Tiny Civilization

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What if the sentient species on the planet was not man? What if something smaller had evolved to our position? By smaller, no smaller than ants, but no bigger than the average rodent (chipmunk, mouse, etc.). If this is scientificially reasonable (if not, I guess this would belong in the ASB forum)?

Main point of interest is infrastructure and technology. For example, at what point would they be able to build bridges?? Would they be able to build cars and rockets? What about ships? Even small waves would be able to take out rodent scale ships. And think of all the predators they have. They might purposefully drive some species to extinction when they get the chance, if only to save their own hides.
 

NapoleonXIV

Banned
I once read an article by Asimov that said if you place a shrew at 1 and an elephant at 9 then man will be about a 5 on a scale of size. He's not big, but he's bigger than most.

Keep in mind that smaller animals are usually stronger pound for pound so they can manipulate their environment. If warm-blooded they necessarily have faster metabolisms because the square-cube law means they lose heat faster, therefore they have to eat more and spend more time in hunting or lots more time in eating.

I can envision a world in which small animals have extincted most species over the size of small dogs. Chipmunks ride Chihuahuas and husband rabbits. The last remnants of a relative of the great apes, called man, hold onto a desperate existence in Africa as a protected species.
 
Planet of the Shrews

A very small mammal civilisation would probably have to industrialise much faster than human civilisation just to even the odds a bit. Presuming that primates don't exist in any form in this ATL then the shrews efficient firearms much sooner than man did, bears and tigers aren't really that much bigger than humans, maybe a 6 on Asimov's scale, and can be killed reasonably easily by a spear, to a shrew though a cat is the eqvivalent of a T-Rex only faster and more manuverable. I doubt a rodent civilisation would kill off all the larger predators though, as a lot of them, like wolves, lions and bears, wouldn't be interested in something so small.
 
I hold that a rodent is a good choice for a intelligant species failing apes. They have the hands, all they need is the thumbs.
A small animal civilization would develop faster then one of humans due to smaller animals living in faster time then humans and having shorter life spans (more of a drive to get stuff done in your life).
Not many LARGE animals would be too interested in a rodent and they would have smaller animals being bigger for food and more resources so jah it should work in some ways though in others its iffy.
 
I nominate squirrels for sentience. They spend a lot of time sitting upright anyway, so they are on the road to bipedalism. And they have dexterous paws, so maybe they could eventually develop opposable thumbs. They store nuts for the winter... the first step towards agriculture. They live in trees... the first fuel source sitting all around them. Without humans, maybe there would be nations of squirrels spread out across the planet.
Hey, we could take it farther. Let's say they develop technology.... eventually there are squirrels flying small versions of helicopters and fighter jets. Squirrel navies sail on the oceans, and squirrels fly space shuttles into space, and have landed on the moon. Let's say they are all evil too, so they spend a lot of time conquering other races of squirrels and rodents (the long war of extermination against the chipmunks is a dark chapter of squirrel history). What if the squirrels develop cross-planar technology and come to our world? Will humanity be able to stand against the evil squirrels?
 
I figured out how they could bridge smaller rivers. Just chop down a tree that taller than the river is wide.

As for large animals, you have to do something about them. Otherwise, they might accidently walk over your cities.
 
From everything we know, a brain has to be a certain size to promote advancement in the scale of Man; we also need opposable thumbs (that's why dolphins get stuck in our nets, not the other way around). So yeah, ASB. Sorry! :D
 
Do they have to be land species? I mean, some water species are quite smart. Then eliminate most of troubles. No need for bridges, no need for bipedalism, no need for navies. And hey, land forms only small portion of Earth and it's continuous so no need to develop technological advanced things to move around (you need ship to get from Europe to America, you don't need anything to go from Mediteranean to Indian ocean).
 
Knight Of Armenia said:
From everything we know, a brain has to be a certain size to promote advancement in the scale of Man; we also need opposable thumbs (that's why dolphins get stuck in our nets, not the other way around). So yeah, ASB. Sorry! :D
Well, I think its the proportion to the body mass thats important. Plus, there's no reason why you can't get a rodent with opposable thumbs.
 
There appears to be a minimum brain size required to develop intelligence. However, the relative brain size is also important. Humans pull it off by being large mammals but having brains much larger than our body size would suggest. So intelligent small animals is probably ASB. Of course, if we're not around, it's certainly possible for rodents to evolve larger.
 
Suppose somewhere along the line we eliminate primates and replace them with a species of rodent that has the prerequisites for developing civilisation, opposable thumbs, binocular vision, ability to walk upright all the time. So where do they go from there?

