably be their first mark.

[Fotiadis_110]

Now lets say that the ancient mammals of 65 million years ago were rat like in their behavior and mating characteristics. Suddenly all the main predators they had to deal with disappeared in a short amount of time due to the aforementioned ecological catastrophe. Without natural predators these ancient rats would see a population explosion which would cause them to go in a feeding frenzy within months. A feeding frenzy that would target everything within easy reach; land based small dinosaurs would probably be their first mark.

New Zealand (Where i live) is a haven for hundreds of unique species of birds.
Most of our more interesting ones are stuck on offshore islands.

Because the rats ate them everywhere else.

Remember the weakness of eggs is they are not mobile, so you are stuck in a location for a few weeks/months while the young develop and they aren't usually able to fend for themselves on birth anyway.

Snack Time for Mammals. Who make Milk and feed their babies who don't need complicated digestion to develop rapidly and become 'Sexually mature rodents'

Honestly probably the only reason avians aren't extinct is you can fly off to islands and massive food overabundance after the extermination of larger species due to the Ratsplosion of the Cretaceous. Although that IS only a personal theory based on little actual evidence. (I figure Meteroite, bad year, Massive Vulcanism bad decade, into Ratsplosion, almost nothing could survive on the mainland.)

[Retagin]

Hello, first time actually saying anything after lurking for a year or so since I think I have something worthwhile to add.

My orbital mechanics professor really enjoys the big rock hitting earth as an example in orbital mechanics. Do note, this is the general jist I remember from his examples in office hours, and seeing as neither of us are archeologists or geologists, it should be taken with a grain of salt. I tend to trust his guesstimates since they were, at least at the time, reasonable and he was one of the lead engineers for the peacekeeper missile system so he does have a pedigree in making really bad days.

When objects interact with one another with any considerable force, heat tends to be generated from excess energy that was not imparted as physical forces or converted into sound. At high speeds a lot of materials tend to act like liquids in terms of displacement, such as soft dirt and melted rock.
Just like dropping a rock into water, a large meteor impacting earth would theoretically create a very large geyser of molten stone from the sheer energy of the impact. Due to the forces involved, this geyser would mostly exit the atmosphere, and re-solidify into volcanic glass in a sub orbital trajectory just outside the atmosphere. This is where my professor really enjoyed going over all of the math that says, roughly, most of that ejecta would roughly reenter earths atmosphere at the same time, give or take a few hours.
The resulting cascade of falling stars heats up the atmosphere as hundreds of millions of pieces of hot rock reenter almost simultaneously. With a sufficiently large asteroid, this could heat the surface of the earth to several hundred degrees Fahrenheit for a few hours. This is universally described as a really bad day.

Fortunately, dirt is a fantastic insulator. 4-5 inches of dirt is all you really need to survive with minor burns, and a foot down this would simply be unpleasantly warm. So for any lifeforms that tend to burrow or nest underground (Insects, mammals, plant roots) this would simply be a disaster of epic proportions. For large surface dwelling creatures who lay eggs exposed to the surface, or really anything without sufficient protection, this is a brief and incredibly fatal trip through temperatures equivalent to that of a pizza oven. Many of the larger dinosaurs would go totally extinct overnight, since both the eggs and surviving members would mostly all die in a single event. This also goes for many of the smaller non burrowing creatures who hunted small, burrowing creatures. Really handy that.
Most sea life would be totally fine.
The surviving large surface dwelling creatures would have to contend with starvation, since most plant life has been devastated and will take time to regrow. The equivalent to rats on the other hand take much less nutrition, can eat roots, and simply by pure luck are able to deal with a wider variety of conditions as stated earlier in the thread.

It was not that that mammals could out compete the surviving larger creatures, they did not need to. They were all dead or dying of starvation. So in short mammals won due to, practically, sheer blind luck. Large reptiles got absolutely shafted. Smaller reptiles whose eggs were semi-protected obviously made it through, since we have crocodiles, lizards, and birds. But considering the massive power vacuum that was left in the wake of such an event, expansion is inevitable for all survivors.

[Arioch]

Uuuuh if my skim read is correct: we invented sweat glands that dumped antimicrobials onto eggs O_o Maybe live young licked antimicrobial out of tasty spots of fur? Maybe they helped with calcium accumulation for bone formation? Interesting that Lactose metabolism actually harnesses some of the enzymes known to have antimicrobial properties.

Yeah, that tracks; primitive mammals like platypus and echidna don't have teats; they just sweat the milk directly through pores in the skin.

It was not that that mammals could out compete the surviving larger creatures, they did not need to. They were all dead or dying of starvation. So in short mammals won due to, practically, sheer blind luck. Large reptiles got absolutely shafted. Smaller reptiles whose eggs were semi-protected obviously made it through, since we have crocodiles, lizards, and birds. But considering the massive power vacuum that was left in the wake of such an event, expansion is inevitable for all survivors.

It's not hard to imagine how the disruption to the food chain would be fatal to large animals, but it's not as clear why the small dinosaurs were also swiftly wiped out. There were dinosaurs that were just as small as lizards and rats, and their eggs should have been just as protected.

