# Evolution tampering



## imjoelsavage (May 1, 2014)

i am doing a university research project on world building and my main research question at this point is 

"How can digital 3d media help to create an authentic and believable world, where the human evolution is drastically altered by the progression of another life form?" 

what are your thoughts as to which life form you would like to see brought forward to become dominant to the human race and why?

any replies would be really helpfull.


----------



## Queshire (May 1, 2014)

Since the focus is on how 3d media tells the world building and not the world building itself wouldn't any race work? If that's the case then, hmmm... well dragons are a classic, why not them?


----------



## Scribble (May 1, 2014)

As humans we are biased to consider intelligence as the key factor in domination, but adaptability to environmental changes and luck, particularly in having the right genetic mutations at the right time are the overarching facts of evolution.

If I were to imagine a species dominating humans, considering the industry of homo sapiens, I would think about what would happen to make humans _less able to be dominant_. 

Here's a scenario - the collapse of humanity due to overpopulation (the tragedy of the commons)

Assuming the human population keeps growing, eventually it will reach a critical point at which the whole world will be ruined not just for new people, but for any people. Disease, war, famine, death, all the riders out and after us. People living off in the hills here and there survive, but the human dominated world as we knew it... gone by the fact of just having too many.

Back to intelligence, we've got corvids (crows). Revenge of the dinosaurs, the crows, living in our abandoned cities keep using their brains to survive, and as a result the offspring inherit some braininess. They already have something like culture, they remember faces and communicate with each other about humans. They go on doing this until they develop the corvid version of intelligence, language, technology. They get bigger. They don't need to fly any more because they are farming up food. 

Then, they find out the tales are true about the "old ones" who live in the hills. They come and find the humans and decide that not only are we tasty, but that we can be trained to do work that the crows don't feel like doing.


----------



## CupofJoe (May 1, 2014)

Scribble said:


> Back to intelligence, we've got corvids (crows). Revenge of the dinosaurs, the crows, living in our abandoned cities keep using their brains to survive, and as a result the offspring inherit some braininess. They already have something like culture, they remember faces and communicate with each other about humans. They go on doing this until they develop the corvid version of intelligence, language, technology. They get bigger. They don't need to fly any more because they are farming up food.
> 
> Then, they find out the tales are true about the "old ones" who live in the hills. They come and find the humans and decide that not only are we tasty, but that we can be trained to do work that the crows don't feel like doing.


Oh... I like that!
My favourite Crows-are-smarter-than-you-think story is that they've learnt to use pedestrian crossing to crush [sea?] snail shells that are too tough for them normally. The Crows drop them on the white stripes of paint, wait for cars [etc.] to drive over and then use the common red lights to swoop down and retrieve their newly gotten gains... 
"Why the white stripes?" I hear you say - that way it is easier to see if the shells have be cracked open from a safe vantage point...
Intelligence is important but adaptability and co-operability I think come up close behind. If you want to screw with humans [other humans aside] look for things that can out-adapt and out-cooperate us... I'm still guessing that hive minds are the next big thing... Insects and Slime Moulds.
Even trees seem to have a shared mind/sensory system if what I read about threat responses is true...


----------



## Gryphos (May 1, 2014)

Definitely some kind of predator, I think, as it's with them that you get the high intelligence and co-operability. Velociraptors were of course one of the most intelligent species of dinosaur. But of course they died out like all the others. You could say that in this world the dinosaurs never did die out, but then you have the problem that if they didn't die out then mammal life would not have been able to develop very well and humans would likely never develop.

There are other predatory mammals that came later that could pose a threat to primitive humans and their ancestors (if they had a boost to their intelligence, that is). The three main ones I can think of are wolves, lions and hyenas.


----------



## Jabrosky (May 1, 2014)

Gryphos said:


> Definitely some kind of predator, I think, as it's with them that you get the high intelligence and co-operability. Velociraptors were of course one of the most intelligent species of dinosaur. But of course they died out like all the others. You could say that in this world the dinosaurs never did die out, but then you have the problem that if they didn't die out then mammal life would not have been able to develop very well and humans would likely never develop.


Most of the mammal species we recognize today probably wouldn't have evolved, but we primates are special because our ancestors lived in trees where they would have been safe from most dinosaurs. Even when the time came that we had to descend to the ground, the intelligence we would have cultivated in the treetops would have come in handy against dinosaurs just as it did against lions, hyenas, and the like. Ergo, I can see human-like primates evolving in a world dominated by dinosaurs.

As for Velociraptor's intelligence, no one knows that for sure. However, most paleontologists will tell you that its brain-to-body ratio was hardly more impressive than an ostrich, which isn't known for having intelligence like crows.


----------



## Gryphos (May 1, 2014)

> As for Velociraptor's intelligence, no one knows that for sure. However, most paleontologists will tell you that its brain-to-body ratio was hardly more impressive than an ostrich, which isn't known for having intelligence like crows.



Well naturally. They obviously weren't geniuses or anything. But compared to other dinosaurs raptors were probably some of the best.


