The ocean is deep, mysterious, and frightening, so is it possible that under the bottomless ocean, there is a kind of intelligent life that we do not know? Let the fish tell you today why there are no intelligent creatures in the sea.
possible...... Maybe there is, you say SpongeBob SquarePants?
Is there a difference between high and low life, this question is difficult to answer. In fact, the total weight of microorganisms on this planet is 23 billion tons, which is 385 times the total weight of human beings, and 12 times that of all marine and land animals on The Earth, in this sense, the real owner of the Earth may not be us.
But from another point of view, evolution does have a history, and these histories lead to the complexity of life, and we humans are probably the creatures that grow at the end of this treetop, that is, intelligent life. We no longer live just to live, but look to the sea of stars.
<h1>Evolution has a direction</h1>
In general, this direction can be summarized simply and crudely:
Simple to complex, temperature to constant temperature, ocean to land, solitude to gregarious living.
These are the general directions, which means that there are actually special cases everywhere in the world, such as many cavemen who have degenerated their eyes. But the special case is the special case, will not change the direction of our understanding of the world, then you also see, from the ocean to the land is a general direction, why life must leave the ocean to further develop it? This brings us to a fundamental principle of evolution, which is "stress selection."
Animal without eyes, Proteus anguinus
For life to exist, it must strive to become more prosperous, otherwise it may be accidentally extinct. Changes in the environment will make life strive to adapt to the environment, this process of evolution under the pressure of the environment is called "pressure selection", in a well-known phrase, that is, "no pressure, no motivation".
<h1>Want to eat and die? Come to the bottom of the sea</h1>
So how does life in the sea compare to land? It has to be said that the sea is really too comfortable, 88% of the photosynthesis on the earth comes from the sea, the sea has abundant organic matter and minerals, and the continuous ocean current brings nutrients from the seabed to the surface, so that there are often outbreaks of biota in the ocean.
Chani worms, sea pens, porcelain crabs
I'll give a more interesting example from the side, there are many ways for organisms to eat, one of which is called filter feeding. As the name suggests, it means constant filtering. There are also two types of filter-eaters, active filter feeding (whale sharks, blue whales, thunderstorms, flamingos all belong to this category) and passive filter feeding. Passive filter animals are just living a life of eating and opening their mouths, they don't need to do anything, they just need to stay where they are to filter the seawater.
Sea lily
Why? Because of the density of the seawater, there are often many plankton and organic debris floating around, some of which are the remains of other creatures, and some of which are the feces of other creatures (shit eat you!). ）。 As long as an organ that can easily filter seawater has evolved, it can live very well, so most of the creatures that depend on these subsistence depend on them look strange, not like animals at all but like plants.
Terrier gill
For example, the Cambrian era of The Chani worm, the Charnpan worm, the Langonia worm, and the sea pen and sea gills that still exist today, all of them look like a feather. The twigs and dragons look like stretching fireworks. The basket snake's tail, peduncle and sea lily look like a tropical plant for viewing, except that the color is not quite right. Probably the most excessive are barnacles and teas, which give up their movement altogether and secrete a hard shell that attaches to the surface of an object or animal.
Basket snake tail
The most excessive thing is that this kind of day is really too good, those animals that could have moved flexibly want to be opportunistic, such as porcelain crabs, obviously arthropods with strong athletic ability, but also grew a pair of small nets specifically used to filter seawater.
barnacle
And because of the buoyancy of the sea, the animals do not need particularly high-intensity exercise ability, whether they swim fast, and more importantly, whether the body size is sufficiently streamlined. The competition for survival in the ocean is nothing more than waiting until the nutrients brought by the ocean currents every year to make a wave of seabed resources erupt, and then take advantage of this time to desperately eat and desperately live. At this level of natural selection, organisms don't evolve too fast. (Porcelain crabs are enjoying haidilao)
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<h1>Ancestors came ashore</h1>
Our ancestors of terrestrial animals came from a branch of the suborder Total Finfish, and the only people who still exist in this order are coelacanths and lungfish, and most of the fish in the sea today are spokefin fish, whose fins are skin nets supported by bone or spines, while the fins of total fin fish are fleshy, with bones and muscles in them, which is the premise of their evolution into limbs after landing.
