You quoted me without including reference.
That's considered impolite. Please don't let that happen again, either with me, or anyone else. Please use the quote button so that the poster to which you're referring is including in your response.
Thank you.
It's just proper netiquitte.
Here's the post:
Quote:
Originally Posted by mugaliens
Intelligent life is as likely to have red (iron) blood, two hands with five fingers each as it is to have legs like a crab and it's blood be based on copper.
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And my reply:
Quote:
Originally Posted by GOURDHEAD
Perhaps not. At a sufficiently high level of categorization evolution will have generated many "body plans" for the biota in each of the compatible environments. Those with DNA structures, iron blood transportation, two manipulators, and two locomotors will have competitive advantages (optimal "brain" loading) in the march to technical competence and result in not being significantly different from us.
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I do tend agree with your iron oxygen system, bipedal locomotion as well as bipedal manipulation, which makes as much sense on land as it doesn't make any sense in the water, hence the reason whales, dolphins, sharks, and fish have flippers, not hands.
Yet we find several variations throughout nature, each optimizing on variations. Primates can walk, humans are the best, we can climb trees, some of us are prehensile; ants are six-legged, some with pincers, some with stingers; termites also six legged, but many with various other mechanisms.
Arachnids, the eight-legged variety.
Worms. No legs at all, just like snakes and two varieties of lizards, yet they seem to do just fine.
Birds.
Fish.
What I'm getting at is that there are many niches within the evolutionary cycles because there are many environmental conditions. Cold, hot, dry, wet, land, sea, windy, etc.
The reason that we're at the top of the food chain is because we're not really tied to any particular environment, including the vacuum of space. We've "been there, done that." Even though, technically, we weren't the first off the planet.
However, we sent those who were, and not because we thought they were better than us, but because we thought they were expendable, and we weren't.
So...
My point is that we live on a planet with a highly varied climate. It's only natural that the top of the species would originate from the species that can live in -100 to +130 temps, no lack of fresh or salt water, and with a food supply chain 24,000 miles long.
What other species on the planet can boast this?
My point is that we don't occupy a "nich."
We occupy something called "domination."