----------



## Caged Maiden (May 1, 2014)

Okay, so some unique things happened in our world history that made humans possible.  IN fact, one study suggests that it was actually a disease that led to human intelligence.  In most primates, the jaw muscles are very well-developed, to handle the tough vegetation gorillas eat, for example.  IN humans, our jaws are terribly weak by comparison.  A team of scientists studied old bones of hominids and located a gene in a diseased hominid, where its jaw was very weak.  They did more studies and found that every single human has that same mutated, DISEASED gene.  What did it mean?  That when the jaw muscles didn't form on those early hominids, they had a larger brain capacity because these taut muscles weren't stopping the skull from expanding.  So... the thing that led certain hominids to develop larger brains...was a disease that made their jaws weaker.  As hominids used fire to cook food already, to gain better nutrition (evidence is in their skeletons as to the size of their guts), they didn't suffer form the disease.  Okay, to expound on that, if you look at the physique of a chimpanzee, next to a human, you'll see we have trim waists (or should) and chimpanzees are miles more intestinal tract than humans.  They don't cook food and eat tougher things than we do, and therefore are rather barrel-shaped around the middle.  So... when we cooked food, and by "we", I mean our hominid ancestors, we derived all the nutrition we needed from hot meat and tender veggies, as chimpanzees get from their raw fare.

So... I think if you want to make humans a lesser species, it might be easy to reverse that mutation, say they have strong jaws and their braincase is just held up as smaller than it might have been.  

I'm not sure whether your intent is to make humans more like cave men, or to use perfectly advanced and modern humans, but to make another species more dominant.  So I'll go to that case now.

Okay, in the same way humans mutated to become smarter because their brains were allowed to expand, there are actually creatures smarter than us in the world.  Maybe not in the sense we measure intelligence, but on complexity, definitely.  SO Orcas are one of them, dolphins another.  Orcas have languages (each separate family group of 300+ whales, uses their own specific sound combinations to communicate and captured whales cannot communicate).  Watch netflix's Blackfish for more on that.  Another thing about them is that they're actually more emotionally complex than humans.  We tend to think ourselves very complex, but really, there are many animals that have a sense of ancestry (elephants, orcas, probably loads more I don't know about) sexuality (dolphins and whales enjoy coupling and flirt and tease each other maybe even more effectively than humans), and identity (loads of animals either work together or don't, understanding:  "If I help this guy, he's going to get the treat, and if I don't help him, no one will get it."

MOnkeys and apes are characteristically different from humans in a few ways and those differences are WOW pretty unexpected.  For instance, the scientist showed a human child how to get a treat from a box, by tapping a stick around these three holes and then pulling the lever.  The child did it and the chimp did it.  Perfectly.  Okay, so when the scientist made a clear box and the subjects could see that the tapping did nothing and all they had to do was turn the lever... the chimp turned the lever and got his snack, but the human child still tapped.  It's something in us that makes us willing to learn from someone else, whereas a chimpanzee assess things differently and shortcuts where he can.  

That might have been a huge evolutionary advantage to us as we built on the knowledge handed down by generations of hominids who expanded throughout the globe.

another example, is that human children will work together to retrieve a treat, even if the reward will go to only one of them.  Chimpanzees, when they have to both pull ropes to open a door to reward one ape?  Will refuse to help because they do not receive a reward.  

So anyways, I hope i gave you some things to think about regarding humans, hominids, and apes.  I think if you could use another animal to become very advanced, it needs a few advantages:  The ability and desire to work together, it need not be a carnivore (elephants and gorillas) but it needs to be capable of defense and have a reason it isn't on everyone's menu.

I think the raven example is really good because they really are adaptable.  but so too could other animals be.  What if orcas left the ocean?  If oceans receded and inland seas became their home, they may evolve very rapidly due to limited population.  It isn't plausible they'd leave the water entirely, but maybe given enough time, they could revert to some median?  I mean, their ancestors walked on land.

it really depends how you're going to show the other species' dominance.


----------



## imjoelsavage (May 1, 2014)

i really like the idea of the crows and find the story about the crows utilizing safety crossings quite remarkable,i have never really thought much about crows as we don't have any in NZ. i think the idea of them taking over after the overpopulation sounds epic but i am more interested in starting off this evolutionary reaction before we have evolved properly which a crow would still fit. also is a crow and a raven the same thing?

to see a more preditorial animal climb to the top of the intellectual ladder and gain attributes such as the ability and desire to work together and take on more of the "If I help this guy, he's going to get the treat, and if I don't help him, no one will get it" attitude.

i plan on ending up with the humans being less able or just differently abled as more of a surviving species rather than our current state. i think hyenas would be an interesting one in terms of their physical build so i will probably have a look into their habits and see what their actually like.

the other angle i find interesting is one of something so small that would most likely make the most difference. Bacteria, whether is ocean or land dwelling it is potentially something that could change the world as we know it.


----------



## Queshire (May 1, 2014)

Crows have orange beaks, ravens black. I also think crows are larger than ravens, but it might be the other way around? Symbolically ravens are generally portrayed as more urban or higher class than the more rural crows, or that's me. I think it comes from ravens generally being connected to Poe while crows are with cornfields and scarecrows.


