Life as we know it comes in different forms and sizes and as evolved different features over the last few billion years of its existence on earth, but out of what we know so far, millions and millions of species has come and gone with different features popping up independently multiple times like sight, flight, echo location, blow-holes e.t.c and one can say safely that some features tend to appear in living organisms but what about the defining feature of our species... Intelligence.

Intelligence has appeared only once in life on earth's history and has sent us from tree swinging, banana-peeling apes to a space-faring civilization but even at that, is intelligence really rare in the galactic neighbourhood, were we really that lucky on earth to have developed intelligence such that we are the only species in the galaxy with these abilities?, or is intelligence an inevitable trait for life to develop?

My Personal opinions are as follows: I think intelligence was inevitable after our ancestors developed a brain, we can attest to it by observing intelligence that is developing independently from humans evolutionary line (dolphins and whales), but then again how certain is a feature like the brain or something similar to develop? On a different planet with different environment that would cause life to evolve in a very strange way, far different from what we are used to on earth. We can obviously say that intelligence is a rare gem given that we cannot find any intelligent signal elsewhere in the galaxy or maybe we are just one of the first intelligent races out there.

What are your opinion on these? and notice I restricted the thought to our galactic neighbourhood...

Ifeness will love this

this is probably the most asked question in this section. hehe.


well, one thing is for sure, the possiblity is very damn high.

excuse me, sir, but i think you'll find that intelligence is not as rare as you claim. it's just not really needed for survival. an organism can very easily survive without intelligence. because of this, it rarely pops up. however, homo neanderthalis, Homo sapien, and homo nadeli all were intelligent life forms. dolphins are also quite intelligent.

hahn:
Ifeness will love this

Of course I would

Teempakguy:
this is probably the most asked question in this section. hehe.


well, one thing is for sure, the possiblity is very damn high.

excuse me, sir, but i think you'll find that intelligence is not as rare as you claim. it's just not really needed for survival. an organism can very easily survive without intelligence. because of this, it rarely pops up. however, homo neanderthalis, Homo sapien, and homo nadeli all were intelligent life forms. dolphins are also quite intelligent.

I did confirm that intelligence was an inevitable trait after we developed brains and i also did mention dolphins and whale being on a path of intelligence far independent from our evolutionary line, what i meant to say or ask is intelligence on a distant planet with life far different from ours and how probable is a brainlike feature going to form on another planet?

donnffd:


I did confirm that intelligence was an inevitable trait after we developed brains and i also did mention dolphins and whale being on a path of intelligence far independent from our evolutionary line, what i meant to say or ask is intelligence on a distant planet with life far different from ours and how probable is a brainlike feature going to form on another planet?

hmmmn, well, it depends . . . i think it is highly probable for intelligence to occur. it may not occur with a brain like structure though.

The way I see it, all we can do is speculate.

I really wish that intelligent life exists elsewhere in our galaxy. I really wish that we can make contact with them, or that they visit or communicate with us...in my lifetime.

I have to be realistic, though...and acknowledge the depressing odds.

While I believe that sentient intelligence is very probable, I think the odds of us detecting and making contact with the type that we expect...is very very very low.

Well the possibility of intelligence life existing outside this system is very high. I believe some more older star system will contain more intelligent life form. The truth is, if not that stray piece of rock probably we might having super smart dinosaur running the earth lol. Intelligence does not depend on shape and size. In some systems you might find a more complex organism which I will like to call brainiac an organism that is intelligent even at cellular level.