Which non-human animal is the most likely to develop a civilization?

Yeah. That's why I said only possibly. Honestly if human civilization did die out and something replaced it, they would probably be stuck in some sort of medieval age due to us using all the easily accessible fossil fuels.

lol

>implying ants and bees don't already exist.
There's a good argument to be made that visiting aliens would consider ants to be the dominant species

Make it then because that sounds like some horseshit.

>more numerous and hardy than man
>farm livestock
>agriculture
>sophisticated communication and social structure
>elaborate architecture and cities

Raptors.

all animals using simple tools are candidates for a technological civilisation, all apes, many monkeys, beavers, raccoons, also some other mammals.
Ravens and some other birds.
Dolphins and Squids are smart enough, but it's hard to make fire under water.
You could say ant's, termites and bees already got some kind of simple technological civilisation.

Apart from population, humans very obviously and clearly do all of those better.
And very clearly population is not a sign of dominance because I've probably killed tens of thousands of ants in my lifetime.

Cetaceans, probably Orcas or some other dolphin.

Let's start with the most important prerequisite for civilization: intelligence

To become intelligent/self-aware: the organism would *probably* have the following characteristics:
>k reproductive strategy
Slower, fewer offspring but more chance of survival, more time nurturing.
>Long-lifespan
Here intelligence and an extreme k reproductive strategy would complement each other, as older organisms could impart knowledge to younger organisms. See sociability below
>Mammal or bird
Higher metabolic rate means more energy to spend on bigger brains
>Carnivore or at least omnivore
More energy gained per time feeding. Also selection pressure towards increased intelligence in hunting behavior (have to outsmart prey obviously). Most of intelligence in animals is for feeding, and if you're like my iguana and your food is literally always around you (leaves in trees) you're not going to need to evolve intelligence to eat.

Now let's discuss achieving technology
>High degree of sociability
Obviously. Can't make civilization if you only interact to breed and fight.
>adaptable
Organism MUST be adaptive enough to survive periodic global-scale natural disasters, such as ice ages and volcanic eruptions. It will take *at least* tens of thousands of generations to evolve intelligence, and if you're a niche organism you'll never get enough time to evolve intelligence before your environment changes.
Fun fact: humans encountered a devastating event tens of thousands of years ago that reduced the entire population to a few hundred/low thousands of breeding pairs (we know this from genetic analysis that there was a bottleneck).

cont.

If you want the complicated answer, it all comes down to energy.
Humans use 20-25% of ALL energy on the brain. This is far more than any other organism in any other biological genus. That energy has to come from somewhere, and it has to gradually increase over time (it's not like building a new car, where you say to the boardroom "This year, I think larger brains will be trending).

Humans got that boost by cooking meat, which takes a relatively tremendous energy burden from digested food that went straight to the brain.

I would guess that cetaceans probably won't ever become sentient, because they can't really get the energy for brains from anywhere else. Almost every calorie of energy they use is expended on survival, there is just simply no way for them to get more without sacrificing something crucial.

If not another ape, this would be my best guess. Or crows. Some species of bird.

himpanzees.
Btw, several animals have technology,with primates using stone tools and spears and corvids primitive stone use

>than any other organism in any other b̶i̶o̶l̶o̶g̶i̶c̶a̶l̶ genus
Genus was originally family, hence the qualifer.

>which takes a relatively tremendous energy burden from digest[ing]***
Fixed

>humans very obviously and clearly do all of those better.
Citation needed. Define 'better' in terms than transcend humanity. Good luck.

>Defining intelligence and civilization in human terms
As already pointed out ants and bees already have civilization of a kind. Whether the human version is better or the only type that counts is not a question we can answer

Not user but ant population clearly isn't representative. We obviously cannot compete since we're bigger. So we can speak in terms of total mass. Few years ago, you could weigh all the ants on earth and the weight would roughly amount to all humans on earth. This is now untrue. We have increased in numbers and gotten fatter as well.
Therefore, we are currently above ants in terms of total mass which is the only absolute and objective measure of a species domination over a planet to exist.

bbc.com/news/magazine-29281253

Exactly.
I favor cuttlefish, because they have strong social groups and a degree of emotional intelligence that similarly intelligent animals, like octopods, for example, don’t have. Decent communication, group cohesion, and super smart. Cuttlefish are cool.

We also cover slightly more surface area, since we can now survive on some biomes ants cannot.

Still, kudos to ants. They got farming, air conditioning, slavery, war and public healthcare done before we did.

This

It's either primates or rodents man.

You're not going to have civilization without hands and walking on land.

>elaborate architecture and cities
Not really

Oh please, you boners saw that shitty speculative evolution documentary back in the day and took it to heart. They would have to evolve skeletons first and rodents already have hands.

You don’t need human-style hands with opposable thumbs to manipulate tools.

No I just really like cuttlefish

None. Humans are a total fluke. Multi-cellular life has been around for like 500 milliion years, yet we're the only smart species ever. And it's not like we're stopping other species from becoming smart too.

Birds are the future. Dinos to birds to lords of the earth and sky.

Feel free to name any other option that is anywhere near close to existing.

I dread the day fucking rats will walk the earth as masters, because it will happen.

