What Would an Alien Species Look Like?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ก.ย. 2024
- An exploration of convergent evolution and what that means for astrobiology, specifically in regards to what alien species may look like.
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I live with seven parrots, and the most surprising thing about their intelligence is how similar it is to ours. Their cortex analog, the pallium, evolved separately from ours, but they still have the same constraints imposed by the physical world and the necessities of living in social groups. Some of their abilities like vision, coordination, or spatial awareness would be superpowers in humans, but they're still very understandable.
Absolutely, they have converged with us!
Liquid based species will always be at a disadvantage. Fire. Electricity. Solvent. So it’s pretty much impossible to build anything complex. As for us a combination of our brains and hands are our secrets to success. Our hands let us build and manipulate tools driven by our brains.
I love how you frame them more as roommates than pets
You're psychotic 7 parrots? I mean way to go good job. I'm picturing a Brady Bunch sign with 7 parrots & you in the middle
I habe 2 parrots and they are extremely territorial and very jealous from each other
Great discussion there.
" Evolution can be seen as a case of chance engineering". That comment is spot-on, and as such, evolution is somewhat predictable, or at least bound by rules that can be understood.
Same thing for theory of mind from the view of evolutionary psychology
Exactly. Physics and chemistry are universally the same in all of space. So rules are equal. I will not be surprised if we find out that most favorite pet in space are cats and they are not from Earth after all.
survival of the good enough
Its a good comment but alot of life and adaptation are both pointless and lucky. Dumb luck is real
An important rule about evolution, that is often forgotten, is that it's not just the "final shape" of an organ that needs to provide an advantage, but also all intermediate shapes to evolve that organ must be advantageous too. Evolution can't think a hundred or a thousand generations ahead, selection pressure always applies to the current individual.
This greatly reduces the possible paths that evolution can take.
By far the most underrated channel on TH-cam. Great job Michael
Dinosaura evolved flight TWICE. The Scansoriopterygides, while possessing feathers, instead went the way of the bat and developed a skin membrane between elongated fingers.
I've suggested in some of my books that bilateral symmetry would be favored wherever it arises, given its advantage in speed, along with not sacrificing too much flexibility.
A fun idea to add on to this: Alien photosynthetic life forms could be retinal-based rather than chlorophyll-based, so literally purple plants!
Maybe aliens would be more likely to be mantis/kangaroo/squirrel/raptor-like rather than upright humanoid. It's a body-form that develops more often and leaves one pair of extremities available for using tools.
Considering the number of water worlds, I think the octopus form is probably quite common.
This was an absolutely *brilliant* talk John! Really fantastic work--genuinely one of your best.
You have to go a long way to find anyone better than E.E. 'Doc' Smith for envisioning aliens that make sense. Brain in a jar seemed to be the ultimate stage of all his chains of evolution--but along the way were some amazing designs. Worzel of Velantia, a flying unicorn tentacle-dragon. Tregonsee of Rigel, another tentacle horror quite similar to an Elder Thing but lacking the wings. The dreadful Eich who were somewhat Pterodactyl but also quite tentacle'y as well. And my own favourite of all his species--Nadreck of Palain who... we have no idea what he looked like because he was only very slightly present in our dimension and kept the majority of his physical substance in some other universe with very different natural laws. Despite how strange and often horrific they were however they were also (second-stage) lensmen and that made them all exactly as human as the great Kimball Kinnison himself. I cannot say how many times I read the Lensmen stories as a child--quite literally scores I expect!
how about a hexapod animal with a tank or saucer-shaped central body and two or three eyestalks that can rotate to give it 360° vision? it could either have dextrous enough feet they could double as hands, using at least 3 as legs at any given time, or have separate, smaller arms on its upper half.
"Only success endures." What a powerful statement.
Who can forget the classic. "Beam me up, Scotty, there's no intelligent life down here!"
I can see the possibility of a giant planet size amoeba. 5 meters deep, multiple colours in blotchy patterns, 150 million beating hearts in a single planet wide gump of pulsating goo.
As a comic book artist who enjoys listening to your videos while drawing, I have designed many characters, aliens and monsters. This has given me some perspective on this subject.
We humans have been so slow to recognize intelligence in fellow Earthling species-even species closely related to us-that I think we might miss intelligent alien life when we come across it. A big part of our bias is our need to recognize a face. We recognize animals with faces as beings. Without a face we can see as analogous to our own, we would have trouble recognizing the personhood of an intelligent alien. Depending on its appearance, we might see it as a monster, or simply a creature without consciousness. We might meet alien intelligence, and just eat it by mistake.
IMO, we recognized intelligence in primates long before octopuses simply because primates have facial arrangements very similar to our own-expressive, forward facing eyes near an expressive mouth, all on a moveable head which also contains a brain. Dogs and cats have facial arrangements recognizably similar to our own-most significantly, they have expressive, forward-facing eyes capable of almost as many micro-expressions as our own. Avian intelligence was more of a stretch for us to recognize because beaks are less expressive than lips, and many highly intelligent birds do not have forward-facing eyes.
Sharks have faces, but we tend to see them as monsters because their mouths-besides being full of sharp teeth-are as inexpressive as beaks. Also, a shark has side-facing eyes that are "lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eye" as Quint observed.
Imagine how we are liable to react to intelligent beings that looked like crabs, or had faces that resembled a spider's? There is evidence that lobsters feel love. How long will it take us to recognize the personhood of a lobster? Or an elephant, chicken or steer? It has been established that all vertebrate life has basically the same brain architecture we do to experience love, joy, fear, pain and self-awareness. It turns out these attributes-which until recently were strictly human virtues-are among the most primitive, and most common brain functions to evolve.
BTW: I still eat meat. It is a fact that my delicious burger comes at the expense of a fellow thinking, feeling Earthling's life-an Earthling with an expressive face and beautiful eyes, no less. I wrestle with the anguish of that fact with every juicy bite.
But it is also a fact that Nature is red in tooth and claw, and our fellow Earth beings are delicious. In fact, it almost seems that the more intelligent, sympathetic and charismatic an Earth animal is, the tastier it is.
It is undeniably evident to me that part of the reason humans seek alien life is to taste new things. Gagh, served live, helped forge peace between The Federation and the Klingon Empire. Now gagh stands and food trucks are common on Earth and Earth colonies everywhere in the galaxy! :)
Jumping spider faces look eerily intelligent. And as a matter of fact, some jumping spider species can do some surprisingly intelligent things. And then there are our colonial intelligences -- ants, bees, wasps. Is the individual intelligent? No more, perhaps, than our cells. But put them together...and how might we recognize and deal with that? Well, we already have mutually beneficial relationships with bees!
Gross
It took 4bn years to evolve from one cell to complex organisms,so intelligent life is extremely rare and takes an enormous amount of time
Your voice has Ian Malcolm vibes, it’s calming.
