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If Humans Die Out, Octopuses Already Have the Chops to Build the Next Civilization, Scientist Claims
(www.popularmechanics.com)
Do we need to die for this to happen? 
It's real sad to me how all the other intelligent lifeforms on this planet are biologically limited in one way or another. Rats? Live a few years. Octopi? Live a few years. Dolphins? The fuck they gonna do with those flippers? Ravens? Ditto, but wings. They can't even masturbate. Humans hit the evolutionary jackpot.
Humans didn't evolve and then start using tools, our ancestors used crude tools, much like many of he species you listed occasionally do, which resulted in an evolutionary selection bias for those who could best make use of tools. Tool use created humans and it in time could create descendants of those other species who are much more capable of using tools.
Yeah, that is true. Still, primates at least had a pretty good base from which to work towards evolving to use tools - hands, relatively high intelligence, and decent lifespans. I don't even know how you'd go about giving a dolphin or ravens grippers. Octopi and rats have a decent base to work with in terms of grabbing things, but they would need to evolve to extend their lifetimes several times over before they could reasonably maintain a civilization.
Tbh as someone else said, it's most likely some other primate species would take over in the meantime since they're much closer.
Whenever I read an article like this or about the probability of extraterrestrial civilization, I think there is the enormously hubristic assumption that “technological civilization” is, from an evolutionary perspective, a long-term success strategy.
Like, behaviorally modern humans are maybe 100,000 years old, the epoch in humans actually do enough stuff in the world to be force relevant to climate and biodiversity is maybe 5-10,000 years.
Maybe the answer to the Fermi paradox is obvious and maybe being a shark who swims and eat fish is an evolutionarily superior pattern, technologically civilized societies are evidentially doomed by the observation made in the Fermi paradox.
Yeah if we accept that at the very base the only criteria for success in a living organism is propagation then bacteria are by far the most successful. I personally agree and think sapient life is an aberration.
I think the raven's bigger problem is that they are just too weak. Humans aren't very strong by animal standards but we are strong enough to break wood and rocks. How would a raven ever get past the stone age. You'd need an entire flock of ravens with stone axes to fell a tree.
To be fair, I feel like ravens would probably need a lot less wood than humans do, so branches & young trees would likely suffice.
Idk. Dolphins do sex for pleasure and find "toys" to masturbate with and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy said they'd survive getting off the planet before it's destruction. They did try to warn us.
I, uh. Think there's a word for what they do to their "toys", and it isn't masturbation.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
what about the elephants?? they got brains and those cool trunks
True, no opposable thumbs, though. Perhaps they could develop some kind of written language, but I don't think it'd be nearly as easy as it is for us and I doubt they'd be able to do much with complex tools.
There are sharks they’ve found that are 400 years old. I’m telling you, when sharks get larger brains and opposable thumbs, humans are done for.
Greenland sharks reach sexual maturity after 150 years. So it’s going to take a long ass time for evolution to do it’s thing.