You've heard of Earth is space australia now get ready for: Earth is the space Amazon Rainforest. Aliens land on Earth and they are losing their goddamn minds because every square inch of the ground is absolutely PACKED with life like there are hundreds of species just in this one site, there are winged animals flying through the sky and multiple colonies of sophisticated social insects just in the shadow of their ship, this ONE ROCK is covered in MULTIPLE SPECIES OF ORGANISMS that are themselves MULTIPLE ORGANISMS LIVING SYMBIOTICALLY, the tall, woody autotrophs look so different from each other because they're...holy shit that's like 5, 6, 7???? different species on this one site???
they start talking to a human and the human is like "haha yeah that's a crow!" and the alien researcher is like "you called it a 'bird' earlier, is that a different name?" and the human is like "oh a crow is just one species of bird, there's like, 10 others out there"
"On this planet?"
"No, in the back yard right now."
imagine aliens that come from a tidally locked planet where only a thin band of the planet is habitable, or a planet life was only able to develop in small areas at the poles, or in the few pools of liquid water on the planet's surface, or just in isolated areas where geologic activity causes geysers and springs, visiting Earth. They seem completely unprepared for the shock of realizing that Earth's continents appear green because the continents are absolutely covered with green organisms.
The alien biologists are so uncomfortable because there are certain protocols for maintaining certain distances from life signatures to avoid harming unfamiliar organisms, and groves of plant like autotrophs and pools where aquatic life dwells are carefully protected and respected, with very important rules for approach
On Earth, the inhabitants are just. Playing and walking LITERALLY STEPPING ON CARPETS OF ORGANISMS the whole time. the aliens are like "it doesn't hurt them??? Can't you just...move them to a place where you don't have to step on them?" and the humans are like "no of course not, grasses evolved to tolerate being stepped on, and besides, more plants would grow there if we tried to move the existing ones"
It then must be explained that humans would need to regularly spray poisons on the ground to prevent any given area of bare soil from filling up with plant life, and that "regularly" means "multiple times within a single solar cycle." And that the poisons stop working within a few decades because the plants evolve to resist them that fast.
Human: yeah solar is the dominant energy source these days but some of the recent solar farm projects are pretty controversial because they're in reclaimed strip mining sites that others argue should be restored as best as we can to their previous ecological state
Alien: I don't understand...why would you not place the solar farms in an area of the planet with no existing ecosystem?
Human: ...what?
Alien: You have rather sophisticated protective gear and have done some space exploration, surely you could establish them in an area of the planet to which life is not yet adapted?
Human: ...there isn't one.
Alien: ...what do you mean there isn't one
Human: I mean, every lineage still alive today has survived at least 5 major Extinction Events.
Alien: You have repeatedly used the phrase “Extinction Event” and I understand both of those words individually but the way you use it seems to imply that some species are surviving Extinction.
Human: I see your confusion; “Extinction Events” are when a bunch of species go extinct at once, not an individual lineage. Everything alive today has survived between 5 and 20 of those, depending on how severe the biodiversity loss has to be to count.
Alien: 😥
Human: Yea like sometimes it’s catastrophic volcanism. One time a giant rock fell from space. This one’s fun; one time the arctic sea had a particular configuration and a single species of plant wound up sequestering so much carbon that it permanently cooled the planet.
Alien: 😱
Human: so, you know, every living lineage has been at least a little bit extremophile at least once in our natural history.
Alien: this explains the succulents
Human: exactly
#organisms? In the ground? Like in caves and tunnels with high humidity, yes? ...What is this mycelium you talk of, how big is this net? Like a couple meters? What do you mean the entire continent
#and then they discover that humans are basically our own biome. We’ve got so much non-human stuff in our guts that we’re more bacteria than human being.
Alien: what do you mean you have entire classes of organism that rely on the cellular machinery of other species to function!?
And then the aliens learn about the fact that our classification systems have Problems as well.
"So… because of your downright obscene biodiversity-" 'Still a really weird thing to say, but sure,' "-your species decided to make a system that puts living organisms into a finite number of nested categories, with evolutionary lines of descent having a lot of weight for grouping organisms."
'Pretty much. I mean, can't say anything sensible about an organism's... everything without getting into the weeds of how they evolved in the first place.'
"And yet... somehow you're saying that this flying animal covered in feathers is in the same overarching group as... the small, hairless animal it just ate?"
'Yep. Didn't figure out the whole evolution thing until a couple hundred years ago, so before that we thought that "all those animals that live in water, can't breathe air and have fins" would make for a nice, clear-cut category.'
"...sensible enough?"
'Until we started doing proper science rather than just guessing and assuming. Turns out? Either we're all fish, or "fish" is too nebulous a category to really use.'
"S-so... 'Fish' are a category of ancestor species?"
'Also no. "Fish" are around today and haven't stopped evolving just because a few went on land. We're figuring it out, but yeah. It's more complicated than it looks.'
"...yes, that much is evident."
___________
“How convenient that you’ve learned how to read the molecular code of life on Earth. We assume you’ve been working hard to sequence Earth organisms?”
“Oh yes, we’ve sequenced the genomes of almost 4,000 species!”
“Incredible! How many more are left?”
“Huh?”
“You must be getting close to completing that project.”
“…. There are probably 9 million species on earth and we don’t even know what most of them are yet.”
“Sorry, what?”
___________
Just wait till they hear about the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone though.
“Okay, so there was a nuclear power plant here.”
“A what?”
“A method we developed to capture energy from the splitting of atomic nuclei. And to answer your question, it’s usually safe, but when it goes wrong, it tends to go horribly, horribly wrong. Like here. There was … what we call a meltdown. The radiation is such that the area won’t be safe for human habitation for another few centuries.”
“Oh, I see. So nothing lives there anymore.”
“Well, no humans live there anymore.”
“What.”
“The people who used to live there all fled or died, of course. But everything else? It’s thriving, as far as we can tell. We’ve sent in scientific expeditions — it’s safe as long as we don’t stay too long and monitor the radiation levels. There are plants overgrowing all the buildings. Animals all over the place. If I remember correctly, we even found an entirely new species of fungus that had adapted to use the radiation as food.”
“…Your planet is crazy.”