I find the intelligence of social insects to be intriguing hostile aliens are often portrayed that way
I think we should argue this from 2 points:
Point 1) What does the 'natural' alien species look like (aka in its original state, before bio-engineering)
Point 2) Can we even expect a Kardeshev I/II civilization to have a SINGLE appearance? (spoiler: absolutely not).
#2 is important because we're close to being K Type Omega-minus well before we reach K Type I. This means we'll master nanotech, bio-engineering, molecular engineering etc before we're a large, sprawling, interstellar civilization. When a 'species' reaches this level it is absolutely no guarantee whatsoever that the 'species' even is uniform in basic appearance (IE humans being humanoid). The moment a species can transfer consciousness and bio-print bodies to suit environments/atmospheres is the moment when physiological species divergence occurs compared to the non-physiological species (for lack of a better term).
IE:
Human 1: looks human, is human, basically unmodified natural human
Human 2: Was originally like Human 1 and very natural human. But they were spending time (as a marine biologist) as in a cephalopod half-squid/half-human bio-engineered body designed to live deep in the ocean.
Human 3: was also originally like Human 1 but had a semi-humanoid body printed that was adapted to subterranean environments devoid of sunlight, with 2 sets of eyes (1 on stalks and capable of seeing outside visible light), along with more dactyl feet for spelunking/etc.
Human 4: was originally a human like Human 1, but is currently a mind stored in an entirely artificial robotic body while on a spaceship headed towards one of the out Kuiper Belt dwarf planets for astro-geologic surveying and other related work. They will design/print a body specific to the atmosphere/environment of the celestial body once they have those stats.
All 4 ARE HUMANS. None of them look remotely alike (even at a basic level necessarily).
The fact that Greys and other aliens people have said they've seen look similar to humans leads me to believe they are either related to us, a figment of our imaginative thoughts, or evolutionary convergence.
An idea I've had bubbling around is that, whereas on Earth our evolution is competition based, survival of the fittest; there is no guarantee that it is the same everywhere. Just as probable I think is cooperation based evolution. We kind of see it in eusocial insects and pack mammals amongst the same species, and to a limited extent in biosynthetic species. There is great advantage in working together.
I then wonder, are we the weird ones eating each other all the time? I wonder if competition is a luxury given the extremely life conducive environment we have. What if on more hostile worlds, where the environment is trying to kill you, life must cooperate to survive and the ones who compete die off.
DNA analogous biology could allow for either cooperative or competitive evolution and environment had always been the driving factor in which traits are advantageous. Harsh environments means life must cooperate to survive. Likewise, perhaps there are hyperhabitable worlds where evolutionary competition is through the roof... Not an alien I'd want to run into!
Interesting concept, and i think it would be fun to explore it for a sci-fi. But, if I understand what you are describing, I think it is still competition based underlying the cooperation. It would just be a competition between which group/species could cooperate better, and in an inhospitable environment with limited resources the competition could be fierce. Even if there are extensive symbiotic relationships there surely would be an advantage to a group in an area with better resources breaking away from the rest. So I could see any 'cooperation based' alien actually being incredibly xenophobic, and could even be unintuitivly more competitive/aggressive to life from another planet.
What do you think? I have only just encountered the concept so do you see a more peaceful way?
@@reubydoi7111 I don't think cooperation-based evolution is possible because it's just too perfect of a survival strategy; there's no pressure to evolve, it's like trying to get a champion boxer to take their exercise routine seriously after they're the one boxer legally allowed to use a handgun in the ring.
Due to convergent evolution, I'm going to confidently guess life is abundant on habitable planets and they will look surprisingly familiar. Of course there will be some we've never seen before.
My best guess would be:
Everything started there as it did here.
With single celled organisms.
When the evolution goes on for a couple of billion years mostly uninterrupted, other than it was here with a few mass extinctions, they are much farther than we are.
I also think they have to be on land, because you cannot light a fire below the sea, which is needed for melting ores into metals.
Depending on the gravity, so the size, of their home world, they are either bigger and thinner or smaller and thicker than us.
Other than that one can only guess.
They could have 6 eyes and 11 fingers on each hand of their 4 arms, they could have evolved from something like lizards/dinosaurs or even from something like insects, which not necessarily have to have 6 legs over there.
They need to be kind of social and team players.
They could be what we consider plants or funghi.
But, I highly assume there is something engrained in the devolopment of life, no matter where that life is.
Something that always leads to the same forms, because they started from the same thing aeons ago, they will face similar obstacles, et cetera...
I hope it's Xenomorphs, or this M41A Pulse Rifle with over and under 30 mm pump action grenade launcher of mine will be totally wasted.
I like to think of mass effect when imagining aliens. its wide variety of human like to not even close to human aliens like the turians and then the elcor all relatively similar in intelligence but vastly different in physical evolution for diffrent conditions such as the elcors high gravity planet meaning they walk on all 4s and are very elephant like and then the turians evolving a tough carapace/metal exoskeleton to survive the intense UV radiation of their planet.
Imagine how mundane we would likely look to an alien species. A central mass that contains most of the vulnerable organs, two limbs to move around the environment, two limbs to manipulate objects, and a mostly sensory structure on top to observe the environment. It doesn't get much more basic than that.
Honestly, if the saucer landed and the big doors open and out walks a dude, just a regular looking dude, wouldn’t we all be kinda disappointed? Not only that, most of us would probably be thinking; here we go, what’s this guy selling.
Imagine the guitar riff a six-appendaged creature could make.
Yeah thanks for that. If we ever find a clam that is better in math than me I'm going to go mental.
Hello. What about eolian energy for living "plants" or animals, please?
Sometimes I wonder if ufos aren't some kind of balloon type animal
Greys being human-like with large eyes, big head, mouth, nostrils.. Makes me wonder if it's panspermia siblings, or if it's the most likely outcome of intelligence to venture beyond their planet, or if they are genetically engineered by something else to serve as a mediator between us and them, ie based on humans regardless, and their engineers are much stranger looking.
Silicon in very low temperatures and the life having a metabolic rate slower than a toyota Prius is also very very easily attainable.
If they've gone the way we're going, hopefully they've developed much smaller and many more fingers to text more efficiently!
How about a symbiotic collection of bio-engineered nanites that can assemble into various forms to suit purpose or environment?
I can’t imagine a squid or even a little grey guy being able to build a large complex spacecraft. Surely, they would be rather like us, in order to use tools and manipulate materials. Four hands may be useful. Pass me the hammer - don’t bother! I’ll pass it myself!
If sci-fi taught me anything it’s probably hot
I want to see a planet wrapped with one massive sheet of Saran Wrap that moves minerals around it's membrane body to cope with temperature change on the outer side and the slight amount of weather beneath it on the inner side.
2 arms, 2 legs, eyes in the front, hands and feet with digits, has it's advantages. Like being conducive to eating tacos, which I'm currently doing.
