Why did the Earth end up under the control of a type of primate

Try to think of some other appendage that would allow for an animal to use tools and create things with the complexity that humans do.

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>>8724617

Cathedral termites do pretty well. Not the greatest architecture in the world, but maybe somewhere between abos and african humans.

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>>8724617
This. And bipedalism to allow easy use of hands.

I'm not an evolutionary biologist though I know a bit and have posted at length in similar threads here. The prevailing assumption among most people is along the lines of, life on other planets wouldn't be humanoid because that would be a) too much of a coincidence and b) just egotistical of us to think so. But in previous threads I've asked for someone to post reasons why or how sentient, technology and tool-using life would or could develop along any other line than we have. It's harder than you think; just about everything in the human design has enabled us to get where we are, and it's difficult to envision any other design which could do the same. Perhaps a reptilian equivalent, like a Cardassian. But certainly not things with tentacles, insectoid forms, blobs of slime, etc.

>>8724605
>Is it really just something retarded like opposable thumbs?
Try to live without your thumbs and then come back here.

Also,
>bipedalism
>omnivorous diet

>>8724628
You can say the same about bess, but it's literally the only thing they can do. They are genetically "designed" for that. We can do lots of other tools and constructions that we weren't biologically made for.

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>>8724651

Why not insectoid? They seem pretty well suited to building complicated structures and having lots of communication and social strata. They're also a relatively common subject both of fictional writings on aliens as well as of ostensibly earnest (though probably delusional) reports of real life alien abduction.

>>8724660

>We can do lots of other tools and constructions that we weren't biologically made for.

Aren't all our actions reducible to physical cause and effect?

>>8724651
dude there wasnt even a dinosaur equivalent of apes, and the ecological niche was available

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>>8724686

>>8724676
>Aren't all our actions reducible to physical cause and effect?
Yeah, but that doesn't mean what you likely think that means. The whole process of having an idea and using it in nature can be expained in physical terms, but the ability to have an idea is what makes as do physical processes different from the ones our DNAs were made for.

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>>8724686

Troodon inequalis

>Troodontids had some of the highest non-avian encephalization quotients, meaning they were behaviourally advanced and had keen senses.

>>8724698

Why is creation through DNA less variable or powerful than creation further downstream from DNA? Couldn't there hypothetically be a DNA-like process that yields the same breadth of technology that humans have created?

>>8724686
There was, but they didn't get their chance, as you might know.

>>8724651
>But certainly not things with tentacles
Why not? Everything we can do with hands you could do with tentacles.

>under the control of a type of primate

Do you feel in charge?

>>8724703
>Why is creation through DNA less variable or powerful than creation further downstream from DNA?
It is limited to the effects of evolution that made that DNA prevail.

>Couldn't there hypothetically be a DNA-like process that yields the same breadth of technology that humans have created?
Yes, but it is highly unlikely. Humans can adapt to other planets, whereas a creature able to do complex tools but limited by their DNA wouldn't adapt to an entire new habitat.

>>8724714
>Everything we can do with hands you could do with tentacles.

Elephants essentially have a tentacle on their face. Think of all the things our arm/hand/fingers can do that an elephant's trunk can't do.

>>8724605
E.O. Wilson wrote an interesting book dealing with this called "The Social Conquest of Earth".

>>8724605
RNG
Had the mass exitinction event not happened then the earth would have almost certainly been ruled by the descendants of dinosaurs seeing as how they possessed social order, some degree of intelligence and even some them had opposable thumbs

>>8724669
Passive or semi-active breathing tubes, no lungs, mean they could never get enough oxygen to power a big brain.

>>8724714
Tentacles are good in water but don't make the transition to dry land. An invertebrate would never be able to hold itself up, become bipedal, defend itself against a vertebrate.

>>8724867
Cardassians!

>>8724651
hands and legs are essntially tentacles with joints
nah, i'm not buying that at all

the one invariant imo is some kind of intelligence

>>8725098
Dolphins are really smart and can't do jack shit because they don't have arms and hands.

>>8725112
they're not that smart are they
but i see your point, it's a good one

still i think elephant trunk is potentially well suited to use tools

>>8725117
But you need two to manipulate many things. How do you work on anything intricate if you only have one hand? You can't hold the thing in one hand while manipulating it with the other.

>>8724669
Maybe you could see insectoid people happen on a planet with an atmosphere that's thicker or has a larger oxygen content.

>>8725140
>if elephants had two trunks we would have potential competitors
mind = blown
although fingers allow for finer manipulation than trunks
so they would have to have trunk-fingers too

>>8724718
Nope. Just protected. Scary feels.

>>8724651
Octopuses and other intelligent tentacle-users could be potential contenders if they figure out how to build tech that's compatible with an aqueous environment, which is probably a lot more difficult than tech that functions in an atmosphere of air.

They've been around for a fuck of a long time though, so what's holding them up?

>>8724686
Name 3 (three) Mesozoic fruits

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>>8724669
I was having some toughts about intelligence in terms of what's the smallest sophisticated brain that we know of.

I think this is it, the pigmy marmoset's brain, it's the most advanced primate in that scale of size, it's just as intelligent as primates three times their size.

And if you consider it, there's nothing stoping miniaturization, things can be smaller and just as complex.

>>8724718
I paid you a small fortune.

>>8724867
>the earth would have almost certainly been ruled by the descendants of dinosaurs
Why? They had plenty of time to evolve intelligence. Dinosaurs became the dominant terrestrial vertebrates 200 million years ago, then went extinct about 66 million years ago, allowing mammals to take their place.

In half the time the dinosaurs were dominant, the mammals produced human intelligence. There's not much indication that the dinosaurs were ever going to make that leap.

Note as well that the small dinosaurs didn't survive competition with the small mammals to contend for the role of the large beasts. Only one of their flight-specialized offshoots, the birds, survived (flight-specialized mammals, the bats, only emerged after the extinction of dinosaurs). Mammals had strong advantages over dinosaurs, and might well have pulled down the large ones over time even without a catastrophic event.

Think also of the sea creatures. Cephalopods have been intelligent (as animals go) and dextrous for a very long time, yet they have never produced technological society. That group has been around for half a billion years, since the dawn of complex multicellular life on Earth.

Mammals are special. Prolonged dependence of child on mother. Extra-big brains with lots of additional nervous regulation of the body's systems. High maternal commitment once pregnancy is initiated (I suspect rape, and the large maternal investment before abandoning the infant is possible, was essential to the development of high intelligence in the divergence of homo from pan).

>>8725318
>They had plenty of time to evolve intelligence.
I love this point.
all the animals that people like to think might replace us have been around hundreds or even thousands of times longer than apes have and haven't yet achieved our technological heights.

there's no reason at all to think any of them ever would.