Worldbuilding Wednesdays: Hallmarks of Sapience

Welcome to Worldbuilding Wednesdays!  Every Wednesday, we spend what is probably far too much time walking through our worldbuilding process.  This week, we discuss one of many methods of making people.

What We Have So Far

We have a world that's ready for people is what we have.  We've got enough information to have the geography prepared (in broad strokes), the weather, the night and day skies, the tides, the various biomes, the plants and the animals living in them... but as of yet, no people.  Last time, we talked about the fact that first we would need to decide what parts of a person we should describe... and paused at the fact that the people we were about to describe didn't have to be human.

We also mentioned a few environmental factors that would influence the type of species that could become "people" instead.  It only occurred to us later that maybe not everyone was aware of why, exactly, creatures become sapient in the first place.

A Smooth Brain is a Happy Brain

What follows assumes that we're using widely prevalent evolutionary theory.  We don't have to; we could craft our people whole cloth, or follow other rules.  This particular method was chosen mostly because it follows our design philosophy, principally the part where, unless otherwise noted, we follow Earth's rules for development.  And on Earth, so far as we can tell, evolutionary theory is what describes the development of animals (and potentially non-animals) into people.

So:  how did we humans get so smart?

The answer is that at least initially, because we needed to be.

As it happens, there are several evolutionary factors that contribute to having a powerful brain like ours.  Part of it is size, for example. Larger animals tend to have larger brains, and larger brains tend to make creatures smarter.  If that were the only factor, however, elephants and whales would be smarter than we are.  The jury is still out on certain whales, with a couple of scientists positing that, say, dolphins could have developed a civilization if they weren't sea-bound... but we definitely have elephants beat.  We know because we checked.  Although elephant brains are larger than our own, they only have about 30% of our thinking power. 

Their brains, you see, are smoother than ours.  It turns out that one of the easiest ways to determine how smart a creature is (in a general sense) is to measure, not the volume of their brain, but the surface area.  While quite a few animals have larger brains than humans, few have brains that are as wrinkly.  Our brains are wrinkly because they couldn't get much larger; because of how we are born and develop, there is a maximum initial skull size (and thus brain size) before each child being born would kill their mother in the process.  Killing our mothers in childbirth is a terrible way to build up our species' numbers, so once we reached our limit, increasing the wrinkles became the go-to method of making us smarter.

Now, the thing about evolution is that it does not actively select traits.  Evolution more or less randomly selects traits, but once those traits become available, adaptive pressure is what determines whether those traits flourish or die out.  So it is that intelligence developed more or less at random, but once it was present, the intelligent versions of our ancestors outlasted the unintelligent ones.  And the reason why the intelligent ancestors survived is that they needed that intelligence.

This may have seemed like a massive aside, but what it boils down to is pretty straightforward.  When we think about making a sapient species, we have to ask ourselves what adaptations, environments, and activities did they rise from that required intelligence?  The more pressure they faced to become intelligent, the more intelligent they grew.  Eventually, those pressures conspired to create a creature that was more intelligent than strictly necessary for survival, and it is at that point that civilization becomes possible.  For our purposes, we're going to pretend that is also the line where sapience occurs.

Peer Pressure

Judging from Earth's creatures, we can make some broad-stroke assumptions about what kind of creatures need to be more intelligent.  The reasoning is a little bit circular; we look at smarter creatures, note the traits they possess, and then claim that those traits are what led to their intelligence.  It may be fallacious, but hey, at least this way there will be no loose ends.

The following types of creatures tend to display increased intelligence, compared to their peers:

  Hunters.  Not every smart animal is carnivorous, but most are.  It turns out that having to outwit your prey means that smarter hunters thrive.  They tend to develop basic strategic thought and predictive analysis.

  Mid-Level Predators.  Humans like to think of ourselves as apex predators, and this is true on our planet, but we weren't always so.  At least one or two species evolved specifically to eat us, such as jaguars.  It turns out that being hunted by ambush predators made us good at pattern recognition; the proto-human that could spot a camouflaged cat in the bushes was the proto-human that survived to make more babies.

  Social Animals.  As mentioned, not every smart animal is carnivorous.  The smartest herbivores are those that live in packs or herds, as they use a large chunk of their brain to keep track of the other members of said herd.  Remembering everyone is important, when not remembering that there were twelve in your group an hour ago could mean that you fail to notice you're being picked off.  So it is that an elephant never forgets, because the elephants that did forget died out.

  Bipedal.  This trait might just be confirmation bias, but there is evidence to support the fact that part of the reason that humans are so smart is that it is so difficult, mechanically, to walk on two feet.  Running, for example, is basically falling forward and catching yourself on one foot, repeated hundreds or thousands of times in a row without messing up once.  Being bipedal gave us many advantages, but the versions of us who had issues figuring out how to do it got wiped out in the process.

