Taking the search for life to water worlds

Alien water life?

A number of the most superior and clever animals at this time are birds and mammals; amongst mammals, our closest evolutionary kinfolk embrace apes and monkeys, which regularly exhibit social traits embarrassingly much like ours.

Maybe most exceptional although, are cetaceans, together with whales, porpoises, and dolphins. Animal behaviorists typically agree that bottlenose dolphins are self-aware and probably able to summary considering. Nonetheless, like all mammals, they first developed on land; solely later did they adapt to aquatic environments. So, can really clever animals originate in water?

The reply appears to be sure, at the very least within the case of the remarkably advanced octopus. Not like vertebrates, which have a central mind, these cephalopods have a decentralized system that extends all through their our bodies. Along with a large central mind of their heads, additionally they possess what is perhaps known as “mini-brains” on the ends of their tentacles. This diversified nervous system permits them to shortly alter their pores and skin pigmentation to match their bodily environment, a camouflaging functionality helpful each for hiding from predators and catching prey. Octopuses additionally exhibit higher-order cognitive talents, together with problem-solving and even a level of social interplay with people.

As a result of they’re soft-bodied animals, their evolutionary historical past is tough to hint for lack of distinctive fossils. However the nervous programs of those boneless, completely aquatic creatures appears to have developed in a convergent, virtually parallel method to that of land vertebrates. Maybe intelligence is a trait that evolution converges on, like wings, which developed a number of occasions in numerous land animals. As Cambridge College zoologist Arik Kershenbaum writes in his guide The Zoologist’s Information to the Galaxy: What Animals on Earth Reveal About Aliens — and Ourselves (Penguin, 2021), “On Earth, flight developed 4 totally different occasions in 4 totally different teams: in birds and bats and pterosaurs and bugs. The truth that all of them use wings isn’t as a result of they developed on Earth; it’s as a result of it was advantageous to fly, and wings are nearly the one strategy to fly. And so, we are able to anticipate these constraints to be working all over the place within the universe.” The truth that intelligence has developed a number of occasions on Earth — on land and within the sea — means that it may additionally occur on alien worlds.

It appears completely believable that clever, even self-aware beings may evolve over time on alien water worlds. What may such creatures seem like: octopuses, dolphins, or people? Probably none of those. Quite, they might be creatures distinctive to their world and its explicit bodily and chemical surroundings and life-supporting sources.

It’s potential their development might be restricted resulting from environmental constraints. Take dolphins, for instance. Even when they turned math savvy and able to summary considering, missing the equal of fingers may severely restrict their potential to develop instruments or superior applied sciences. Nonetheless, it’s enjoyable and instructive to invest, as Trefil and Summers have carried out, with their fictitious Europa-like world in Imagined Life.

Assuming the denizens of Nova Europa developed appendages to deal with issues like rocks and shells, may that result in extra advanced instruments? Missing fireplace, they may be capable of forge instruments from molten rock and metallic at ocean vents.

Contemplating that our first instruments have been chiseled rocks and flint, resulting in axes and spears, who is aware of how far curiosity and intelligence may propel some intrepid alien octopus over time? What in the event that they finally made their means by way of the ice barrier encapsulating their world? Their worldview would undoubtedly bear a profound change, simply as ours did after Copernicus confirmed we’re not the middle of the universe.