Would we know if dinosaurs domesticated other dinosaurs?
What is domestication, anyway? Just another form of symbiosis? We know who is the passive and who is the active participant in our relationship with our domesticated creatures, right? Is it about control? Is it about intent?
We have evolved lactase persistence in some populations to drink milk. Did goats or cattle domesticate us?
How strange it must be to be a coffee plant, that became so poisonous that creatures wanted to eat it even more to become poisoned.
What kinds of symbiosis will we never know about?
Which creature invented symbiosis?
Did dinosaurs love their young?
What was the first creature to have loved something?
Do plants worship the sun?
Is belief necessary for worship?
Which creature invented belief?
Some humans think in only pictures and some can't think in pictures at all (Aphantasia). How long has this been possible? How long ago did humans first have words in their minds?
Which creature invented seeing?
Which creature was the first to see well enough that it could go blind?
Which creature was the first to be able to think about being under the condition of blindness?
Do cats with three legs know that they have three legs? Is this knowledge in the form of "number of legs" or "difference from other cats" or "injury in the past?"
If crows have names for each other, and meerkats have names for birds of prey, do any animals have names for us?
If we sometimes believe that animals can't be evil because they can't go against their nature, do any animals believe this about us?
Who was the first to say "I love you" in whatever language was spoken first? Did they know what it meant?
What was the first metaphor? How do you develop the capacity for metaphor when you don't have it before? What happens inside you that makes you capable of understanding that something can be something else in a way that is different than being that thing?
How did we evolve artistic ability? Cruder forms of creation are less precise and more abstract. It's so much less of a leap to look at a bronze sculpture of a horse and say "horse," than to draw lines in dirt and say "horse." The lines in dirt aren't something that could be mistaken for a horse. The sensory experience of "horse" is big, beast, thundering hooves, hair, three dimensional, warm. The lines in dirt represent horse, without having much in common with horse. You can understand why a cave painting of a horse is "horse" without understanding symbols, but you have to somehow learn that you can represent things in two dimensions by using crude lines before you can create realistic art.
What colors did Precambrian organisms have?
If there was nothing that existed with color vision, did they have colors at all?
How many times has life started to evolve whatever it is that humans have, and turned back from that path?
Do blue whales know that they are the largest organism? Do they understand "largest?"
How large is an ant's concept of the world? Could a civilization of ant-sized creatures develop space travel? How much harder would it be for them to develop an understanding of the world that is that size?
It would be so much harder for a blue whale to develop space travel. Is there a size range for organisms that can do that?
If there is other life close by our Sun, how likely is it to ever develop interstellar travel? Would a single huge sapient fungus penetrating every ecosystem on its planet be interested in finding new planets, even if it was far more intelligent than us? Would sapient octopi? Is curiosity naturally part of intelligence? Is purposeless behavior naturally part of intelligence? How statistically likely is the ability to draw with a stick in the dirt and understand that you've made "horse?"
Would Earth 50,000 years ago be considered to have "intelligent life" by most standards? Would Earth 3,000 years ago? Was space travel inevitable? What if alien Sumer lasts for a million years? What if alien Sumer simply does not see anything else left to accomplish?
What if multicellular life is relatively rare? What if life on land that breathes air is relatively rare?
Why do so many creatures dream? Is it likely that aliens would understand what dreams are?
If aliens don't use sight, could we explain writing to them?
Is communication even possible between organisms that have totally different sensory worlds?
Would a sapient fungus that encompasses its entire planet in mycelium even be able to think of the idea of "communication?"
Would a sapient forest be able to think of the idea of "travel?"
Animals who have been taught some language have not been known to ask hypothetical questions. What creature invented questions?
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