----------



## T.Allen.Smith (May 1, 2014)

Queshire said:


> Crows have orange beaks, ravens black. I also think crows are larger than ravens, but it might be the other way around? Symbolically ravens are generally portrayed as more urban or higher class than the more rural crows, or that's me. I think it comes from ravens generally being connected to Poe while crows are with cornfields and scarecrows.



There are different types of both ravens & crows. The Common Raven, however, is typically larger than the American Crow. It has a longer wingspan and length. 

Also, crows may have black beaks, just like ravens.


----------



## Queshire (May 1, 2014)

Ah 0 for 2. Oh well.


----------



## psychotick (May 2, 2014)

Hi,

When thinking evolution you have to consider two things. First mutations are completely random. And second natural selection will favour those that suit the environment best. So when thinking about human evolution you have two things to consider - first that random mutations did occur that could lead to increased intelligence, and second that that increased intelligence was an advantage to those humans.

Its not hard to imagine that those mutations granting increased intelligence did not occur - they are after all random. And equally its not hard to consider that because of the environment in which humans lived increased intelligence was of no great advantage. So think about Gorillas. Close to human, but not as smart. Why not? Because even if some of them do have random mutations increasing their basic intelligence it is of no real selective advantage to them. They're already well able to survive in their habitats (until we destroy them of course) so why would the smart ones do better? The answer is of course that they don't. And until the environment changes to the point where intelligence becomes a significant survival trait for them, they won't advance.

So if people had no need for intelligence because they were better able to thrive without it, they would be stuck with the gorillas. So consider that there are other mutations which could provide a better selective advantage. Say the ability to run faster. If humans had developed that instead we wouldn't be where we are today.

As to another species taking the intelligence crown. Whichever one you pick it has to be under some evolutionary pressure that makes intelligence an asset. Lions and tigers and other peak predators won't achieve it - they simply don't need intelligence. Cattle and sheep etc have a herd mentality that protects them and sharper senses and running speed. Those are the things that help them, not intelligence. Omnivores and creatures trying to straddle multiple environments where there are specialist predators and other threats are more likely to find intelligence and adaptibility an advantage. My guess is that pigs and boars etc are a good land based choice. Bears if they didn't develop size would be as well. And creatures like otters as well.

Cheers, Greg.


----------



## Gryphos (May 2, 2014)

Another thing to consider is how traits evolve not just because they make the animal more likely to survive, but they make it more 'attractive' to the opposite sex of the species, and thus more likely to be able to reproduce. In fact, many people speculate that that was a major factor in how humans gained so much intelligence so fast, because, in short, smart males were more attractive to the females. And of course it's the same with appearance, peacocks and all that.


----------



## Terry Greer (May 4, 2014)

One of my favorite novels on increased intelligence in animals is Poul Andersons Brainwave.
It postulated that the Earth had been inside a electromagnetic field since the Cretaceous that dampens neural activity. The novel explores what happens when earth leaves that field and every creature on earth has its intelligence bumped up an order of magnitude simultaneously.

Brain Wave - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It's years since I've read it , but the first chapter with an animal in a snare figuring out how to escape has stayed with me for years.


----------



## Terry Greer (May 4, 2014)

I've always been fascinated by evolution as a potential driver in a story. A few years ago I was working in computer games and developed a background for a game/possible TV spin off based on junk DNA and HOX genes which are found in every animal species on earth (with similar effects - for example a HOX gene for an arm in humans is directly analogous to a HOX gene in a fruit fly - so they go back a long way).
The premise for the story was that these HOX genes have been largely lying dormant just awaiting a switch - provided by a antiviral drug trial, that would reactivate a form of life not seen since the Archean period on earth. 
This was for a game called Possession (later renamed HOX - to tie in with the HOX genes I made central to the story).

If anyone's interested in it you can see more about the game here:
Possession
and the revised bible based around the concept of HOX genes can be found here:
PossessionHox


----------



## Terry Greer (May 4, 2014)

It's worth mentioning that species that are omnivorous and have a large opportunistic (or seasonally variable) diet tend to be more intelligent than herbivores or carnivores of the same body mass.
The other main driver for intelligence is sociability - species that live in large groups need to recognize other members and interact with them - this requires a good deal of intelligence.

Corvids and parrots are a good example of this - they're small but highly intelligent and tick all the boxes (sociability/variable diet etc).


----------



## Devor (May 4, 2014)

Unfortunately if you're looking for realism, instead of "cool," there's one pretty good candidate:

The raccoon.

I don't even like to think about the numerous qualities that would make a sentient raccoon species into a powerhouse capable of competing with humanity.  :help:


----------



## Caged Maiden (May 4, 2014)

you know... I almost said raccoon.  I mean, it has thumbs, is extremely adaptive, and tends to reproduce quickly and make the best of any situation.  But yeah... it isn't cool.  Or scary.  Unless it got loads bigger.  Or developed guns...


----------