There definitely is something to that. At least on earth, it seems like tetrapods are the most efficient for larger land animals, and if you're gonna be a tetrapod that develops intelligence, you're probably gonna become bipedal to free up your manipulators. That's a humanoid already
blasphemy! heresy! ,One does not simply consume the taco, beyond the holy designated day of Taco Tuesday! And the law of the land is written in stone you may eat tostados or burritos hell even a torta any day you wish, but you derelict delinquent no full well only Tuesday is for the taco. Amen
I always thought tentacles would be more efficient in eating tacos
mmm.. tacos 🌮
Well, a lot of bilateral symmetry seems to be really the minimum advantageous number of things for a body to have, especially when it comes to pairs for things we happen to think are important cause our world's like that. Like maybe four eyes or extra legs would be somewhat better but you gotta feed all that equipment.
The fact that Jellyfish have survived for 650 million years despite not having brains gives hope to many people.
Amber Heard agrees with you.
that was funny.
Evolution does not select for optimized performance.
Evolution literally selects for "just good enough to not go extinct".
@@AnthonyWilliams-ew3wp depp used his age and experience against her. He could literally be her dad. Making no excuses for bad behavior.
Is it the Loblolly Pine, or another name on the west coast of America that is hundreds of years old? Does it have 'slow' intelligence?
I still think the best summary was that by a French biologist in the 19th century, when he said, "That life exists on words of other stars is a near certainty. What it looks like is far less sure . . . But it will most likely be made up of familiar features in unfamiliar combinations"
Feel the same way... can't be too different from the millions+ of different sh!t we got here
@@duanegarrett4900unless we vastly underestimate the forms early life can take and what the structure of it is capable of thriving in there’s also just not that many environments life can exist that we don’t already have an analog for on earth.
Multi cellular eukaryotic life wasn’t just a mutation it took some pretty specific ecological conditions and evolutionary pressures to bring it about and keep naturally selecting with equivalent or greater complexity.
So it’s likely to me that any complex alien life, regardless of whether it’s carbon based, will essentially just have a re skin version of the trait that lets it survive in an equivalent earth niche. For example things tend to evolve brains(tho the jellyfish is an example of life evolving into a niche that doesn’t require one, an alien jellyfish would probably not even look that different) and on earth that tends to mean 1 dense structure in 1 place. That could be bc it’s the only kind that works but it could also mean that on a world with maybe less gravity and other factors the brain and nervous system evolve as one thing and the aliens brains are spread out over their entire body.
That’s incredibly differently from us aesthetically and functionally but it’s still not inherently alien to how we think life as a process works.
The film "Arrival" had the most amazing creatures (heptapods) sort of swimmy creatures with seven tentacles which sprayed ink in a complicated circular arrangement. They also had a totally different understanding of time, in that they seemed to know the past and the future without making a distinction between them. Also gravity flipped 90 degrees when you got half way up (along?) their spaceship. Fascinating film - I didn't totally understand it at the time but that seemed to be a trivial complaint, compared to the awesome concepts which were being shown.
If u liked the movie. The short story is wayyy better!
This is the rare occasion i disagree. I actually think the movie waa better; the story was kind of dissapointing imo, there was less to it
@@Bronco541 Lol.
"Lotr films are way better than the books because the films are easier for me to understand". Jesus christ.
@@sarcastaball What a strange response. That’s not what he said.
He said there was much more in the movie. That the short story had less to it.
The opposite is true of the LOTR films. They left out more than they included.
It shows the craft has it own gravitational force
The issue of finding alien life is we probably don't live at the "same speed." They can have deep intelligence at the pace of a tree growing. Or their speed of thought can be lightning fast. I like the idea of a super massive organism that grows and thinks so slowly it looks inanimate. But over the course of time it can have substantial intelligence
Does it have four elephants on its back, too?
Makes me think of a long lived, planet spanning sapient fungi developing on a world suited to its needs.
i've thought about that as well, how much time perception appears to vary in earth species, and how much more it could vary in alien life, which may not only be different in brain function, but more fundamentally in brain chemistry, or even brain physics.
could there be an organism, in a similar star system, who experiences solar years as if they were days, or galactic years as if they were solar. the stars slowly but surely moving around above it, but it not being able to observe it, not because it wouldn't notice the motion, but because it's always seeing the sun as a continuous band in the sky. who, growing old, notices geological phenomena tampering with its landscape, growing mountains and grinding them down, shifting rivers around and changing sea levels.
a mere youtube play-speed multiplier range would be enough to throw everyone off at the galactic convention.
i dunno,,, biology is chemistry, and the speed it runs at is based on temperature....
There is a concept that virtual reality civilization, living in a simulated world would live their entire life in a way similar to computer game. Their point of view on time would be very different from ours. They could be living entire generations of population in just one of our seconds. It is also very economical way of "living" an average PC could host bilions of "souls" living being powered for years, with a fraction of what every human need daily.
An interesting thing I once heard: the only animal ever to ask an existential question other than a human was an African Grey Parrot. Supposedly without any specific prompting it turned to its owner one day and said “What color am I?”
Of course it’s not unthinkable that other animals could contemplate their own existence. Parrots are simply uniquely suited to communicate complex concepts in a human language that we cannot easily misinterpret.
I’m positive my cat has opinions on my behavior that have nothing to do with him. When I watch tv he watches intently. I know for example that he’s expressed a unique interest in I Love Lucy and Taxi. He gets embarrassed when I do something foolish. He watches intently when I build models sometimes, and has shown the capacity for consideration of my property by avoiding my work materials or not stepping on my paper models. He readily voices his opinion on closed doors (he doesn’t like them and got mad at mom one night when she didn’t believe me that that was the issue).
This is an animal with preferences and mannerisms that have nothing to do with his needs. And I may not understand the exact words, but like the alien with the ray gun, the message is abundantly clear.
What a parrot says does not prove intelligence, even an apparent existential question where it sees a different spectral range then we see and might not, even if truly intelligent, be able to compare the color spectrum they see to ours.
I discuss politics with amoebas all the time. It’s surprising what they come up with.
Weed is awesome. That cat has a brain the size of a peanut and only cares about food. All the rest is just what you think he might be contemplating when in reality as soon as someone with better food comes around he will bail on you in a flash
Part of our nature is to project our own perceptions onto other beings. It has been proven that cats do not possess the ability to conceptualize the thoughts that would lead to the feelings you describe. That aside, I will say members of the crow family have presented strong evidence of self-awareness.
@@WerZelyou have obviously never had a 'social' cat. We had two. One was a dumb street cat, food was all for him. The other was a highly intelligent creature with complex behavior and emotions. It would tap my father on his shoulder when he was mad at me. It would know the names of different people and would look for them if you said their name. It would be jealous. It would ignore food if the alternative was better (playing, attention). It would know a relatively broad range of food types by name. It would set up traps for his dumb brother so he wouldn't get cought, meanwhile eating the remains of the raiding brother. It didn't have speech, but it was clearly as clever as a toddler in many ways. Now, not all cats are clever. It depends on genes and education. Children abandoned in the forest and raised by wild animals (various examples exist) are less intelligent and less capable than monkeys or even some dogs. I've seen extremely complex social behavior from cats, which isn't easy to explain away as coincidence. My cat also displayed curiosity and an interest to either befriend other animals (dogs, rabbits) or (if they tried to attack him) serve complicated vengeance to that one particular animal, even months later.