For species that require a large intake of nutrition daily swithing from being hunter/gatherers to farmer/builders has a lot of advantages. Also even if they do eat more proportionally than larger animals farmer rodents would still use less land than human farmers. Also if the rodents are omnivirous they can domesticate animals which might be quite a bit bigger than themselves, (when thinking of that one I got a mental picture of a boatload of hamsters reenacting Moby Dick with a trout).

As for cities, well they'd have to site them for defence like we do and they'd face the added problem medium sized predators and larger animals that could trample the rodent cities into the ground. I'd say they'd build them in the treetops and on islands because they can sanitise the them of any dangerous lifeforms (something like the ending of Day of the Trifids where the population of Britain decamps to the Isle of Wright).

Rodent transport systems would be prey to the same problems as rodent cities so I'd imagine that early comunities would be quite isolated. To avoid ground based predators and having their railway line crushed by passing cows the rodents might develop air travel sooner than humans. The rodent eqvialent of Chistopher Columbus might cross the Atlantic in an airship.
 
Underwater technilogical species couldn't happen. Fire is the base for technology so the most technology you could get with a underwater race is along the scale of tool using chimps.
Also brain size doesn't mean much, it is brain size in proportion to body size which matters.

We come to gerbils in regards to large animals trampling on your cities- build them under ground. Gerbils and hamsters and other similar animals do have little villages built underground anyway, all they need is thumbs and some tinkering with their brain.

So assume the ancients choose rodents as the species to make sentinent rather then the missing link chimp type creature of otl...
 
Accepting that this really belongs in ASB's it is nonethess a good speculative question. If we assume intellegence in a mouse or squirrel-sized bipedal mammal is possible, there may be some interesting ecological and physical conditions to affect how their societies/technologies developed.

(1) Architectcure/settlements. Much smaller, lighter structures to support much smaller lighter creatures. Possible location of settlements/towns in trees to escape larger predators in early history and then continuation of this pattern as urbanization develops. Perhaps individual trees are political units, forests are like continents or islands, and treeless savannahs are like oceans (alternative is living in warrens and burrows, but this doesn't seem as cool to me)

(2) Agriculture. Given the size of the plants domesticated for human cereal and tuber agriculture, this would be more akin to forestry to our smart rats. Probably much less development of agiculture in our sense, except possibly for fungi. Wild god-given acorns have the economic/spititual significant grain breads do in ours.

(3) Animal husbandry. Iffy. All animals domesticated by humans are either deadly predators to these little guys or way too big to be domesticated. Maybe herds of turtles or guinea pigs. Or small birds. Also bugs, lots of bugs.

(4) Technology. Probably based primarily on using wood, clay, bone, feces, and grasses. It probably takes too much raw physical strength to chip stone tools or forge and hammer metals. Possible use of more pottery and chemical technologies (etching, crystal growing, etc). If fire is tamed, probably far less widely used than by big guys in stone house like us.

(5) Weapons. "hand" thrown projectile weapons would be a lot less useful, owing to the lightness of the projectile and air resistance (try throwing a 4-inch long match stick javelin at your cat 6 feet away and see if he even feels it). Tiny swords and daggers made of sharpened wood or bone would be good. Catapult-like devices would be necessary to impart valuable kenetic force to heavier projectiles like rocks or useful sharpened arrows. Acid, poison, or fire based weapons might be more common. Guns (of a sort) might actually occur earlier than in OTL.

(6) Travel and Transportation. Gliding and powered flight would probably occur much earlier, given the light weight and high metabolism of these little guys. It would take a lot less effort to have a "mouse" powered set of wings attached to their little selves, and given their light weight, even a long fall to the forest floor would usually not have fatal consequences (again try this with your pet gerbil if you want to be hitleresque!). Probably the only machine engines likely to evolve would be those based on enegry produced or conveyed by spring tension, gears and pulleys, twisted fibres, etc., as it takes metallurgy to make steam and combustion engines. Maybe animal power from bugs, turtles, birds and any other small domesticated animals.

This is just a start.
 
zoomar - those are very interesting speculations. Whether they live in trees or underground would depend on whether they evolved from burrowing-type animals like prairie dogs or tree dwellers like squirrels.

Realistically, I don't think that any animal as small as a squirrel could become really intelligent. I think that there is a certain minimum number of neurons that an animal needs.
 
