Among life here on Earth, humans are undoubtedly unique because we are the only living species to have evolved with higher intelligence. We wear clothes, cook our food to survive, invent smartphones, and get hooked to them.
But what if humans suddenly went extinct? What animals will evolve to create large and complex societies like what humans have now?
Molecular ecologist Martha Riskind, from North Carolina State University, said with modern-sequencing technology and their insight of evolution, they are quite good at making short-term forecasts, Live Science reported.
For instance, they can predict that if humans were to "go instinct tomorrow," climate change would continue driving a lot of species toward famine resiliency to survive.
She added cold-specialized species would continue to struggle, too. Meaning, sadly, penguins and polar bears are not likely to flourish in the millennia following the extinction of humans.
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An octopus is seen on November 13, 2020 in Melbourne, Australia.
The 'Convergence' Evolutionary Process
Geologist Douglas Dixon, a science writer and a speculative book author, mentioned the "concept of convergence" in a similar report, per California News Times.
Convergence is an evolutionary process by which a pair of unrelated organisms create similar traits to succeed in a specific environment or fill a specific niche.
Dixson said one classic example is the fish shape. Their sleek, torpedo-like bodies and stabilizing fins are optimized to help them survive in water. Nevertheless, dolphins have evolved in an extremely akin body plan. Unlike the fishes, they are warm-blooded, air-breathing mammals with a totally different background in terms of evolution. But another group of animals is extremely adept at manipulating objects with their eight limbs — the octopuses.
Octopuses as the Smartest Non-Human Animals
Cephalopod intelligence researcher Jennifer Mather from the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, said, "Intelligence is altering one's behavior as an outcome of influence from his environment.
By that measure, she continued, perhaps, octopuses are the smartest non-human animals on this planet. They can learn to differentiate real objects from virtual ones, according to a study published in The Biological Bulletin in 2020.
Another study published in the Communicative and Integrative Biology journal also noticed its ability to engineer its environment by taking out unwanted algae from their dens and blocking the entrance using their shells.
These animals are even known for living in communities of sorts, as shown in the finding of "Octlantis" off Australia.
Nonetheless, octopuses would be hard-pressed to adjust to life on land. Essentially, vertebrates are characterized with iron in their blood cells, binding to oxygen quite effectively. On the contrary, octopuses, as well as their relatives, have copper-based blood cells.
These molecules are still binding to oxygen, although less preparedly, and as an outcome, octopuses are confined to oxygen-saturated waters, opposite thin air.
Related information about human evolution is shown on Braintastic's YouTube video below:
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