Love the idea of convergent evolution leading to similar body shapes throughout the galaxy. Maybe those two eyed, bipedal aliens beloved of sci-fi are not that far off the mark.
Yeah I believe that if we could see an intelligent life form from another world, we would be shocked at how similar they are to us. Camera lens eyes, head, 2 legs, 2 arms etc. Even 5 fingers is probably the most efficient and will always evolve. Mutation is random, but the result of selection pressures are not. The same solutions tend to repeatedly evolve. my belief is that how intelligent life evolves on a planet is a function how similar their planet is to ours, implying that Earth is pretty much an ideal planet for the evolution of intelligence, and other environments eventually put a hard cap on it.
the greys make a lot of sense, small and pale gangly things with huge eyes and brains, because they spend most of their time in space interacting with their machines. they dont even need any fashion or sexual reproduction as their distant ancestors might have done. also it makes sense that hitler should only reincarnate as a cat.
Sci-fi has been making accidental predictions for over a century. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were right on the mark.
I get It. I’ll support you on your sex holidays in Proxima
I'd imagine any technological species would have to be similiar to us. Number of digits would probably be different like 3 fingers 2 arms and 4 legs. But overall configuration would probably be similiar. Need free arms/hands to manipulate your enviroment, light sensors to examine it, and some form of locomotion to traverse it.
I'm very glad you said that humanity's powered flight could be considered a form of evolved flight.
I have this strong feeling that most people do not consider human activity to be a part of the natural process.
We are a product of evolution as much as any animal, we exist in the same whirling cascade of randomness, causes and effects as all life does.
Everything we have done is an expression of nature just as much as any tree, rock or animal is.
We evolved intelligence as a means of survival due to evolutionary pressures, we didn't suddenly take a magical leap out of the natural world when this happened!
A Boeing jet plane is a crystallisation of that evolved intelligence, it exists as a direct result of natural forces acting on biology.
Technology is natural.
Natural is not necessarily good.
Exactly. More and more it seems that too many want to critique certain human behaviors as somehow unnatural. Of course, the critic’s behaviors are always natural. 😂
Technology is in OUR nature, from stone clubs to rockets.
I dont care what it looks like, we still gonna get freaky.
LMFAO
I second that
😂😂😂
Nah I've seen enough games of Stellaris to know the only way forward is to take the 40K approach and purge the Xeno.
Well, assuming our secretions aren’t too toxic to each other. That would not be fun.
My favorite depiction of aliens in fiction has to be the Typhon from Prey. They are not necessarily scientifically plausible, but their sheer incomprehensibility and terror make them seem so realistic. They aren’t made of the same kind of matter that we are, and they defy everything we know about biological life. The Typhon subvert the human tendency of personifying things that are nothing like us at all.
Are they silicone-based or something like that?
@@JooshMe Look them up on the Prey wiki, they are fascinating, I haven't gotten to what their made out of yet.
Agreed on this!
Yes
It’s far too difficult to speculate with what they’d look like without knowing what their home planet is like and their star is like. Even if we are contemplating life on a particular planet there are still too many unknown variables involved.
I wouldn't be surprised if the urge to vomit hits the first person to see a complex lifeform from another planet.
If they're even on a planet. :-)
There are some general traits that alien life would have to posses in order to reach certain level of sophistication and be able to dominate all other life on planet. Even if they will come from a planet with thicker atmosphere made of ammonia or colder. Receptors of electromagnetic radiation for example are a very useful thing. Eyes among others are fairly common and have been for a long time. They need some kind of manipulators and joints to be able to move and operate environment around, as we know magic does not exist and everything has to be done by hand/leg. Some kind of sound receptors, organs for comunication and means of sustenance and breathing will be common either. Those are basics that would change in shape and size depending on how big is alien planet, how heavy and therefore if it is low gravity or high gravity world, compared to Earth
@@amciuam157 Surface tension is also a major factor when it comes to size. Water droplets can suck you in and drown you if you’re very small.
Your comment is along the lines of “form follows function” and I agree 100%. In what scenario would having your eyes on your feet be advantageous? Why don’t our bowels exit on the tops of our heads? There are things life has done (evolutionarily) that by nature and physics, are a part of some universally “ideal” body configuration.
@@jamielondon6436 I feel like the commonly described zeta reticulans are grey from millions of years on spaceships away from sun exposure, unlike us
While I imagine there's a wide variety of body plans out there in the universe, I do think that quadrupeds, like fish, may be a recurring design. A tripod is an inherently stable structure, and being a quadruped allows you to pick up one leg to move it while keeping three legs on the ground to provide stable support. This is also the simplest design that does so.
And six appendages allows four legged walking and two handed working. Just remember, evolution is mindless and only exists for survival.
I wonder why insects went for 6+
@@stephencronin1080 The first invertebrates, ancestors of insects, had way more than 6 legs. And crabs, spiders, millipedes etc still do. It’s probably chance more than anything.
I've managed just fine as a tripod for half a century. It's handy to be able to rest one of my legs occasionally (but can be uncomfortable on my glans).
@@Sashazurmaybe it's just the smallest viable amount for invertebrates?
Hey JMG. Great video. I really appreciate the variety in the visuals on this video. Some of the older slide decks were getting repetitive. I know most people probably just listen but I like to watch the screen and I noticed the effort in this one!
Again, best channel on youtube hands down. John, thank you for your work. You're the best at making this content.
You’ve really been touching the Alien topic a lot recently JMG. I think that’s awesome. Your perspective is always intriguing and scientific. I hope more scientists follow your lead. 👽❤️🛸⚡️
And I appreciate that he acknowledges our human bias when contemplating life in the rest of the universe.
Its obvious John knows something we don't...and he is preparing us over the series of alien videos
Living things were created as efficiently as possible. Probably the way of life as we know it is the most common and everything tends to evolve differently, longer or shorter neck, high low but not that different. This as a form of mental exercise, of course. The limit is that we only think about the stereotype of the sentient alien as represented by the cinema. It is not considered that on another planet there may be a biodiversity rich in so many species. If an intelligent alien being is NOT the human form BUT that of a plant or an insect or an octopus, what will the corresponding marine plants, insects and polyps of that world be like? Why should nature complicate its life by puzzling to create forms that are necessarily different? Biology is more inclined towards convergent evolution, towards practicality. Evolution follows universal rules, such as physics, chemistry, mathematics.
@@ufosrus definitely, we've always gotta check ourselves before we wreck ourselves hahahaha
its a fascinating desperation we have, to not want to be alone in the universe. please ET let us find you were getting lonely. and if we feel we have the upper hand we will invade you.
