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Sorry, chimps. Oxford professor says octopuses will rule Earth after humans.

They are civilization builders.

via Dan Asaki/Unsplash and Canva/Photos

The last man on earth and a perplexed chimp.

It’s upsetting for many to consider that humans may not be around one day. But it’s not shocking, given the damage that we’ve done to the planet through climate change and the fact that we’re the only species to create a nuclear bomb. Even if we don’t do ourselves in, the odds aren’t in our favor of the Earth not finding a way to eliminate the surface disturbance known as humanity. Studies show that since life began on Earth, 99% of species have ever lived have gone extinct.

So, after the last human on Earth passes away, who will take over the mantle of being the apex predator and build Earth’s next great civilization? University of Oxford professor Tim Coulson has posited that a rather unorthodox species, the octopus, will take over after we’re gone. His new book, The Universal History of Us, outlines his thinking for the cephalopod takeover.

What species will take over the Earth after humans are gone?

octopus, octopus swimming, end of man, evolution, smart animals, survivors, human extinctionA happy octopus swimming.via Canva/Photos


Most people would think that the great apes are our natural successors. Still, Coulson says otherwise. “Hominids such as chimpanzees and bonobos are intelligent animals with opposable thumbs, tool-using abilities, and, at least for short distances, the capacity to walk on two legs, traits shared with us,” Coulson told The European. “Despite these similarities, they would likely face extinction alongside humans, as they are equally exposed to threats in our shared environment.”

Coulson says intelligent birds will fail to take over after humans because they “lack the fine motor skills needed to construct a civilization." However, octopuses have the physical, mental, and social possibilities to build a great society, especially without humans to thwart their efforts.

“Their ability to solve complex problems, communicate with one another in flashes of color, manipulate objects, and even camouflage themselves with stunning precision suggests that, given the right environmental conditions, they could evolve into a civilization-building species following the extinction of humans,” Coulson said. “Their advanced neural structure, decentralized nervous system, and remarkable problem-solving skills make several species of octopus well suited for an unpredictable world.”

octopus, octopus swimming, end of man, evolution, smart animals, survivors, human extinctionA happy octopus swimming.via Canva/Photos

Coulson believes that octopuses could evolve to create a great civilization beneath the sea that rivals the world created by humans. With some help from evolution, they may also learn to adapt to life on land and take over where people left off. This may sound improbable, but 370 to 390 million years ago, the first sea creatures left the ocean to live on dry land. Further, some animals, such as dolphins and whales, started in the ocean, lived on land, and then returned to the sea after disruptions to their habitats. Could a similar disruption cause the octopus to look for a better life on the beach?

Culum Brown, a professor in the School of Natural Sciences at Macquarie University, is skeptical that octopuses have it in them to make the big leap to the top of the evolutionary heap. “Despite all their tricks, octopuses are still working from a snail blueprint, and there’s only so much you can do with that toolbox. They are also highly constrained by their very short life-span,” Brown wrote in The Conversation.



Sydney Philosophy of Science Professor Peter Godfrey-Smith told Popular Mechanics that octopuses are also hindered by their social dynamics and lack of “intergenerational connections.” Given that they have yet to develop them over millions of years of evolution, Godfrey-Smith is doubtful they’ll occur “anytime soon.”

It’s impossible to know what the future holds, but don’t be shocked if, one day, octopuses develop a superior civilization based on peace, love, and seaweed. “Random mutations, unforeseen extinction events, and population bottlenecks can all significantly influence the trajectory of evolution, making it challenging to determine whether another species will develop human-level intelligence or the inclination to construct cities,” Coulson told The European. “But could octopuses replace humans–and potentially also primates–if they were to die out? Absolutely. They could become the brains of the sea.”

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Science

The reason why humans started kissing each other is kinda gross but really interesting

Let's just say love has evolved.

via Canva/Photos

A couple ready to smack lips.

There are few more beautiful moments in life than a romantic kiss. But there are a lot of other reasons why humans kiss, too. There’s the kiss that a parent gives a child to show them love. There’s the kiss that friends give each other on the cheek and the kiss of death from a mob boss, signaling that a member of the family is going to die.

Kisses play an essential role in the social lives of humans, but where did this behavior come from? Previous theories suggest it’s a holdover from the instinctual sucking that humans do as babies to get milk. Some researchers believe it’s behavior that evolved from when mothers would chew their baby's food before feeding it to them mouth-to-mouth.

Others have suggested that it’s a way for humans to sniff one another for “social” inspection. It’s a way of finding out where that person has been, who they've been with and what they've been eating.

Why do humans kiss?

A new research paper by Dr. Adriano R. Lameira, an Associate Professor and UK Research & Innovation Future Leaders Fellow at the Department of Psychology, University of Warwick, UK, argues that it comes from primate grooming rituals. “The most likely and straightforward evolutionary explanation is that mouth-to-mouth kissing evolved from an earlier form of kissing involving the mouth and other body parts,” he writes.

The disturbing part is that, according to Lameria, when we pucker up our lips and suck on someone else, it mimics a behavior we used to remove parasites from one another’s fur when we were apes.

Why do primates groom each other?

