Brainstorming: Porus World

What if Animal life never diversified beyond sponges. How would the world look with most animal life being Porus. Would Porifera diversify into new sponge like phylum. How advanced could a Porifera based life form get in terms of body structure and intelligence.

My thoughts.
They reproduce sexually so interesting possibilities there.
No central nervous system. This may limit how far they can develop.
Free floating larva could evolve into a non-sessile animal.
IRRC calcium based sponges are closer to Metazons then the two other types.
Specialized sponge cells can transform into any other cell in the body. They are sort of like stem cells.
 
I can't imagine that the sponges or placazoans would be able to advance to anything with intelligence.

I think this is true. The lack of a nervous system will be the biggest hurdle here. Maybe there is a way for it to gain a nervous system while maintaining the sponge like body plan. The problem here is that I'm not sure how efficient the sponge body plan would be in an animal more advanced then modern day sponges.
 
I developed plants with nervous systems. Wrong kingdom, but it just goes to show that you never know what's out there. I imagine sponges would move as slow as the plants if they ever became mobile. We're talking top speeds of 100 meters and hour here.
 
They would probably convergently evolve the features of non-sponges. Body structure would be different (symmetry, vertebrate vs invertebrate, etc.) and unpredictable, but not unfathomable. The main difference would probably be on the microscopic level.
 
They would probably convergently evolve the features of non-sponges. Body structure would be different (symmetry, vertebrate vs invertebrate, etc.) and unpredictable, but not unfathomable. The main difference would probably be on the microscopic level.

I developed plants with nervous systems. Wrong kingdom, but it just goes to show that you never know what's out there. I imagine sponges would move as slow as the plants if they ever became mobile. We're talking top speeds of 100 meters and hour here.

Would they still be counted as a sponge though? Parazoans don't have organs or tissues; it's one of their defining features.
 
Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?

Haha, beat me to it! :D:p

This would seriously be interesting, though. Imagine an entire ocean floor full of intelligent spongiform animals; how would they think? How would they eat? Could they build a civilization, even if it's nothing like our own? The possibilities could be rather open, IMHO. :cool:
 
Would they still be counted as a sponge though? Parazoans don't have organs or tissues; it's one of their defining features.

Plants are a lot easier to modify since photosynthesis defines them and still takes place as the means of producing food for Ambulaflora (they just eat bugs to extract nutrients).
 
After days of wracking my brain here some ideas I came up with to make sponges a little more advanced and give them movement.

1. For some reason (lack of food? genetic disorder?) a number of larva from a certain species of sponge fails to metamorph into the adult morphology. Larva is able to swim somewhat using a flagella. As the larva mature and begin to breed with each other a new branches splits off the tree of life.

2. Aka predatory sponges. Sponge somehow overtime loses its ability to filter feed. They evolve a slow form of movement that allows them to move into other groups of sponges. Once they are within range of another sponge they use specialized skeletal structures on their sides to tear into the other sponge and adsorb its nutrients through a primitive "mouth".

3. New Kingdom. Sponges absorb and integrate some chloroplast cells. Photosynthetic ability is a bone to sponges and goes on through further generations. Kingdom Plantazoa is formed .This is probably the most far out. I would say its possible though as some single celled organisms have both plant and animal cells inside of them.
 

NothingNow

Banned
I can't imagine that the sponges or placazoans would be able to advance to anything with intelligence.

Yep. they're about as simple as a macroscopic organism can possibly be.

Also, it's an ASB scenario to propose that life Never develops past sessile Porifera.

Eventually you're going to get something that preys on them. Probably mollusks or worms of some sort, along with nematodes and such.

Motile Predatory sponges won't work. Absolutely nothing exists on a sponge that could be adapted into a decently mobile structure without completely changing the shape.
 
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