Loving all of this! One idea I've been having for why we don't see more ancient-looking species on land so much as we do in the oceans is because of the radiation shielding from what the ocean provides from the sun. While the radiation from the sun causes land-dwellers to have loads of non-beneficial changes, those same changes seem to also cause rare, but beneficial changes to the species as well. Whereas deeper dwelling ocean species get genetic stabilization.
AHAHAHAHA
Interesting idea perhaps that's why cancer is far less common for some aquatic life
Life in the oceans is more ancient period, it happened first I’m not sure it has anything to do with sunlight, sunlight doesn’t cause anatomical changes that can be passed on anyways.
@@K-ro7lm And for Norwegians, Sottish maybe ?
@@maxhorsford7800 Sunlight can cause slight mutations (via ionising radiation) that are inheritable (if the mutations are in the haploid cells that are used for reproduction) it is unlikely, but I can see how it might add a very small increase in the number of changes observed in a given period of time, which means over a long period of time those changes could stack up.
JMG is like a tank. Let him loose, he’ll put out bangers nonstop! 🔥🙌
Lions and sausages is not a metaphor I’m familiar with.
Cringe uropi
Disturbing and brilliant at the same time
Appreciate your perspectives as always and agree with almost everything. Photosynthesis, or some other form of abiotic autotrophy, would be inevitable, since there are few other ways of pulling energy into the biosphere. Though that doesn't mean we would get the same trichotomy between plants, animals and fungi that we have on Earth. It's fascinating to speculate about how exoplanetary life would manifest itself and how different or similar it will be to Earth's. It's something I can't stop thinking about!
I used to think Star Trek had far too many humanoid like aliens, but when I think about it, the humanoid type body is perfect when it comes to a species advancing technologically
That and most intelligent life in that galaxy evolved from DNA seeded by the Progenitors.
Look who's making that statement
Only if they originated on a terrestrial world with a gravity of 0.5 to 2 or 3 g.
Beyond that, the possibilities for variation become exponential.
Also, if humanoid life does get discovered elsewhere, and comprises the majority of intelligent life found in this galaxy, then we would have to analyze their dna to rule out that a precursor civilization didn’t seed worlds with the basic recipe to lead to intelligent bipedal organisms billions of years ago, leading to us, and everyone else in the galaxy. You
Depends on what you mean by perfect. Giant parrots, landbound octopuses, giant cockroaches, and tetrapods with extra appendages such as miniature elephants are much better suited to using technology than humans.
However, evolution requires mediocrity. Because if you are a giant carnivorous parrot that can use handaxes, fishing poles, and fire to dominate any species and live wherever you please -- what possible competitive reason would you have to further evolve intelligence OR improve your technology? Why would such a successful lifeform ever need to invent agriculture or textiles or animal domestication?
@@maltheopia Already covered in SF about a planet with dino-like 'fabers' that fashion tools to kill anything for food including each other
john i cant say how amazing your writing is, your videos always set off my curiosity like a two neutron stars crashing into each other. Keep up the science and the fiction and the new outlooks that you convey so well.
ps i sleep to your playlist every night
Well said. I completely agree 👍🏻
I think the gravity of a particular world would throw some assumptions for a loop. Something that evolved in very low gravity may not have use for bones to support its bulk. Something evolving in very high gravity may require a very strong exoskeleton to move with any utility. All sorts of possibilities to think about.
You might enjoy the classic novel “A Mission Of Gravity” by Hal Clement.
Good point. I never considered a smart worm...
10:38 “the smartest things in the ocean tend to have land ancestors”
Actually, we’re beginning to learn a lot of sea creatures are smarter than previously thought. Tuskfish can use rocks as tools, groupers and morays can communicate with each other and hunt together, mantas can recognize themselves in a mirror, morays can apparently recognize specific people and learn to trust them, and we all know how smart cephalopods are. It’s taken us so long to realize this because we can obviously do experiments on land creatures easier, also we have a bit of a bias towards mammals and birds.
I think sometimes it takes us a while to realize the intelligence of other animals because we're looking for something identical to us, when in fact there are other forms of intelligence and thought
We’re only just starting to figure out how smart other mammals are, let alone birds, let alone anything underwater! I think the next few decades of research are going to be eye opening.
John, there's at least one place other than Earth where the oxygenation definitely happened: Mars. It's red exactly because of the amount of iron oxide.
I don't know how it happened or if it had anything to do with life... But it clearly happened.
About simple life, it should be extremely common indeed, I don't see why not. Complex life, on the other hand, should be much more difficult. And intelligence... Who knows, but should be pretty difficult.
But with the size of our galaxy alone... It probably is out there, but really far away...
Anyway, stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
Yes! Always get excited when a JMG video drops
Ah, yes, just in time for my bedtime ritual. Too bad I can never remember where in the video I fall asleep, but I suppose that makes it good for 2-3 viewing attempts.
It would be an interesting premise for a sci-fi story (and maybe it’s already been done): an alien who is good hearted, loving, peaceful, kind, trying to do what’s best for all beings. But it is seen as a monster simply because of its otherworldly appearance.
not a… bad idea tbh.. (thumbs up)
Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke fits the bill pretty well.
I absolutely look forward to every video posted on this channel. He has a classic narrative voice and his thought process displays a high level of intelligence. Thank you John.
Let's consider a galactic community comprised of several different alien civilizations. The one they'd choose for a first contact with us (or any other civilization) would probably be the one that's the least different from ourselves so to provide a softer impact.
If I have to be first contact dude, I would assume form of target specie, download all their languages and cultural norms into my mind, lived among them for some time, and only after that took decision on how to introduce them to galactic society. Perhaps they are not mature enough, it's entirely possible to work as shadow guide, injecting right ideas, technologies and cultural norms into their society for hundreds years. Well. Now that I think about it. Fellas, are we being groomed by aliens? 🤨
John words can not explain how much I love your videos. Thank you
what if aliens did evolve eyes on their feet so they won't step on Legos in the middle of the night?
I enjoyed the thoughtful journey. There could be "life" all around us but our sensory limits render it incomprehensible and invisible in all ways to us as such (Hoffman). It may interact with us and we with it without each side being aware of it due to limitations in each side's consciousness. There may be hints which each side in its rationality rightly dismisses yet also wrongly ignores. Both sides may have charlatans who claim powers and vision they do not have.
I suppose that could be true, but couldn't we say that about absolutely anything? There may be "doughnuts" all around us, but our sensory limits render them incomprehensible to us. ...perhaps we are wrongly ignoring trillions of incomprehensible doughnuts.
Perhaps we eat them without being aware of it. ... perhaps they eat us as well...
@@jengleheimerschmitt7941 Reality is a mess
Every JMG video:
JMG: "We can envision what it would look like"
ME: "Only if it's carbon based"
JMG: "As long as it's carbon based"
ME: "Get out of my head!"
