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Did complex landscapes make land animals smart? + Why volcanoes & aliens go together

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Why aliens and volcanoes go together
http://nautil.us/issue/86/energy/why-ali...ogether-rp

EXCERPT: The availability of liquid water, which is essential to every form of life that we know of, would raise the chances that [...an exoplanet...] harbors life. ... Now, scientists are beginning to understand the importance of another characteristic of any planet likely to support life, and it is one that fits squarely into James Lovelock’s view of Earth as a dynamic participant rather than a passive backdrop: an active system of drifting continents, otherwise known as plate tectonics. On the face of it, the connection between life, with its relatively brief cycles and dizzying complexity, and plate tectonics, with its much slower cycles and ostensibly simpler interactions, appears tenuous. But on Earth, at least, that connection is direct and deep... (MORE - details)



Did complex landscapes make land animals smart?
https://cosmosmagazine.com/nature/evolut...als-smart/

EXCERPTS: Writing in the journal Nature Communications, he [Malcolm MacIver] and Ugurcan Mugan suggest complex terrestrial landscapes with trees, bushes, rocks and hills, and the primal drive to survive, is what made land animals smarter than their aquatic ancestors. [...] “What this work really showed us,” MacIver says, “was that vision, one of our most prized ways to take in the world, went from being relatively unimpressive while in water… to giving us information about a much, much larger span of space once we lived on land.”

This enhanced vision offers more time to plan ahead rather than react automatically. [...] To test this, he and Mugan tapped into computational models, such as the famous AI program AlphaGo, to simulate predator-prey interactions. [...] Results showed that in rich savannah-like environments with a mixture of open and closed spaces, escaping predators was greatly enhanced by planning, a brain capacity that has evolved in birds and mammals.

On the other hand, there was no benefit to strategic thinking in dense jungles, open plains or water. The reason for this is simple, says MacIver. “In those patchy landscapes, every move you or your adversary - another human, a sabre tooth tiger - make is a move in which your position could be hidden or revealed.”

By thinking through the different options offered by a complex environment and what might happen in each possible scenario, much like in a chess game, you can work out which path is best. “With obstacles to perception, such as opaque things like boulders or a cluster of dense bush for a visual task, suddenly a whole suite of deceptive tactics becomes useful,” MacIver says. “But you need quite some brain power to work through those tactics.”

Evolution could have then naturally selected for brains that were able to plan and envisage the future. “It could explain why we can go out for seafood, but seafood can’t go out for us.”

So why are sea mammals like dolphins and whales intelligent? MacIver suggests these animals prove their theory, as they lived on land until 50 million years ago, and likely had developed planning ability before plunging into the sea... (MORE - details)
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