Alien Biospheres: Part 15 - Sapience

To assuage some of the concerns I’ve been seeing, this may be the last episode of this series, but it won’t be the last time we see this planet – not by a long shot. The whole purpose of this series was to serve as an introduction to the basic principles of evolution and to establish the natural history of this planet in broad strokes. But now that we’re finally at the present-day time period and have established all the necessary groundwork, we can start fleshing out the biosphere in much greater detail. Really, the only thing that’s going to be changing is the format; instead of obscenely long videos that take the better part of a year to make, we can switch to having shorter, more focused videos on a much more reasonable schedule. EDIT: I also want to say, because I don’t think I made this clear enough in the video: cultural developments can play just as big a role as instincts in shaping a sophont’s behavior. There is a danger of being too deterministic when it comes to finding evolutionary explanations for a sophont's behavior. The point of the latter third of this video was just to focus on the biological basis of the neotects’ behaviors (after all, this series is about biology, not anthropology) and to establish their cultural “starting point”, but their behaviors will doubtlessly change a lot from their ancestral state as their cultures and technology progress, which we’ll cover in future videos. For example, the division between breeders and non-breeders is likely to become less important to maintain and more blurred as populations increase and resources become more abundant. It’s not like the neotects are going to be stuck with exactly the same behaviors and social structure as the paleotects forever (just look at how much humans have changed since the paleolithic). Also, while I think it’s pretty much undeniable that a species’ evolutionary history will influence its psychology and culture to some degree, the field of evolutionary psychology is a bit of minefield and can sometimes get mixed up with various outdated and pseudoscientific ideas. Like I said in the beginning of the video, this whole topic is very speculative and is susceptible to personal biases, so be sure to think critically when reading up on the subject.

Fact: Neotectons possess an instinctual affection towards creatures with soft, slender bodies and small (or even nonexistent) eyes, in the same way that humans possess such an affection towards creatures with large eyes and heads. Resultant fact: Neotectons would love you if you were a worm.

We did it boys we've invented spider racism

(time stamp: 55:25) The theory that the human brain became smaller a few thousand years ago (by DeSilva in 2021) was refuted only a year or so after it came out (in a 2022 study by Brian Villmoare and Mark Grabowski). Turned out DeSilva used a rather small and skewed sample size in his analysis. Using a wider sample size - especially around the target period of the supposed reduction - shows no sudden reduced volume. Human brain volume has remained (on average) about the same for the last 30k years.

"Many aspects of human architecture will seem bleak and utilitarian to them" I mean... It does to us too...

the end of 'alien biospheres', the beginning of 'alien civilisations'

Tectid male: lays two sticks at 90° angles from each other. Tectid female: "TF does this mean? Literally what?" Tectid male: moves one of the sticks to be at a 91° angle. Tectid female: "Take me right now you stud."

I would totally read a story about a male Neotecton that dreams of one day traveling the world, only for those dreams to be shattered when they turn to female. Will they resign to the life of a trapped female, or damn the consequences and shame and set off to explore? What will others say? What will they find? Will they still even want to know?

As of right now, 5/3/2024 the wiki page for Neotecton ecumenes states: "The most successful species of sapience because they were the most racist."

The way you divided sapience into "can be used to make life easier" and "is needed for survival" makes a lot of sense and I'm surprised I haven't seen it used by biologists before

Considering how their breeding systems work, i imagine these guys are gonna be making absolutely wild romance stories, like a combo of courtly intrigue and soap opera

Shoutout to orcas for having fashion trends. Salmon hats are so in.

Give us the spider-people plushie you cowards.

"Many primates have a specialized grooming digit called a toilet claw" is a wonderful sentence.

The fact that their architecture was not born out of necessity for survival but out of artistic expression is amazing.

Spiderwolves with pet snakemoles sounds exactly like the kind of thing that will ensure Australians are the first hominids to make contact, as I doubt anyone other than us is going to volunteer for the task.

This series started when I was a freshman in Highschool. I'm now finally finishing it finishing my year as a freshman in College. I'm so excited

So basically, 'emo' neotechs wear teal patterns, eat 'deserts' made from various meats, and watch 'anime' drawn in a style that makes characters long and skinny with short limbs about badass warrior trans-women with harems of nerdy beta males.

"Yes Chief matriarch of the Neotectons, I understand that us humans seem like eldritch horrors beyond your comprehension but have you considered the fact that the human male's reproductive organ resembles a very cute widdle baby grub? Perhaps we are not so different and even worthy of your empathy and compassion."

I'm just imagining like a cute little slice of life were humans and neotects have made contact, and they are doing a little exchange program to get both sides used to each other (thought up by the neotects). Now a human college student and a young adult neotect are romates, and are trying to get used to their VERY different cultures, and other things. Like, imagine I'd the human gets disgusted by the neotect's pet, but the neotect gets absolutely horrified by the humans pet dog. Or they help each other over come their fear of dark (the human) and light (the neotect. And so many more possibilities. :>