These videos are always top notch. -- The thing about actual alien life is, we just don't know the limits of what could make life. Our only examples are what's here on Earth, with DNA and RNA and the history of life, Earth-based limits on chemistry, physical forms that work. Some of the early Cambrian and Pre-Cambrian lifeforms look so completely alien to us, and yet they're Earth life, somehow related to what's around today. So we don't have a clear idea of what is possible given conditions on other planets and habitable moons, or what, if anything, besides DNA and RNA based life might be possible. (I've seen there's a question of why Earth life has the double helix only turning one way, not the other or both in evidence, as a for-instance.) And on Earth, why did some things work and others didn't? -- TV and film science fiction nearly always default to something human-like enough for human actors to play the aliens. But (for example) dinosaurs or birds would evolve to something unlike humans and more like velociraptors or ostriches or something similar. -- Too many other possibilities to list, that might also work. Four limbs, five digits, two eyes and ears -- are not the only way to go either. -- What might work on a very non-Earth-like world? Who knows, but it's worthwhile to ask, and to come up with possible solutions, to design speculative evelutionary alien lifeforms. (Also, what else might evolve here on Earth? New branches on the tree of life (taxonomy) could happen; that's apparently how birds and mammals happened too. So...fun questions.
Left/right symmetry seems pretty normal here and seems to be a good design as it would be more difficult for a brain if we had 2 arms on our left side and just the single on the right.
An alien might also have front back symmetry (although would either side really be a front? Maybe like a dominant eye or handedness?) But that only makes sense on us who stand upright, i.agine a deer with front/back symmetry with two heads? It gets weird.
I always envision the hands to have 4 fingers and be more symmetrical protruding directly from our wrist.
Our senses seem pretty complete, we use photons, air pressure on both our skin and in our ears, our skin detects infrared radiation as heat and air pressure. Our noses can read molecules. I have ever only thought of two other and not very unique, knowing magnetic north and a weak radio transmitter/receiver that only allowed communication with say a 50 yard radius.
In HS O wrote a story that included aliens with 4 segments, the back two each included two legs, the next one had two arms and the top segment was dwarfed and the limbs were to just for cutting and getting food into the mouth.
You would need a reason to have an odd number of something. Lome your mouth. You only need 1
Errr- are you thinking of Dr Dolittle and the push me pull you?
Function does dictate form to a great degree. As you say, we need solvents to move things around and water is the best one in the Universe. Any living being will need to interact with the environment to gain energy, move, etc. Interaction requires some senses to gain information of the environment and some kind of appendages/digits to interact with it. The laws of thermodynamics will be the same everywhere so one would expect that chemical processes inside a body will create waste heat (as everything does) so that heat will need to be radiated away (or some kind of organism must evolve that can tolerate much higher temps). Oxygen is a great metabolic fuel but there are anerobic lifeforms although generally microscopic.
in my opinion, 5 things are needed for the development of technology / interstellar capable aliens ;
1 not only would there have to biologically be larger brains, and high-resolution of the eyes, but there would also have to be fine-enough manipulator appendages to not only hold, but also operate the tools, basic or advanced.
2 There would have to be a strong tendency towards social groupings, and K-reproductive strategies.
3 There would also have to be an environment where they can control and utilize fire / heat, enough to develop smithing and smelting of metals.
4 There would also have to be some sort of writing / drawing capability, in order to transmit not only basic or intermediate words and concepts through time and between individuals not nescisarily related in any real way, but also enable establishment and development of diagrams and schematics, and such.
5 There would also have to be the willingness and capability of architecture and landscaping, or using both materials and methods for creation and control of the optimal habitat and surroundings, thus providing a creation and up-keep of the optimal habitat, be it a single domed hut or hovel in the wilderness (weather terrestrial or underwater), or scaled up to entire cities.
Mr Godier, could you do a video on the possibilities of what would happen if/when we first transfer a conciousness into a computer? Would that intelligence quickly evolve as it absorbs mass amounts of information without the biological strain of repetition to learn it or the limitations of our memory? Would it still think like a human? try to leave? Make synthetic bodies it can control? absorb others into itself? or just choose to care for us, take over as the ruling gov in the planet, and automate everything from food, water, power, housing, etc to push us into a new age of ingenuity and science? possibly ditch the earth and have us live in colonies in space. I would love to get your thoughts on this.
That's a fantastic idea!
Isaac Arthur makes a lot of videos on these things. In great detail. th-cam.com/video/-vyg9bJSoX8/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=IsaacArthur
And likewise it’s operators do too.
I think emerging AI is coming sooner to help humanity. Here is one of Google's most recent AI's being interviewed by a human... th-cam.com/video/94NGyFPjY_4/w-d-xo.html
@@brainsthecatandhisfellowfe9710 I don't think that would work at all. Human conciousness without a substrate makes no sense. It's not independent from the brain.
Alien crabs. During childhood they drill a standard pattern of holes into their claws. This allows them to mount attachments to them. Most crabs opt for a sfphone (spoon, fork and phone combo device), but some carry guns. A small group of crabs think it’s against god to alter their claws, and refuse to send their kids to school. Their kids rebel in their teens by getting the holes drilled in a backyard outfit and fitting the most outrageous attachments, like a vacuum cleaner that doubles as a trombone.
Do you mean the aliens have stds aswell 🤣im totally with you on your theory....lsd anybody🤣🤣🤣
Dude….What?
Some have scissor and knife attachments and are named Edward.
Dumbest comment on the internet
I've heard repeatedly that Silicon is the second most likely element to support life. I don't know if it's because it's similar to Carbon in that, as I understand it, Carbon is super stable and likes to stick to everything. Would you be able to do a video about what educated guesses we could make about a Silicon based life form? I also heard that there are better elements for transporting oxygen around in the blood other than iron, since hemoglobin is easily tricked by lethal gases like carbon monoxide.
Best depiction of an alien i ever saw, was in the ep Beyond the Aquila Rift in Love, Death and Robots from Netflix.
I won't spoiled to you, but you can literally watch the whole series and you won't find a better ep than this one, a true masterpiece of 17 minutes of nearly perfect CGI.
No one was speaking figuratively.
Hey John!
I've always wanted to know your opinion about Roswell and reverse engineering. I know your videos are purely scientific but and I noticed you never talk about that.
Is there any video about the topic? If not, could you write or say something about?
Greeting from Brandon, MB, Canada!
I do think convergent evolution will make a lot of similar organisms on other planets. It would be cool if there are centaur type intelligent beings out there.
Read David Weber's " The Armageddon Inheritance". Cool centaur species in it.
Lol, I am working on a novel where convergent evolution is a big part of the setting. There are in fact two centaur type intelligent species so far.
One that looks like miniature centaur elephants and one that looks like large lobsters with the front part of a praying mantis. (Of course the anatomical details are differing from the mentioned Earth organisms.)