I would rather crows became kings instead. Crows are cool, and surprisingly smart.

Tentacles. Octopi can manipulate basic levers.

I was just talking about simple tool manipulation, and was thinking about birds specifically. They can get pretty precise when building things.

Corvidae are tool users. True parrots can be too, though they usually don't pick up many skill in that area (their beaks are strong enough to break shells, so they don't need to be very crafty).

You can't build civilization underwater as an octopus even with human intelligence. They can't farm, they can't build building like structures.

Yeah man, but a bird can fly and has no incentive to farm or settle in one place. You need hands, and the incentive to stay in one place to build civilization.

Niggers

>What are Nomadic Civilizations
Are the Mongols not a civilization?
>No civilization Underwater
Based on what? There is a ton of shit you can build or mine underwater. Coral, Notably.

Some fish already show behavior not unlike farming.

Humans were historically nomadic too, before we figured out how to get food without having to migrate all the time. And why do they have to be hands? Other animals have similar levels of precision. Even beavers (who I wouldn’t personally put in the running, it’s just an example) can make rudimentary structures by slapping mud with their tails.

Which behavior? I know they can have symbiotic relationships with other species but I hadn’t seen anything that I’d qualify as domestication or farming

>In order:
1.Hominidae
2.Other 'less evolved' primates
3.Colugos
4.Myomorpha
5.Other 'less evolved' rodents
6.Corvidae
7.Cetacea
8.Cephalopoda
9.Hymenoptera
>>>Everything else

Attached: C.jpg (600x748, 71K)

Beavers have hands, the precise stuff is not done with their tails. My non-primate vote is rodents like beavers and rats because that is the most obvious and clear answer.

Birds are way less tied to any land than a human is. The mongols still had land livestock.

I have always thought about otters

why

>What is Hunter Gathering
Some Birds still maintain a preference for certain Areas. A Bird isn't just going to up and abandon an area Rich in food for no reason.

Scottish Otters that call each other Matey

Ants. They already know how to farm fungus and some species have even figured how to do slaver (slaver maker ants). They know how to build large colonies and for their size, have some nice feats of architecture. That's the basics of a civilization as far as I can see. They're at, like, somewhere between hunter-gatherers and Neolithic civilization. Only thing is, they've been stuck there for thousands of years and can't really go much further.

They use rocks as tools and have hands for example.

Yeah and they don't need to farm because they can fly wherever they want. A huge amount more mobility than any human.

Giant Ants with basic intelligence would be Perfect soldiers. Tough, Fierce, and Fearless. Absolutely loyal to commands, and will never flinch. The Ultimate warriors.

to be fair, you could theoretically create farms and "roads" underwater utilizing sea sponges and coral as a type of defense / means of containing fish that feed off plankton. But they would be hindered greatly in terms of technology and using metals.

there could never be giant ants because their weight could not be supported by gravity. That's why insects are already limited in size, thanks for square cube law an ant your size wouldn't be able to carry a car, in fact it wouldn't even be able to carry itself

Underwater roads are retarded. Just swim.

Attached: stone age.jpg (1280x720, 80K)

Some kind of evolved raccoon?

i was more thinking a road = a giant coral reef you can sort of hover over with goods, and when a giant squid, shark, dolphin, or any predator drifts by civ-octopuses can just retreat into the reef for protection.

Would civilized octopodes just come here and shitpost all day then?

Would elephants have a chance? They can use tools and they're smart as fuck.

Insects could become larger if the atmosphere had more oxygen. But that would probably max out at a little over a foot long or something.

Meerkats have a simple language, and live in basically cities.

Birds have been known to use tools, and are pretty smart and to form social groups and communicate with one another to co-ordinate attacks and such, but that time its going to take to evolve hands put them at a disadvantage

>more numerous and hardy than man
Their numbers are the only reason they as a race are able to survive environments that are mundane to the average human. Let it also be understood that in the event of war humans would easily wipe out the ants.
>farm livestock
A few species that are delicately adapted/evolved to fit one particular environment, does not speak for the efficacy of an entire race.
Take any fat stupid american and place them in a caravan desert environment, they will 7/10 times learn and re adapt to the new environment.
Ants dont "re-adapt" within th span of a single generation.
>agriculture
Same poimt as previous
>sophisticated communication and social structure
Millions of nonsentient/semi sentient beings reacting to environmental stimuli in an entirely predictable simple chemical manner is not a sophisticated communication structure.
Smells like X=do X
Smells like Y=do Y
If the thing is unknown, they literally have no grasp of the scientific method to make it known, since they don't "know" anything.
Its pure instinct.
>elaborate architecture and cities
Networks of tunnels in the ground heald tigether by spit.

>Smells like X=do X
>implying humans are more sophisticated than this
Still falling for the free will meme user?

Negroes.

>Networks of tunnels in the ground heald tigether by spit.
As opposed to what exactly? Rocks held by other rocks?

Primates (see: humans) evolved from squirrel like creature millions of years ago. Rats would probably end up looking exactly like us by the time they reach sapience.
I do have to wonder what a sapient race of birds would look like though. Would they grow more leg/arm/things for better tool manipulation? Would they still fly? Would they still have beaks or feathers? How big would they get?

Kangarooooos!