Insectoids?

[Raylan]

Hello all.
I have been thinking as late of the most likely form that intelligent ET life would be.
My thinking brought me to the fact that insect life is the most varied, hardy and ubiquitous form of life on our planet. Also, their rate of evolution far exceeds any other complex organism. Examples are the cockroach and the bedbug who within a few generations can become chemical resistant to new toxins.
Funny enough, it was while I recalled a really bad Sci-Fi movie called Mimic that this theory popped into my head. The film is about a genetically tweaked species of insect that is set to disease carrying kill fleas or roaches (can't remember) and biologically programmed to have a super short lifespan. Of course the scientists botch things and don't count on the the insects' rate of evolution being exponentially increased resulting tin giant human mimicking insects that look like Men in Black or Mothman.
But the bad movie aside. On earth it was the humans that against the odds became the dominant species even though the insect world is far more adaptable, resourceful, hardy and successful at survival. And the best chance of complex life on another planet therefore should be insectoid by that reasoning.
So even though I really balked at the stories of experiencers describing Praying Mantis type beings. Now I believe that insectoid life would be far, far more likely and comon that humanoid, ie. the Greys, Nords etc.
Of course this is all a moot point if we were the result of planetary seeding
Hope I didn't ramble too much. I welcome all insights on the matter.
All the best.

 

[Kim323]

Hello, Raylan. That's a interesting idea, and of course cannot be discounted, on both levels, the evolution of life here on Earth, and the possible evolution in that direction of life elsewhere. I just heard of a study, a very reputable one by a scientist whose name I didn't catch (I think I'll see if I can find the study online), that hypothesizes that the really stunning size of insects in our earlier geological eras had evolved down to their size now because of the appearance (over tons of time, of course) of predatory birds.

I don't suppose given enough time and adaptation that insects couldn't have developed extraordinary intelligence and consciousness to the degree we have it. Difficult to say. As for intelligent insect-like creatures elsewhere, that is less likely in my opinion. A lot of evolutionary scientists are disputing the whole thrust of the SETI scientists' emphasis on assuming that intelligent extraterrestrials would be anything remotely like us or like life on earth, and criticize the whole anthropocentric perspective of SETI research, or that intelligent extraterrestrials even exist. But I don't rule it out.

One thing I've always rejected is this, well, intelligent extraterrestrials would be to us as we are to insects. That devalues and diminishes us and insects, in my opinion.

One of the reasons I'm replying to your post is its whole premise resting on insects. Since a very small boy, I was one of those insect boys, studying about them in books, capturing them and trying to raise them, always having a soft spot for them, and quickly my "specialty" became the social insects, wasps, bees, termites, and ants. I raised them all, though capturing a paper wasp nest and trying to keep it going was a challenge. I don't mean the huge enclosed paper nests you see popularly portrayed in cartoons (though they certainly exist for some wasp species) but the ones you can see above you coated with wasps, the still very large paper nests of one layer. Very difficult and foolhardy to try to domesticate, but I tried.

Ants are easy, and I raised a number of species. Termites, the small soil dwelling ones, are also easy to raise, and you can study their caste system. Of course, it didn't take me long to discover honeybees, and I've been a hobbyist beekeeper since I was very small. To say honeybees are not intelligent and do amazing things would be very wrong. Bumblebees are easy to raise and observe.

Anyway, enough. Here are some superb books I've enjoyed.

Amazon.com: Honeybee Democracy (9780691147215): Thomas D. Seeley: Books

Amazon.com: The Ants (9780674040755): Bert Holldobler, Edward O. Wilson: Books

Amazon.com: Walter R. Tschinkel: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle

The second two are rather pricey, but they would no doubt be available from your library or regional library system. Wilson's The Ants is a classic.
And the one on fire ants delves deeply into the social structure of these fascinating ants, and especially how they spread their colonies. It's a story worthy of a Shakespeare play in its details and dynamics. Kim

 

[mike]

Great sci fi book that deals with the possibility

Nor Crystal Tears - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Actually NCT is just the first contact story, Foster wrote a whole series with the thranx as characters

 

[Raylan]

Thank you Kim for your wonderful insights.
I will definitely seek out the books you cited.
And thanks to you as well Mike. I shall likewise seek out the book you mention.
All the best to you both.

 

[Trajanus]

But the bad movie aside. On earth it was the humans that against the odds became the dominant species even though the insect world is far more adaptable, resourceful, hardy and successful at survival. And the best chance of complex life on another planet therefore should be insectoid by that reasoning.

Na, to be intelligent (or dominant) a creature has to be fairly sizeable, and insects just never seemed to get far in that area. Just because something is very adaptable doesn't mean it's most likely to evolve intelligence (a key to dominance)--or we'd see intelligent bacteria.

So even though I really balked at the stories of experiencers describing Praying Mantis type beings. Now I believe that insectoid life would be far, far more likely and comon that humanoid, ie. the Greys, Nords etc.

If you look at the actual # of reports, humanoid beings greatly outnumber insectoids. Which isn't surprising IMO.