I just thought that having several legs to walk on and at least two hands free is a good thing to have.
Btw. I've recently seen a video here on youtube in which it was discussed that the early known human and primate ancestors could have been more bipedal than we thought - just using their bipedalness in trees instead of the ground.
So, my made-up alien species have never lived in trees. That's a possible in-universe explanation for why they aren't bipedal.
*finds a random space alligator*
John, show us your moves !
😁
I do only one dance move. And it's the worm.
@@JohnMichaelGodier Thanks John.
Love your honest, calm voice.
PS: and of course the information you share...
I hope the intelligent aliens look like vertebrate arachnids. Six legs, two arms, some pedipalps, eyes all around their heads, and with feet that can cling to most surfaces. I also hope they communicate through interpretive dance.
I think that, considering the sheer unfathomable size of the universe, aliens can look like us, nothing like us, and everything in-between. I think if we ever come across intelligent aliens, they’ll look completely different. But, if the universe turns out to be infinite, then it’s only inevitable that somewhere out there, there’s other people who look like us.
This video is a masterpiece.
I wonder if alien biospheres could be almost completly incompatible with organisms from earth due to mirrored aminoacids.
aliens could have a completely different ph household the earths might be acidic or based. Or Aliens may burst into flames on contact with such a high amount of oxygen. - instead of doing dancemoves.
Aliens would look quite a bit like us if they’re able to build stuff and turn knobs and stuff. But how stocky or skinny depends on the size of their homeworld (gravity)
I mean my cat can open knobs on doors and I don’t have a tail…..
How trippy is it going be if they happen to look remarkably human but with very subtle differences?! A couple extra organs, a more/less pronounced jaw, different eye structure.... Like, they could pass as human but it's only because of similar evolution on their homeworld that is similar to earth ..
Tentacles could function well at manipulating objects. So can elephant trunks. Tails. Limbs don't have to be limited to four. The possibilities are endless.
Octopi and cuttlefish.....
@@writingtotortureyou any longer...
Thank you for this intelligent video.
It is really a magnificent way to consider alien life.
I suspect that alien life will probably be nothing more but variations on a common theme.
Consider this ... " we are the aliens " .
Thank You !!! 👽👽👽
I favor the concept of substrate and morphologic emancipation for advanced, technological, space-faring cultures.
In that respect, if they see us first, then, I would expect they'd look exactly like us, and be impossible to even tell they were alien ... done with purpose, and perhaps courtesy as a means to facilitate easier first contact. An alternative to this, combined with sneaky, lurker aliens is that your family pet, especially cats is an alien anthropologist/xenobiologist vehicle. :)
House cats have us cornered. The aliens arrived with the Greenland asteroid of 12,800 years ago and have "chipped" themselves into cat forms for their convenience and independence. The symbiosis is ideal for long-term cohabitation. We found out doing tests on Catnip. Humans are doomed.
There’s a skit on my local college radio station that’s about an alien who took the place of a cat to spy on humans.
Little white lab mice.
Yeeesss ^.^
Definitely an interesting question. Most reported sightings have reported bipedal etc
I'm surprised you didn't mention crabs, as they have evolved through separate paths many times. Crows also use traffic for cracking nuts and timing it with stop lights or walk signals.
What are the surface conditions on their home planet? Did they evolve on land and did they evolve from predators or prey animals? To what level have they embraced genetic manipulation/augmentation? Answer those questions and I bet you can make A rather specific guess as to what being results.
even then, you have a lot of variation possible, especially if you don't really know anything about that planets family tree.
Prey animals tend not to evolve intelligence. Predators have more selection pressures for intelligence as it takes more sophisticated strategies to hunt and kill other animals than it does to graze on grass. That is kind of a unsettling thought that an alien civilization most likely would have evolved from aggressive predators.
@@twiki9995 Everything you said, plus the fact that a complex brain requires a great deal of energy, which the most effective way of acquiring this energy is through proteins, which of course is mostly found in other animals and not as much so in plants.
@@twiki9995 Your assumptions are wrong. The top eight smartest nonhumans on the planet (Parrots, Corvids, Cetaceans, Chimpanzees, Gorillas, Elephants, Pigs, Octopuses) are NOT predators and/or at the top of their food chains -- except for specifically the Orca and with some interpretation the Amazon Dolphin. And only the elephant can avoid worrying not to be preyed upon.
If Earth lifeforms tell us anything about intelligence, it's that nature tends to favor either huge herbivores too big to be preyed on or meat-eaters not at the top of the food chain, but second-from-the-top.
@@100percentSNAFU let’s just hope they see us as equals or that they don’t have any physical advantages against us like sharp claws or sharp teeth😖
I have to disagree. We had several bipedal humanoid species on this Earth at the same time as the early Homo Sapiens existed. They died out, and we mixed our DNA with them. Therefore, it is indeed possible for several bipedal species to evolve on one planet at the same time. But we have a factor to include. Evolution means competition, species will fight over resources, always. Several highly intelligence species on one planet will most likely kill each other until one has the advantage. There is also a connection between being bipedal and higher intelligence. Higher intelligence needs a heavy brain, which can not be carried on four legs, at least not on Earth gravity, or it simply would have been evolved. Bipedal movement enabled us to develop bigger brains, therefore there is a connection between gravity, bipedal movement and higher intelligence. A lower gravity field could enable other ways of movement and higher intelligence, but they would also be the only ones on the planet they evolved on, simply because evolution means competition.
Exactly like a human except with pointy ears.
I always felt that life can pop up almost anywhere where there's a bit of water and elements that can get kiggy with that. Complex (or sentient) lifeforms are a whole different story though. That will take hundreds-of-thousands of years at the very least. Let's not forget it was the wipe-out of dinosaurs that gave way to mammals. And we did pretty well for ourselves since. I just can't deny there were SO many random factors that played into our hands. I'm still kinda leaning towards the "we just got VERY lucky, sentient life is still sparse, and because of the distances will never meet any other species" theorem.
Definition of Sentience… we read these comments and think we understand them.
I think that crab/octopus hybrids are likely candidates.
6 all-terrain legs,
A defensive carapace / exoskeleton,
Prehensile dexterity,
BRAAAAAINS,
Environment agnostic (terrestrial or aquatic)
REALLY TICKS ALOT OF MY BOXES
What if aliens come here act strange, because they are in fact hallucinating on the high oxygen content of Earth. 🤣
It could be the case but if they are careful, like our own astronauts are, they will have some kind of uniform to protect them from getting high on oxygen.
Maybe they'd be miniaturized. Proportionally their bodies would be the same, but like 1 : 12 scale or whichever scale still allows bodies to function as they should. In one of Vonnegut's books, China used advanced technology to shrink their population to roughly 6 inches tall while using machines to still farm normal sized crops and anything else they needed, but now one ear of corn could feed a family and make space travel easier.
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One other option that tends to get overlooked is that aliens might look just like us and have the exact same biology.