Our relationship with the fish
Life stayed in the ocean for a full 600 million years, until the oxygen content in the atmosphere was enough, and enough oxygen could form an ozone layer under ionizing radiation, and the ozone layer could block the ultraviolet rays that were quite deadly to life, and ancient creatures had the possibility of landing.
Jinping scorpion - spokefin fish
Coelacanth - Total finfish
Finally, in the Silurian Period, 440 to 410 million years ago, the ancestors of all terrestrial animals landed on the earth for the first time. Why did ancestors land so long ago? Are the days in the sea not enjoyable? At present, there are many opinions in the academic community, one is through the study of amphibians and reptile eye size, to get a more open and bright field of vision after landing, because the effective visual distance in the water generally does not exceed 20 cm, the rapid progress of the field of vision is very beneficial for both predation and harm avoidance.
Eye sight distance of different sizes, green is in the air, red is in the water
<h1>The pressure that land gives to life</h1>
Temperatures on land are not as mild as seawater, which is usually not below 0 degrees, but on land, the limit can be as low as minus 50 degrees. The animals that had landed marched to every corner of the ancient continent, towards a harsher environment, and finally in the Triassic period about 250 million years ago, the first type of warm-blooded animals appeared, they were the famous dinosaurs, and then there was the second mestizo, which is today's mammals.
Being able to maintain warm blood allows animals to stay in the best condition at all times, and will not become sluggish because of the cold, and studies have shown that for every 10 degree difference in temperature, the contraction force of the muscles increases by three times, and the stimulation loudness of the muscles also increases by three times. This made the warm-blooded animals much more mobile than the warm-blooded animals, and naturally the warm-blooded animals ruled the earth.
Their descendants are still thriving today, just as warm-blooded birds
From seaborn to terrestrial, life took this step, and the speed of evolution was thousands of miles by day, far away from the old friends who remained in the sea. This strong competitiveness is self-evident, and if you think about it, the top predators in the vast sea now, with the exception of the great white shark, are almost all mammals, returning from land to sea. Because of the characteristics they have acquired for the survival of these lands, they are extremely competitive.
They are not fish, much stronger than fish
And occupying 71% of the earth's area of the ocean but almost no organisms can maintain their own and body temperature, there is only one exception, its name is the moon fish, is the only warm-blooded fish found by humans, it is also a fish with strong viability, breaking the general fish can only be active at a fixed depth, can be basking in shallow water and then go deep into the seabed to hunt (only whales, dolphins, seals, etc. can do this), which proves that warm blood is indeed a trend and advantage, but the pressure given by the ocean itself is too weak, and the evolution speed is too slow.
<h1>Humans also have gaps due to stress</h1>
The effect of stress on evolution is also true for humans, which is a map of human IQ distribution (the gap is not as large as imagined, but there are some gaps), which shows that East Asians > Europeans > Africans. Some scholars have given an explanation, because Homo sapiens was born in Africa, some of them went out of Africa and began to travel to the world, they first came to Europe, where the latitude is higher and the temperature is lower, so they evolved white skin and a larger brain capacity to survive against the environment.
IQ distribution map, this study has some controversy
Our East Asian ancestors crossed Europe and conquered the Siberian plains of extreme terrain before arriving at our homeland! Our unique single eyelid evolved to protect the eye from the intense light of the snowfield. We are a human race that has passed the test of the harshest environment, accepted the difficult survival challenge of hell, and has the most brain capacity.
Roadmap for human migration
<h1>Stress is our partner</h1>
Now you can understand why the gentle Mother of the Sea could not give birth to intelligent life. Yes, no pressure is no power, and this is something like the truth of the earth. Nowadays, people talk about pressure and discoloration, and when they talk about education, they must talk about reducing the burden, as if pressure is the source of all evil. Stress is the constant motivation of our partners, even all living things, and that's exactly what we humans can enjoy today.
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