Secrets to creating a unique universe

[tlrobson1]

Aye that's what the article was about Gumboot; the Cambridge Declaration of Consciousness. I haven't made 15 posts yet so I can't post the link, but if you paste 'prominent-scientists-sign-declaration-that-animals-have-conscious-awareness-just-like-us' into google it's the first hit.

 

[Gumboot]

Aye that's what the article was about Gumboot; the Cambridge Declaration of Consciousness. I haven't made 15 posts yet so I can't post the link, but if you paste 'prominent-scientists-sign-declaration-that-animals-have-conscious-awareness-just-like-us' into google it's the first hit.

Ah, I think I understand. Presuming I've found the right article:

http://io9.com/5937356/prominent-sc...animals-have-conscious-awareness-just-like-us

What you appear to have here is a biased/dishonest source. They state:

An international group of prominent scientists has signed The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness in which they are proclaiming their support for the idea that animals are conscious and aware to the degree that humans are — a list of animals that includes all mammals, birds, and even the octopus.

This is totally false. Indeed, one of the central points they make in their declaration is that the consciousness of various animals is quite different to human consciousness.

But probably most importantly, all the declaration actually states is that many animals have some of the neural circuitry which is used for consciousness. That doesn't mean they actually have consciousness, in the same way that I've got forelimbs but I can't fly like a bird.

Finally, consciousness and self-awareness are not the same thing. While self-awareness is a type of consciousness, it's quite high-level consciousness. Anything beyond involuntarily stimuli-response behaviour constitutes consciousness, including any sort of decision-making, so to make the declaration that consciousness is common in animals isn't really that ground breaking.

To twist that into "most animals are conscious in the same way that we are" as the io9 article does is quite simply an outright lie.

I would recommend reading the actual declaration itself:

http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf

(note, that link is to a PDF)

 

[James Coote]

If you sat down and wrote a story set in present day Britain, you probably wouldn't think twice about the setting. Your head is already loaded with the images and terminology to describe the world, so you can just launch straight into it:

"John straddled the edge of the field, hearing the occasional swish of cars passing on the narrow country road hidden behind the hedgerow."

You don't have to prescribe that hedges border fields, nor specify that cars are boxy metal vehicles with four wheels. This is why authors spend so long on world building, even if they only put a fraction of that world into their work.

People learn new words by inferring their meaning from the context they are used in, but you can do the same trick with a whole landscape by setting a familiar activity into it

"John artfully sidestepped the charging Gholbla, leaving it helplessly flailing as it slid across the frozen lake of Kruflah. Pirouetting round a loose pile of Jogbha, John disappeared into the forest of spiky Nagfores."

John is dodging an attacker and escaping, so the action is moving forward, whilst at the same time, 4 new words are introduced. I know from experience as a reader, this can be infuriating, when an author just throws in made up words and expects the reader to remember them when they get round to the explanation 5 pages later.

However, in the above passage, the words have some attached properties or meanings. Even though only vague, fuzzy sketches in the reader's minds, they still have a huge amount of information attached to them.

For example, the Gholbla moves and acts like an animal. Just the word "forest" implies so many things about the Nagfores; There are many of them in close proximity, but not so close that John can't get between them. They stick out from the ground and are taller than John.

You can sub in words that are easier to infer the meanings of, but you end up with something cliche'd and a bit lacking in originality

"John artfully sidestepped the charging Cyberhunter 4000, leaving it helplessly flailing as it slid across the frictionless hyperpad. Pirouetting round a loose power cable, John disappeared into the forest of spiky data crystals."

The connections are really made when readers put two and two together:

"John crested the summit and was greeted by a clear view of the valley, stretching into the hazy red martian dusk ahead, and flanked either side by jagged geological formations. Below, swift packs of Gholbla on the hunt, flitted between the clumps of Nagfore growth"

Point is, the info dumping is broken into small, manageable chunks. The above actually dumps some info about the valley first, foreshadowing some tough climbing. The second part reinforces the ideas about what Gholblas and Nagfores are. Details can be filled in later if necessary to the story, but even if they aren't, there is still an exotic world inhabited by predators and peppered with strange spiky tree-thingies.

______


The second part is the uniqueness. There are two ways to do this. The first is to just mash two things together that you don't normally see in the same context, but which aren't wholly nonsensical:

"John took a shortcut through the park and across a housing estate, passing as he did row upon row of spiky red pyramids, each home to a single family"

The second way is to immerse yourself in a totally different culture where the architecture, art and dress are completely different. That will put into stark contrast the differences and fundamental similarities between humans*

Your knowledge will likely include big gaping holes into some aspects of life in these cultures, but you should have enough sample material and imagination to fill these in. Once you later on find out the truth, you'll discover that you've been filling this stuff in 'wrong'. In fact you've been inventing whole aspects of a culture. Do this often and eventually, you'll only need a very thin real-life mesh / framework on which to hang the heavy fruits of your imagined world without the whole thing falling apart

* If you can't travel back in time to Tang Dynasty China or can't afford a plane ticket to Chichen Itza, museums are usually a good bet.

