X Beyond the frontier inspired poll.....

Lord Hhallas

Spaceman
I was playing x ( a game I recomend to the Wc addict) and I was wondering...

What do you think any prospective intelligences in the universe would eat (predator etc I mean.

I figure any intelligence would be a predator, since it takes some amount of intelligence to get a regular prey animal.

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Pretend to be a pig in order to eat the tiger.
 
Lord Hhallas said:
I was playing x ( a game I recomend to the Wc addict) and I was wondering...

What do you think any prospective intelligences in the universe would eat (predator etc I mean.

I figure any intelligence would be a predator, since it takes some amount of intelligence to get a regular prey animal.


Diet prefrences do not require intelligence.
Instincts dictate them. Watch the Discovery Channel!
biggrin.gif
 
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Your logic is flawed, though -- a species adapted to *avoiding* predators may be just as intelligent as a good predator. FUrther, though, many of the adaptations that allow for and against predation have little to do with intelligence -- having sharper claws or a better lifting capacity or a built in system of camaflauge doesn't really affect how smart I am. In fact, I believe you'll find that the more specialized an animal becomes to a task, the less 'intelligent' it gets. The more intelligent will be those specialized for nothing, but capable of everything.
 
If that was the case, Hhallas, then pigs wouldn't be so intelligent (they're smarter than most other mammals).

I think that to develop into a truly sentient species though, the creature would have to be an omnivore.

[This message has been edited by Quarto (edited July 07, 2000).]
 
Perhaps an omnivore, however bandit, I might point out that you don't have to be too bright to run away, but one is more likely to need to be intelligent to catch prey. As for pigs, they are omnivores. One should note I class humans as predators.

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Pretend to be a pig in order to eat the tiger.
 
Well, of course we're predators. We just have shotguns.
smile.gif


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If I'm locked on, there's no such thing as evasive action!
 
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If you look at the dental evidnece, evolutionarily we were Herbiovres eraly on. We also were the hunted for a lot longer than we were the hunter. I imagine any spacefaring race is probably eating the equivalent of cheesy poofs and other processed foods. They'd need stuff that would last for siginifcant periods of time.
 
We have been hunting since we were not even human. Even chimpanzees and other apes and monkeys will catch rodents and eat them. And what of whales and dolphins?
 
Early humans scavenged more than they hunted, or so the theory goes. Comapred to a lot of other species we kinda suck at hunting. Until we developed some effective hunting tools.
As a general rule, the lesser primates, new world and old world monkeys, lemurs, lorises, etc. are mostly herbivores and/or insectivores. Of the greater primates (gorillas, chimps, orangs and humans) gorillas are mostly herbivores (prefering fruit over veggies.) Orangs and chimps are omnivores and chimps will sometimes hunt (in groups) some species of monkey. They get most of their diet from plants, though.

There is quite a bit of fossil evidence in places like South Africa that early humans were the main course for several species of felines.
 
The other other white meat!

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Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

[This message has been edited by WildWeasel (edited October 20, 2000).]
 
Uh... I think we're more red than white.

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If I'm locked on, there's no such thing as evasive action!
 
Hehe... I don't think I've actually heard of any culture which enjoyed eating human flesh. As a rule, cannibalism is done for two reasons:
1. No other food available.
2. Ritual. As in, "when I eat your heart, I gain your strength."
 
It's my belief that originally, nature creates a set of animals on a planet without any thought to how they wind up. You get a group of stupid creatures, a group of smart creatures, a group of killers and a group tastys. There's no law which dictates that any two of these four groups must coincide.

Now, if you're a killer, there's really very little room for advancement. You're already at the top of the food chain, or very near the top, so there's no need for evolution to take a hand. The Kilrathi are obviously a fluke in this respect.

If you happen to be prey, however, there are options open to you. Only the smart prey (at least prey somparitively smart next to its respective predator). So let's say you're a mammal, as mammals are usually the most advanced creatures on both sides of the predator/prey wire. And let's say you're abnormally smart, and you get smarter as time passes while your species in general manages to evade extinction. You'll be able to accomplish this by establishing some sort of fortification or finding a suitable defensible spot to live, like a cave.

From there, you can go and forage, and hide if there happens to be any predators about.

So time passes and you evolve.

Now you stand up straight and run on two feet. However, one day, you're dumb enough to be caught off guard by a leopard. You think to run, but you know you're too slow, you think to attack with fists and teeth, but you know you're too weak, but you see a stout stick on the ground by you, so you pick it up. All this happens in less than a second bu virtue of your superior brain, which lends itself to quick and logical thought and accurate fine motor control. As the intellectually slower beast lunges forward you deftly clup it in the face with your stick.

While you may not be strong in comparison to the leopard, you certainly aren't feeble, and the stick adds enough bite to the swing that the cat falls unconscious. HAHA! You've discovered another secret to survival. This you teach to all your equally intelligent bretheren, and your species flourishes more than ever.

But then comes the drought.

Your crude farms and foraging grounds wilt and die, and you begin to starve. You've observed monkeys eating rodents before, so you try your hand at hunting them. In your persuit, however, you attract another leopard onto your trail. This one you club just as harshly as the first, but in your deperation, you cut it with a sharp stone. The meat is vile, but you think perhaps it might be better cooked, like some roots are. You take a hunk of meat to your family and cook it, it begins to smell muchn better. As you bite it again, you realize that meat is far better than foliage.

The bloodlust sets in.

In your craze over this new food source, you quickly develop newer faster and easier methods of killing. With your superior mind and superior weapons you quickly establish yourself as the supreme hunter on the planet. As time passes once again the original objective of weapons and study is lost, but new purposes are found to drive the species to greater intellectual evolution and lethality. Wars, conquest, exploration, always the taking and the consuming.

Your humble beginning is lost, and for the better.

You are now the ultimate force, the very top of the evolutionary pecking order.

Were you a hunter to start? No.
Did being the hunted cause your mind to decay and deteriorate into a slothful and lethergic state? No.

My point is that intelligence and predatory status have no bearing on each other, at least not initially.




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Hats off to the new-age hairstyle made of bones,
Hats off to the use of hats as megaphones...

-Frosty
 
Actually, Hhallas, you *do* have to be fairly bright to run away (or even not be attacked in the first place) -- if you're going to do so and survive.
 
excellent point frosty. as for what you said bandit, flies run(fly) away. So do deer. Neither is all that bright.

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Pretend to be a pig in order to eat the tiger.
 
Everything is relative Hhallas.

What do flies and deer run from? The *from* is the important part. The predators which feed upon those creatures are never significantly smarter and some aren't as smart.

I mean, you'd have to be pretty retarded to eat a fly anyway, right? So the fly can't be much dumber than its respective predator.




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Hats off to the new-age hairstyle made of bones,
Hats off to the use of hats as megaphones...

-Frosty
 
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