[SaintofM]

Uuuuh if my skim read is correct: we invented sweat glands that dumped antimicrobials onto eggs O_o Maybe live young licked antimicrobial out of tasty spots of fur? Maybe they helped with calcium accumulation for bone formation? Interesting that Lactose metabolism actually harnesses some of the enzymes known to have antimicrobial properties.

Yeah, that tracks; primitive mammals like platypus and echidna don't have teats; they just sweat the milk directly through pores in the skin.

It was not that that mammals could out compete the surviving larger creatures, they did not need to. They were all dead or dying of starvation. So in short mammals won due to, practically, sheer blind luck. Large reptiles got absolutely shafted. Smaller reptiles whose eggs were semi-protected obviously made it through, since we have crocodiles, lizards, and birds. But considering the massive power vacuum that was left in the wake of such an event, expansion is inevitable for all survivors.

It's not hard to imagine how the disruption to the food chain would be fatal to large animals, but it's not as clear why the small dinosaurs were also swiftly wiped out. There were dinosaurs that were just as small as lizards and rats, and their eggs should have been just as protected.

THey probably turned into birds. The line between dinosaur and modern bird is far and few between, with several correlations in modern animals such as the leg structure of the typical chicken similar to that of the Tyrant Lizard King. There is at least one species of bird of prey that still has a claw like finger to help the chicks klimb back into the net when they fall (think the Harpie Eagle).

Some probably had some bad luck or got out competed. Lots of animals have that issue where a new contender comes in and does their nitch better or they are unprepared for its presence (such as the terror bird and dire worlves).

[Krulle]

Oof, you guys were productive overnight.

From what I've learned, he major reason why mammals outraced the surviving dinosaurs (who were small due to food shortages), was that mammals could steal the eggs and use those as food, while their own breed was "protected" by carrying it around.

Haven't seen this argument when crossreading the amount of posts, so put it out here...

edit: Fotiadis explaine dthis [url= https://www.well-of-souls.com/forums/vi ... 208#p37208[/url]. Although most birds are tree breeding, exactly because ground breeding birds are vulnerable.
Although they do have interesting survival strategies too (like breeding on off-shore islands), or having "flying watches", at least in areas with ground-based hunters.

[kiwi]

Hi Fotiadis

Thinking of NZ birds, I kinda would like to see an NZ native species f*ck over someone else’s ecosystem. Just once. For a change.

[raistlin34]

Oof, you guys were productive overnight.

From what I've learned, he major reason why mammals outraced the surviving dinosaurs (who were small due to food shortages), was that mammals could steal the eggs and use those as food, while their own breed was "protected" by carrying it around.

It's funny how people still believe survival of the fittest has to mean bigger, stronger, faster, etc... when in truth little things like self-regulating body temperature, a smaller body or a wider diet can take you a long way.

[asaenvolk]

especially a wider diet

[sunphoenix]

lol. Those Damned adaptable mammals!

Beryl ~ "But.. I'm not currently lactating!!!"
Alex ~ {snicker} "I can fix that...!"

[Voitan]

(There's no argument that the meteor event didn't happen, but some researchers point to intense volcanic activity at the time and suggest that this was a more important factor in the extinction. However, it seems obvious to me that the vulcanism was caused by the meteor impact, as the epicenter of the volcanic activity was exactly where you'd expect it to be, on the exact opposite side of the Earth in the spot where the shock waves from the impact would have converged.)

BASALT FLOODS BABY!
https://youtu.be/NrbdYcNTo7Y?t=770

[Mr.Tucker]

DAMMIT!!! I miss three days on the forum, and this conversation happens without me!

To add some late opinions to the evolutionary quagmire: on needs to remember that while we think the mammals at the time of the dinosaurs were placental (evolving during the Cretaceous), we don't actually have any proof of that. The first placental fossils date to immediately after the K-T boundary, and molecular clock studies show that modern placental (not stem ones) date to the early Paleogene. Seems more like a radiation occupying vacant niches than a hostile takeover.

As to why the mammals survived better (well, some of them), most paleobiologists actually point to burrows: non-avian dinos did not seem to burrow. The smaller ones relied on their high speed (dinosaurs were quick on two legs, compared to the mammals) to evade predators, but that wouldn't help them evade massive heatwaves and climate change. Mammals at the time were burrowers, and most likely had metabolisms that allowed them to enter states of torpor to conserve energy and oxygen. Thus making them better at "bunkering" during the fallout of an asteroid impact.

The intelligence of dinosaurs and mammals evolved in parallel. These are, after all, two competing sister branches of the most evolved animals on Earth. On average, for a given size, dinosaurs do not seem to have been any less intelligent than mammals. Dinosaurs were extraordinarily successful, having survived two large extinctions on their own. They also managed to outcompete both early mammals and late synapsids. To me, the fact that mammals rule the world now seems like a fluke. The wheel is ever turning, and there is no reason to suspect that their descendants would not rise to domination once more given another high-order extinction event.