I agree Paul. Although an interesting idea, there probably is a minimum brain size for human-like intellegence, but possibly the neurons could be packed in tighter? Anyway, it makes for good ASB SF.
 
Also something to consider is communal animals- squirrels largely live alone on the whole. You need communal animals for the civilization.
I stand by burrowing animals being the best bet, much safer then trees- with trees something could still come along and smash down your tree or birds could pick you off. Underground a door could be made to keep out snakes and the only thing you have to worry about then is burrowing animals or maybe a spot of bad weather (which also effects trees)

Anyway- Small civ and humans= asb. Small civ= not asb.
 

NapoleonXIV

Banned
Brain power is a matter of size and of folds in the brain. Whales have huge brains but are not more intelligent than people (though they are pretty smart) due to the fact that their brains are smoother. The folds allow more neurons to be packed in. There is a limit to this, however, and I believe squirrels would be right at it.
 
Leej said:
Also something to consider is communal animals- squirrels largely live alone on the whole. You need communal animals for the civilization.
I stand by burrowing animals being the best bet, much safer then trees- with trees something could still come along and smash down your tree or birds could pick you off. Underground a door could be made to keep out snakes and the only thing you have to worry about then is burrowing animals or maybe a spot of bad weather (which also effects trees)

Anyway- Small civ and humans= asb. Small civ= not asb.


You're probably right about burrowers, not so much because living underground is inherently better, but because, as far as I know, the only social rodents and other similar small animals (prairiedogs, meerkats, etc) are terrestrial burrowing animals. One thought though. Perhaps the very nature of aboreal adaptation, together with the pressures it places on evolution of prehensile hands and bincocular vision is necessary for the evolution of the precursor of human-like intelligence. Maybe only when a social group of small mammals (other than monkeys, of course, which are already there) move to the trees, could they evolve intelligence. Somehow, one wonders if living in nice safe tunnels would ever create the selective pressures for good vision, true hands, and other supposed prerequestites for technological intelligence.

One final thought, since monkeys are small social mammals living in the trees, maybe the fact that they had to evolve into apes and then hominids before true intellegence occurred is further proof true human intelligence can't occur until a certain minimal brain and body size evolves (say 800-1000cc cranium with large enough body to support the heavy head and pelvis to bear big brained infants).
 
Kick
This thread is more than 13 years old, but I still wanna reply.
I nominate squirrels for sentience. They spend a lot of time sitting upright anyway, so they are on the road to bipedalism. And they have dexterous paws, so maybe they could eventually develop opposable thumbs. They store nuts for the winter... the first step towards agriculture.

Yeah, that does make sense.


Accepting that this really belongs in ASB's it is nonethess a good speculative question. If we assume intellegence in a mouse or squirrel-sized bipedal mammal is possible, there may be some interesting ecological and physical conditions to affect how their societies/technologies developed.

(1) Architectcure/settlements. Much smaller, lighter structures to support much smaller lighter creatures. Possible location of settlements/towns in trees to escape larger predators in early history and then continuation of this pattern as urbanization develops. Perhaps individual trees are political units, forests are like continents or islands, and treeless savannahs are like oceans (alternative is living in warrens and burrows, but this doesn't seem as cool to me)

I personally think that living underground makes a lot of sense. When you live underground, you're safe from predators and larger animals can't harm you that much.

(2) Agriculture. Given the size of the plants domesticated for human cereal and tuber agriculture, this would be more akin to forestry to our smart rats. Probably much less development of agiculture in our sense, except possibly for fungi. Wild god-given acorns have the economic/spititual significant grain breads do in ours.

(3) Animal husbandry. Iffy. All animals domesticated by humans are either deadly predators to these little guys or way too big to be domesticated. Maybe herds of turtles or guinea pigs. Or small birds. Also bugs, lots of bugs.


(6) Travel and Transportation. Gliding and powered flight would probably occur much earlier, given the light weight and high metabolism of these little guys. It would take a lot less effort to have a "mouse" powered set of wings attached to their little selves, and given their light weight, even a long fall to the forest floor would usually not have fatal consequences (again try this with your pet gerbil if you want to be hitleresque!). Probably the only machine engines likely to evolve would be those based on enegry produced or conveyed by spring tension, gears and pulleys, twisted fibres, etc., as it takes metallurgy to make steam and combustion engines. Maybe animal power from bugs, turtles, birds and any other small domesticated animals.

This is just a start.

For intelligent rodents living underground, fungi would be the most likely be first on the domestication table, being able to be grown underground. I think that insects would be best for domestication. What do you exactly mean by spring tension?
 
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