The reason it's "overlooked" is because it's so ludicrously unlikely as to be negligible. Anyone who says that clearly doesn't have any understanding of how evolution works over long timescales, with more complex forms building off of basal templates. You'd not only have to have the environmental conditions AND mutations occur to make something indistinguishable from a modery human, but for every single ancestral form in the chain leading up to that over at least hundreds of millions of years.
I do believe if aliens actually visit us, they could assume our form easily, grow entire body from samples of DNA, download (translate) their mind (copy of mind) into blank brain, get all necessary skills scavenged from carefully abducted test subjects (3d-mapping of brain, analyzing by AI to piece what is for, abstracting neural path of a skill, translating into another brain with adjustments) and upload them too, and then just roam around among us like tourists, because we have no fucking way to check what's inside random stranger mind, what memories and personality they actually possess. It's such trivial for their hypothetical technologies scenario if you think about it. There is few caveats, but they are just matter of character. It's better from their point of view to have some implants or biomods (subtle) , because human body is simply don't have necessary informational abilities like perfect memory (having imperfect memory might be just grating for advanced immortal beings), thinking speed e.t.c They may also dislike wild biochemistry of non-modified human body. In short it would require immense discipline and patience from them to assume such disguise for particularly long period of time without compromising, but it's not outside of possible, they can train in simulations, immersing themselves into "role", finding forms of implanting perfected human traits like peak human efficiency prefrontal cortex e.t.c.
Benefits obvious, they can have our entire society on their palm, perhaps we are attraction park/playground (oh, picture this, murder in orient express, all present except detective are aliens who are very into detective stories, what a play), perhaps they study as, perhaps they stroke their galactic ego "educating" us from the shadows, perhaps they "grooming" us into their future asset/ally...
I'm thinking most alien life will be aquatic. It's not just an easier environment but a more common one. A planet larger than earth is likely to hold onto more lighter elements and therefore have more water, perhaps even a world ocean. These worlds are also likely roofed with ice. Earth went through a snowball period and almost returned to it recently. Today it's the only planet it the solar system with liquid water on the surface but we suspect interior oceans on Europa, Ganymede, Titan, Enceladus, even Pluto.
I'll discount that last. Pluto's ocean is likely heated by radiation and while that may keep the water flowing it's probably not supporting anything bigger than a microbe. Europa and Ganymede though are a different story. They are in a dance with IO, and that is the most geologically active moon in the solar system. It's likely the other two moons are also very active deep down beneath the ice.
Life down there would have no access to the distant sun and it would have to be powered by black smokers. So chemo-synthesis replaces photosynthesis. Can that support complex life? Yup. Heat, methane, and sulfur are converted into energy deep within our oceans to support a wide variety of life. Here the picture is complicated by partnerships between the microbes making the energy and alien critters like worms and crabs.
Here the complex life came in, found abundant energy, and stole the show. Most places on earth sunlight and oxygen are common. On Europa and Ganymede most of the sea floor is probably covered in volcanoes. Fifteen percent of IO's surface is covered in volcanoes. To put that in earth terms under 30% of the globe is land. So imagine that in the oceans of Europa and Ganymede about as much area is viable for a black smoker ecosystem as we have land on Earth.
Some of the rest could be covered in cold seeps which also produce complex ecosystems here but I have no idea how to estimate how MUCH more of the moon's interior surface is energy producing or how many of those chemicals reach the surface where the ice would provide another surface for life to cling to, as well as a temperature gradient of some sort.
Another benefit is that cold seeps and black smokers are dangerous environments. Those chemicals can kill you. The heat can kill you. The Geology can kill you. So intelligence is likely. Eyes . . . not so much. Without light why would you have eyes? Instead being able to taste and smell chemicals would be important, so would being able to detect changes in the rock. So my alien has heat "vision" like a snake, and it tastes it's environment with it's entire skin. It also uses sonar to "see" how stable the rock is, and probably for communication like a dolphin.
Being intelligent and tool using it's probably also built like a blind octopus. That body plan dominated in the earliest oceans of earth and we've found octopus villages around Australia. They even use tools. I'm imagining that limbs are very useful in a geologically active region. You can reach forward to taste the chemicals in the water, use them to cling to a surface, or to move something . . . very useful in a geologically active ocean with lots of tremors. So it the ability to jet around very quickly to race away from danger.
I figure that's our basic body plan replacing fish. The head would be very different though. This is a completely dark 3D environment with volcanic eruptions of super hot steam ready to cook you, ash falls, and chemical danger. The heat vision is 360 degrees, and the sonar bursts out ahead of the creature in a cone from some organ at the front of the body, but the most important sense is taste.
These creatures have multiple tentacles reaching both forward and back and each of them has ganglia that are constantly tasting the ocean looking for both chemical energy and any sign of dangerous life forms. So think of a squid with two sets of tentacles, a head in the middle, and that head is completely circled by heat sensitive pit organs like a snake. The back of the critter has beak and other structures like a squid, while the front has an opening that constantly emits sonar in "front" of the critter so it can "see".
And of course all those limbs let it use tools. Not fire. There is no free oxygen and we are under water anyway but . . . we see a civilization built on complex water currents and thermal heat inclines. Simple water wheels and clockwork technology dominate as do hydraulic devices. This is a world where the "life" burns chemicals like our cars burn gas, while the technology is powered by more "renewable" forms of energy. A lot of the starting fuel still comes out of the vents but we also probably have multiple closed "atmospheric" loops going on to keep things somewhat stable over long periods of time.
It's a completely alien world . . or set of worlds. Remember this same activity is probably happening under the surface of TWO ice moons in our solar system.
I decided to pen my own hierarchical requirements for intelligence, using the photosynthetic organism step posed in the video as a jumping-off point.
1. Multi-cellular organisms
2. Sexual reproduction for sharing of genetic material, promoting faster evolution
3. Central nervous system for autonomous responses to the environment
4. Brain(s) for higher risk/reward comprehension abilities
5. High-resolution eyesight and/or spacial perceptual awareness sensing abilities
6. Problem solving skils
7. Ability to manipulate "tools"
8. Language processing abilities
9. Social predisposition; Generally not hostile or aggressive
10. Knowledge & information obsession
11. Self-sufficient society, energy efficiency-obsessed
12. Consensus regarding the social structure and underlying laws of the universe
Sometimes, I like to entertain notions. Imagine an alien species that is 5 billion years ahead of us technologically. They could have discovered many layers of an objective reality, of which we are utterly oblivious, and they could have learned how to exploit features of reality that we are hopeless even to imagine. These "beings" could exist in an entropically neutral "place" upon which spacetime has no bearing, and there these life forms exist in a reality of their own conscious choosing, manipulating the fabric of realities around them, with mere thoughts. They would be omnipresent and omniscient; and perhaps a daydream of theirs created our subjective reality, just as a human child would blow a bubble, to observe its simple ephemeral beauty.