I’m gonna go with bears.
I see you’ve been to Northern Ontario.
EeeeeeEEEEEEeeeeeeWWWWWWwwwwwW! No, no, no. It’s nothing like that at all. If you could infer instant adulthood upon a child, and then step back to see whether the new adult was interested in you, THAT would be synonymous. Now. stop. grossing. me. out.
As far as complexity, I’m not so sure. There is the supposed plethora of unused brain that every human has, so I’d imagine there’s some already there with Bonobos too. If that’s correct, and given our success with slowing down Alzheimer’s, I’m guessing the smart pill isn’t so far behind. We’d just have to then make it into a smart pill for chimps.
I chose dogs; they don’t have opposable thumbs, so it’s harder for them to wield weapons to revolt. At the same time, I think they be helpful for the ‘softer’ aspects of society, such as therapy.
Or imagine a hyper-intelligent detective dog.
I don’t think dolphins would give a good god damn what happens on land. We’d totally have to negotiate for various ocean rights, though, and dumping trash into the oceans would be right out.
I think we can all agree that uplifting octopodes would be bad, bad, bad. How long before they invent the trebuchet? Not long enough.
They never developed the trebuchet as far as we know.Their military history was very different from human military history, developing some ideas much earlier, and other ideas not at all.
Classic examples include:
- Mobiity - Early octo battles were almost all cavalry, with very few fixed positions, except for ambush. They went to blitzkrieg from the get-go.
- Thrusting versus ballistic technology. They went almost immediately to crude rockets, and one of the first signs of what would later be known as ‘O day’ was sea to land missiles.
- Ambush and camouflage. The other great horror of ‘O day’- suddenly realizing that you are completely exposed, and that all the rocks and tree shadows that were empty a second ago are actually full of Octos.
Before Molluscan psychology became a restricted military research field, the standard theory was that their evolutionary history had predisposed them to these approaches, much the way our monkey heritage had us throwing stuff by hand, then by atlatl, then by catapult.
Hey, I said nothing about any interbreeding designs or human/ape eugenics or whatnot. I just seen bonobos in action and they are this close to the threshold of early human society. Give 'em the boost, let’s see what happens.
I have as much desire to bone a bonobo as I have of humping a hominid, thank you very much.
I thought the population of bonobos studied were juveniles, and the accuracy of the study in doubt.
I said “cats” because one of my best 4 friends in the world is a cat and I’d totally dig being able to chat with my cat.
But ultimately I’d go with dolphins. They have access to parts of our planet that we don’t and vice versa. The information trade would be of immense value to both species. We’ve already got a huge population of sentient chimps in the world.
You, sir, are the wind beneath my wings.
Are you kidding? I give the cats about ten minutes to realize that we spend over half of our waking time working just to provide gooshy food to eat and a warm place to sleep. The real problem with giving cats intelligence is that they will be nagging us all the time to get them more toys and more comfy things to sleep on. And telling us how there are roaches in the walls.
And you are the current beneath my siphon.
Mosquitos. I want those bastards to be able to regret even existing.
Y’all are just sick; and totally missing the point.
I want a concession selling .410 shells.
None. It just increases your likelihood for extinction.
Voles.
How about rabbits? They wouldn’t be a threat to us.
Octoplural
They can probably use their tentacles like hands to grip and move things. Every other possible animal except chimps would, effectively, be a cripple because they have this big brain in a body that’s useless for working with tools.
Uplifting a chimp just gets you a weird human. We already have those. What’s the point?
The octoplural would be able to colonize the oceans. Where humankind is limited to land, they would be able to farm the bottom of the ocean, build oil rigs that were fully submerged, create power generators that rest in rivines that channel the oceans flow, etc. They would have unique and interesting goods to trade us, and us to them.
I voted dogs. Dogs love us. Any other species might rise up to overthrow and enslave us, but dogs love us.
OK, even dogs might rise up to overthrow and enslave us, but they’d still love us.
ETA: Octoplural. excellent!
Dogs are the only animal on that list that would actively seek to be our new best friend all over again. Plus, you can’t take over our world without thumbs.
ThisSteven Dobyns poem captures their thoughts and impulses quite well.