My Daddy Was a Son of a Trichoplax...

[fajrdrako]

This article, which meret pointed me to, is very cool. Reminds me of a conversation I had the other day with maaseru and maaboroshi about Lucy, a few steps further up the evolutionary ladder. Seems to me this little guy should have a name. Grandpa, maybe?

The oversimplified bottom line:

They say that such a double-evolution was possible because the Placazoans already contained a genetic "tool kit" with genes that coded for a nervous system.

The research also makes it sound as if most animal life on Earth tends to evolve towards creatures with brains.

My mind is boggling. What does this imply for sentient life elsewhere in the cosmos?

Comments

[iclysdale.livejournal.com]

The Intelligent Design folks have got to be having a field day.

Seriously though - wouldn't it be hilarious if ID turned out to be right, for all the wrong reasons?

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

... And it was secular science that "proved" it?

Heh.

Doesn't this sound Lamarkian?

[msp-hacker.livejournal.com]

Implications for sentient life are good, if the basic building blocks for sentience occured twice on our own planet.

I always thought that question of other sentient life in the universe to be very strange. Why wouldn't there be other sentient life? The universe is so vast and so old the idea that there isn't anyone else out there seems far more unlikely even if all the planets within a hundred light years are all lifeless.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Implications for sentient life are good, if the basic building blocks for sentience occured twice on our own planet.

I makes sense to me as a sort of logical extrapolation: if intelligence is a good survival trait, and it is, then evolution will tend towards intelligence, physically manifest in brains. Even though (and because) intelligence is complex, because it has odds in its favour.

I think the only reason 'other sentient life in the universe' is questioned is because we haven't actually seen it yet. Or clear evidence of it. But that's not surprising, as we've barely left our planet, and barely peeked at our universe. Time will tell. After all, they say they've almost found proof of living microbes on Mars - and if all those microbes were making their evolutionary way towards eventual sentience, as this article would imply - well. There you have it. We look at one planet and one planet only, and we find something right off.

It also always struck me as logical that if there is life, there would be patterns of life-forms: that we wouldn't be unique, that our opposable thumbs or bi-focussed eyes or whatever attribute you want to look at, wouldn't be so unusual in the grand scheme of things.

[ceindreadh.livejournal.com]

Proof that there is intelligent life in the universe is its continued failure to show up and visit Earth. (Come on, if you were an alien, would you visit here?)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

if you were an alien, would you visit here?

Wellll.... the Doctor does.

The Weevils do, too, goodness knows why. It's a mystery.

[ceindreadh.livejournal.com]

The Weevils do, too, goodness knows why. It's a mystery.

I thought they all got sucked through the Rift? No wonder they're so agressive when they find out they've landed on Earth ;-)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I thought they all got sucked through the Rift?

Yes, but why them, so disproportionately? I don't know what percentage of the population they are in that universe, but why would so many Weevils fall through the Rift and not Rexacallicofallipatorians, or Sontarans, or Ood, or Daleks, or people from the many humanoid races? There's a sizable colony there.

No wonder they're so agressive when they find out they've landed on Earth ;-)

And they signed up for a holiday to somewhere nice. They don't even get a sunny tropic isle, they get rainy, chilly Wales!

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

The research also makes it sound as if most animal life on Earth tends to evolve towards creatures with brains.

I've known a few people who would seem to be living proof against that proposition…! ;-D

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

So true - and haven't we all! Presumably there is something in their cranium. Hot air?

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

Blancmange.