Grooming is a vital ritual in the world of primates. It consists of one ape picking through the fur of another and removing parasites, dead skin and debris. “Grooming helps to establish and maintain alliances, hierarchies, and group cohesion through social touch, with the consequent release of endorphins, which reduces stress and promotes feelings of well-being between groomer and groomed, further cementing social ties,” Lameria writes.



Whenever an ape finds something to remove from another’s skin, they usually eradicate it by sucking it off their body, in a behavior that works precisely like a kiss. The kiss-like motion is the last final stage of removing each piece of debris so that every grooming session ends with a final kiss. As apes evolved into humans, we lost most of our hair, so grooming sessions became shorter and shorter. “Presumably, up until the ultimate point when two individuals simply performed the last step of grooming, latching on their lips to the other's skin but having discarded the hygienic (and by now obsolete) function of grooming,” Lameira writes.



So, when we kiss each other, we're building and strengthening bonds with someone else, much like we once did through grooming rituals—only now, it's a quicker, more straightforward gesture.

As Sam, the piano player, sang in “Casablanca,” “You must remember this: a kiss is just a kiss,” but Lameira's paper shows that a kiss is much more than we could ever know. A kiss is a behavior that goes back millions of years, an example of the importance that social bonding plays among humans and other primates.

It’s interesting to learn where this behavior comes from. But, after reading this, it’s probably going to make kissing feel a bit more awkward when you consider that you are mimicking a behavior that was once used to remove bugs from your lover’s skin.

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science
Nature

10 amazing times things were camouflaged by pure coincidence.

These photos are mind-bending.

via Reddit user TheDoorBelllGuy

Through the magic of evolution there are countless instances where animals are so camouflaged to their environment, they're nearly impossible to see.

This helps them hide from predators or gives them cover to lash out and eat other animals.

The orca is black on top and white on the bottom so they're hard to identify from above or below.

Who'd notice this terrifying viper in the desert sand?


This seahorse perfectly blends into its environment.



But when human beings blend into the environment, it's not a miracle of nature, it's usually just dumb luck or poor fashion sense.

Here are ten times that things were camouflaged by pure coincidence.

Cat matches dog


The building is slowly fading into the sky.

Via Reddit user pachew96

This black car looks like a mirror after being washed

via Reddit User Tittzo

The cat in the carpet


The vines on the side of this house changed their color to match the siding.

via Reddit user ErnestoJesperson

She is the sea and the sky

via augustoberg / Instagram

The only time polka dots have worked as camouflage.

via Reddit user TheDoorBelllGuy

This woman is wearing the floor.


If she died right there, no one would notice.


This brings new meaning to the phrase, "Eat it or wear it."


Creepiest moment in a hotel since "The Shining"

Reddit user Wickensworth

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What happens when you freeze the Earth?You get the first animals.

Image created from Pixabay.

Science looks at the building blocks to life on Earth.

Life on Earth is tough as nails.

From the crushing, soulless depths of the ocean to the highest reaches of the atmosphere, from boiling hot springs to Antarctic wastes — even in the radioactive heart of Chernobyl, life thrives. It finds a way. It laughs in the face of adversity.

Turns out, that amazing tenacity is kind of our birthright as Earthlings. To understand why, you've got to go back to Snowball Earth.

720 million years ago, the Earth was a pretty different place. For one thing, it was in the icy grips of something called the Cryogenian period.

ice age, environment, algae, earth freezing, science, global warming

Saturn's moon Enceladus. 720 million years ago, Earth's surface might have looked strikingly similar.

Photo from NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute.

Living on Earth would have been tough. For 85 million years, the planet was locked in a grinding cycle of massive freezing and thawing. This was no mere chill. At its height, the entire planet may have been frozen over with glaciers marching over even the equator. The alternative? Greenhouse conditions caused by massive volcanic eruptions.

Sounds like a bad time to be around. And, yet, life didn't just endure. This period happens to coincide with one of life's greatest moments — the jump from single-celled bacteria and microbes to multicellular life. Plants, animals, mushrooms, just about everything you can see in your day-to-day life is a descendant of this great leap forward.

But this triumph in the face of adversity wasn't a coincidence. At least, that's what a letter published Aug. 16, 2017 in the science journal Nature says.

Life didn't just endure this cycle of ice and fire. It may have flourished because of it.

The reason, the authors say, has to do with algae. For the three billion years before, single-celled life had scrimped by on whatever energy and nutrients it could grab. There wasn't much to go around.

But things were going to change. As the glaciers marched back and forth across the surface of the planet, they acted like giant belt sanders, grinding mountain into powder — powder that was chock-full of minerals like phosphates. When the cycle flipped and the volcanoes took over, the glaciers melted and dumped all those nutrients straight into the ocean.

Where the algae could get it.

Which then spread like never before.

Which was then food for everything else. Suddenly there was plenty to go around and life began to eat. And thrive. And change. And, over time, that life made the leap from tiny, lonely microbes to the ancestors of all the multicellular life we see today.

We don't just endure hard times. They give us the fuel we need to grow.

This is just one possible explanation, but the scientists say it's backed up by evidence. Chemical signatures in the rocks show a massive algal bloom around this time. Other ideas might come in later and disprove it, of course — that's just how science goes.

But if this is true, then it just makes life on Earth that much more incredible.

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