I would caution against using "time to maturity" in comparisons between birds and mammals. While exhibiting outwardly similar levels of intelligence, birds have a pretty different brain structure (for instance, they don't have a proper neocortex). Essentially it is a case of "convergent evolution" applied to behaviours rather than physical structures (something which is extraordinarily interesting on it's own). They way in which they learn seems to be quite different compared to mammals (ultra-high bandwidth early stage, followed by life-long medium bandwidth in birds vs high bandwidth in early and mid life that then slowly petters off for mammals; yes, elderly birds seem to show very little difference in learning speed compared to younger mature birds). In the world of neuropsychology, the general modern consensus is that sentience is an emergent phenomenon. As such, it may take very different forms to what we are accustomed to (see Peter Watt's "Blindsight").

As part of a challenge, I've undertaken a hobby worldbuilding project to try and flesh out a civilisation that would follow a complete and sudden extinction of the human species. As such I had to choose an animal that would be most likely to succeed us in intelligence. I chose a pachyderm, because, after much reading, it seems to me like they are the only order of mammals (no, I won't choose another ape ), alive today that combine both (scarily) high intelligence, and tool manipulation (don't sell that trunk short; it's a pretty broken attribute, given its size, flexibility, strength, and dexterity with its fingers). My main stumbling block at the moment is trying to plausibly determine what set of conditions would lead them to become truly intelligent (since intelligence is beneficial enough that there isn't really a single set of circumstance that would lead to it appearing; any animal and niche can benefit from it; it's probably a matter of energy with a tipping point somewhere).

Funny addendums:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUAT9XrFSN0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMLY3L5_c2w
https://www.dana.org/article/bird-brain ... ompliment/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9WoBPSvJ04&t=334s

[GeoModder]

As part of a challenge, I've undertaken a hobby worldbuilding project to try and flesh out a civilisation that would follow a complete and sudden extinction of the human species. As such I had to choose an animal that would be most likely to succeed us in intelligence. I chose a pachyderm, because, after much reading, it seems to me like they are the only order of mammals (no, I won't choose another ape ), alive today that combine both (scarily) high intelligence, and tool manipulation (don't sell that trunk short; it's a pretty broken attribute, given its size, flexibility, strength, and dexterity with its fingers). My main stumbling block at the moment is trying to plausibly determine what set of conditions would lead them to become truly intelligent (since intelligence is beneficial enough that there isn't really a single set of circumstance that would lead to it appearing; any animal and niche can benefit from it; it's probably a matter of energy with a tipping point somewhere).

You must have liked "Footfall" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.

[Arioch]

I chose a pachyderm, because, after much reading, it seems to me like they are the only order of mammals (no, I won't choose another ape ), alive today that combine both (scarily) high intelligence, and tool manipulation (don't sell that trunk short; it's a pretty broken attribute, given its size, flexibility, strength, and dexterity with its fingers). My main stumbling block at the moment is trying to plausibly determine what set of conditions would lead them to become truly intelligent (since intelligence is beneficial enough that there isn't really a single set of circumstance that would lead to it appearing; any animal and niche can benefit from it; it's probably a matter of energy with a tipping point somewhere).

Even if the trunk developed "digits" and became very dextrous, it's very difficult to do any serious work with only one manipulator. I'm reminded of this every time I injure one of my hands. You really need to be able to hold the item you're working on and the tool you're working with; there are no bench clamps in the stone age. I think the trunk would have to split in two, and probably fairly high up the base. Which, not accidentally, more or less describes the Fithp from Footfall.

A split-trunk adaptation would probably require some sort of freak mutation. But having "hands" to work with may itself be a trigger for the path to sentience.

[gaerzi]

Talking of sentience to describe human-like intellect is a misnomer (popularized by Star Trek I believe); properly sentience is the ability to sense one's environment and react to it, which is actually a rather low bar to clear. Even people who aren't hippies are starting to acknowledge that, for example, plants are sentient too.

"Sapience" is a better word I think, since it's the one who used to describe our species (homo sapiens sapiens): the ability to acquire and transmit abstract knowledge.

[Arioch]

Talking of sentience to describe human-like intellect is a misnomer (popularized by Star Trek I believe); properly sentience is the ability to sense one's environment and react to it, which is actually a rather low bar to clear. Even people who aren't hippies are starting to acknowledge that, for example, plants are sentient too.

"Sapience" is a better word I think, since it's the one who used to describe our species (homo sapiens sapiens): the ability to acquire and transmit abstract knowledge.

"Sapience" just means intelligence, and a being (such as an AI) can very intelligent without being "self-aware" or having "free will", or the various hard-to-define characteristics which separate humans from AI or other animals. Which is why science fiction literature uses the term "sentience" instead, presumably because of the element of "experiencing subjectively". It's not a perfect term, as befitting a subject which no one knows exactly how to define, but it's what we have.

Amusingly, there's even a scholarly paper on the subject: https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handl ... 6789/25749

(And it's science fiction literature as a whole, not merely Star Trek. I don't know who was the first author to use the term, but the use goes back to the 1920's at least.)