  Grasping Appendages.  With all due respect to dolphins, we've already mentioned that their relative inability to craft tools is one of the reasons why their sapience is questionable.  While our world does feature magic, and a case could be made for a species that magically manipulates items instead of using something like hands, we already said we were approaching this from an evolutionary angle.  None of our sapient creatures will be doing that.

  Ranged Attacks.  Arguably, the largest reason why humans are not just smart but civilization-smart is not tool use, although that did help. It is instead our tendency to throw things.  To note this, compare humans to chimpanzees, who also use tools.  They throw things as well, quite famously so in fact. What they do not do is make tools to throw at others.  Their throwing of objects is incidental to their development.  For us, the users of spears to hunt, throwing objects was instrumental.  Hand-eye coordination, calculus-level calculation, and a fundamental grasp of mechanics all helped us move from flinging poo to taking down mammoths.

  Dominance.  Last but not least, the more intelligent creatures tend to be those that establish and maintain their dominance in a territory.  One of the reasons that humans reign supreme on Earth is that we have rather ruthlessly absorbed, suppressed, or destroyed any other creature that has challenged us for the throne.  On a world 100 times larger than Earth, this tactic won't be as effective, but at the very least, we can expect that whatever sapient creatures develop won't dominate the same biomes that humans do.

All-Terrain Creatures

Now that we have a list of traits that our creatures should possess, the next step is to decide where in our world they are.  This is due to the last trait mentioned; if they were to appear in the same biome as humans before civilization arose, we would have to assume that one species would wipe the other out.  Similarly, we'll also be assuming that they can adapt to other biomes fairly easily, since otherwise they'll be outnumbered by one of the other sapient creatures and, again, destroyed.  Our species will be creatures who are masters of their biome, contenders in the others.

Because we've already established some biomes specific to our world, probably the easiest thing to do is to find a creature that is at home in those biomes.  Looking at our list, and discounting those areas that will either be too small or completely subsumed within larger biomes, we have three contenders:

• Leeward Megasavannas.  Humans are the natural choice for this biome.  Pursuit predation, which we are legendary at, will be less useful when our prey can clear a hundred or so feet in a single bound, but hitting targets with weapons will be more useful than ever... and in the great fields, we'll be able to hit anything we can see.
  
• Fog-Belt Hyperforests.  Our sapient species will be a climber, used to leaping and/or gliding to attack their prey.  As mentioned, they will be social creatures, operating in packs, likely small enough to be agile (meaning our size or smaller).  If they're bipeds with something like hands, they're likely to be quad-limbed; hex-limbed or similar creatures will have the same problem octopods in our world do (they're brilliant creatures but have to devote 75% of their brain power just to running their limbs).  They'll be built to shed water, with needle-sharp claws and gripping pads.  Gliding won't be their main mode of locomotion if they're bipeds, so small gliding flaps, strong leaping skills, and terrific aim will be necessities, since it is a long way down if they miss a branch.  The image conjured is something like a carnivorous squirrel with the coat of an otter, but closer to our size and capable of running on its hind legs as it throws objects (likely ropes, which will help with both movement and catching prey before it hits the ground).
• Stilt-Root Estuaries.  Here, on the sands and through the shallow waters beneath the roots, will be our third species.  Again, social creatures, predators, big enough to hold their own but not as big as the largest predators in the area.  At least partially amphibious, equally comfortable in or out of the water, which probably means scales.  The quickest and most dangerous predators of the estuaries have many limbs, low profiles, and scuttle, so these creatures will survive by having multiple methods of locomotion- running, yes, but also swimming (which does not depend on friction), leaping, and climbing.  These scaly fellows look for food in the water and use their superior intelligence to ambush the quicker predators from above, building nests and homes atop the roots where they cannot be seen by aquatic monsters.  Cleverness and adaptability keep them safe, and these are tools that are useful no matter where you find yourself.  Perhaps these are reptilian, with features similar to geckos and marine iguanas?

Conclusion

This gives us enough to start with:  three species that have massive biomes to spread through and dominate, creatures naturally inclined to become more intelligent, and people who might clash, but could not wipe the others out.  Humans could not outswim or outclimb the estuary and forest people, and would do better on open land than either.  Similarly, the furry climbers won't be able to ably pursue the reptiles into the water, and the more generalized reptiles won't be able to keep up with the furry folk once they've gone into the trees.  This state of affairs would only have to last until civilization develops, at which point the respective species can find reasons to cooperate.

Still, what we have right now are only rough sketches of the sapient species of our world.  Next time, we'll work on adding detail to those sketches.