o-craven-cantoAnonymous asked:
Let's imagine an alternate timeline where there's more than one unambiguously sapient species (or "obligately sapient" as Biblaridion calls them) that coexist with us. Not offshoots of humanity like other extinct Homo species, but unrelated animals that evolved sapience independently. What candidates would you choose? The most obvious ones for me are dolphins, elephants, corvids and parrots.
o-craven-canto answered:
Hmm. Sapient, tool-using species tend to be intrusive*, so if we exclude closely branching species of the same genus, I think we might be unlikely to find them on the same landmass.
If tool-using humans quickly expand to fill Afroeurasia, that means we’re more likely to find our para-humans in the Americas or Australia (other landmasses are probably far too small). Corvids and parrots are found in both, and there were crown-group elephants in the Americas until recent times, so those remain candidates.
I’d like to submit procyonids (raccoons & kin) in the Americas and phalangerids (e.g. the brushtail possum) in Australia as candidate para-monkeys: they navigate complex environments, are actively foraging omnivores, have energy-rich diets, and raccoons can clearly manipulate objects too (see the recent discussion on marsupial intelligence). If they started evolving into a more social direction 20 or so million years ago, procyonid and phalangerid para-humans might not be completely out of the question.
Of course you can sidestep the whole landmass issue going into the sea. Dolphins, as you mentioned, and I think sea lions might also be a decent candidate (maybe less so than dolphins, but with the added benefit of being able to come to land for, e.g., fire). Perhaps sea otters that expanded their feeding range through tool use? Semiaquatic monkeys like the crab-eating macaque that fully took to the sea?
* See the idea that humans might have taken over a particular “cognitive (ecological) niche” (Pinker 2010, Whiten & Erdal 2012) that includes cumulative culture through extended cooperative childcare, cooperation among non-kin with division of labor, complex tools, theoryof mind, and syntactic language. It may be that once a species or group of species has taken this niche, it’s difficult for any other to get in it.
Good point. I focused strictly on birds and mammals but there are some accounts of surprising cognitive abilities elsewhere (e.g. tegu lizards, elephantfish, jumping spiders). AFAIK, the main issue with cephalopods is lack of post-hatching parental care, which means no cumulative culture (and often death right after spawning), which means no cognitive niche. All mentions of “parental care” in this 2001 review of cephalopod reproduction seem to refer only to eggs, as do all other such references I’ve found. Tool handling is known in octopodes and complex huntng tactics in squids, so if a cephalopod line starts teaching skills to its offspring they have a decent chance.
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