 

[nubins]

I cannot read books where the author has thrown in words and terminology unique to the world without explaining what the hell they are talking about. I tried a few and I just gave up on them very early on - I dont care and I dont want to read a sentence full of gobbledygook. I appreciate there may be creatures and plants and people that are different, but if you must go down that route then you have to engineer their introduction to the reader in a way that is clear. The phrases above would still irritate me, even though there is an effort to try and give the words context, it's still meaningless. There is no description of what a nagfore is other than a tree. Why even bother mentioning nagfores? If its a tree, leave it at forest. Ghobla.. it's easier to do this with creatures, but it's still far from ideal. What type of predator are they? How big are they? It explains nothing of what they are - they could be tiny carniverous hamsters, insect eating mammals or wolf like creatures for all that description gives. If they are a pack predator like a wolf, then just say they are - or better yet, call them a wolf/bear/tiger - what does it matter?

 

[nightdreamer]

I also have to disagree with Gumboot on the assumption that alien life must resemble us. I'm assuming the context is that of physical form. According to commonly accepted evolutionary theory, it is largely by accident that we are mammals. Supposedly -- at least according to some -- there was moderately advanced reptilian intelligence on Earth at some time. Granted, evolutionary biology is hardly my field, but I can't imagine a cause for intelligence necessarily being connected to form, nor that our form is particularly better that others for manipulating our environment. I always wondered about Doc Smith's Rigelians in that regard, though they would have had a hard time evading predators.

 

[nubins]

I also have to disagree with Gumboot on the assumption that alien life must resemble us. I'm assuming the context is that of physical form. According to commonly accepted evolutionary theory, it is largely by accident that we are mammals. Supposedly -- at least according to some -- there was moderately advanced reptilian intelligence on Earth at some time. Granted, evolutionary biology is hardly my field, but I can't imagine a cause for intelligence necessarily being connected to form, nor that our form is particularly better that others for manipulating our environment. I always wondered about Doc Smith's Rigelians in that regard, though they would have had a hard time evading predators.

I cant think of a specific reason why reptillians couldn't develop intelligence levels like ours, although as the Earth's oxygen levels fell, the insects and reptiles got smaller, so that could be an issue. But the reason why that doesn't negate what has been said before is that what I think many people believe to be a requirement for higher intelligence is a few simple features - they need to be able to manipulate things easily (fingers and opposable thumbs for example) and they need to be able to communicate effectively. It just so happens, that the bipedal form does it best so it's likely that even if reptiles got to higher intelligence, chances are the ones that do will be bipedal with fingers and thumbs

 

[Gumboot]

I cant think of a specific reason why reptillians couldn't develop intelligence levels like ours, although as the Earth's oxygen levels fell, the insects and reptiles got smaller, so that could be an issue. But the reason why that doesn't negate what has been said before is that what I think many people believe to be a requirement for higher intelligence is a few simple features - they need to be able to manipulate things easily (fingers and opposable thumbs for example) and they need to be able to communicate effectively. It just so happens, that the bipedal form does it best so it's likely that even if reptiles got to higher intelligence, chances are the ones that do will be bipedal with fingers and thumbs

Exactly. And if you step back further and ask why we became bipedal, you'll find those requirements rule out a whole bunch of animals. Then once you look at the reason for those requirements you find a whole bunch more ruled out.

What you quickly realise is that in evolutionary terms the results we see today aren't so much random chance, but rather inevitable.

This can be seen with this simple youtube video which explains how evolution works:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcAq9bmCeR0

Even with an exceptionally open system, in an incredibly short space of time the clocks evolve into creatures very, very closely resembling a real clock.

Evolution is pretty brutal, and any creature that finds itself disadvantaged very rapidly becomes extinct. It tends to funnel animals into a narrow range of characteristics.

The only way, then, of achieving a higher-level lifeform significantly different from humans is to begin with a starting point (i.e. a planet) significantly different from earth, but the goldilocks theory suggests a planet significantly different from earth would not support life.

 

[Gumboot]

Incidentally, a good example of what I'm talking about are sharks and dolphins. Both animals have very similar function in their environment, being hunters. Both looks very similar - to the point that dolphins are often mistaken for sharks.

Yet biologically they're totally different; you only need compare the skeleton of a shark and a dolphin to see how dramatically different they are. The reason being, while sharks are quite primitive animals, who have never left the water, dolphins evolved from land mammals that became marine animals.

How did this happen?

It's the channeling effect that I mentioned. Natural selection limits the range of physical variation in an animal based on its environment, so that two totally different species will evolve to look very, very similar.

Interestingly, dolphins and whales are social animals, unlike fish (while some fish live in schools they're not truly social), and are substantially more intelligent, which is why cetaceans have, in a remarkably brief space of time, become the super-predator of their environment. Sharks, despite being specialist water creatures that have evolved over millions and millions of years in the same environment, are no match for much "younger" killer whales and dolphins.

 

[Ursa major]

To begin with, faster-than-light travel is pretty much a requirement of any future science fiction world that wants to involve anything beyond our own solar system.

I suppose it depends on how one defines FTL travel. My aliens travel great distances (including examples of 1000+ light year journeys in a few days), but their ships don't exceed the speed of light**, they don't travel in hyperspace, they don't have warp drives, they don't use Spice, and they don't use wormholes.



** - In fact, they don't approach it: their ship's generally travel about at a maximum of 10km/s, as they're not keen on constant acceleration/deceleration, high rates of acceleration, or long journey times.

 

[Gumboot]

I suppose it depends on how one defines FTL travel. My aliens travel great distances (including examples of 1000+ light year journeys in a few days), but their ships don't exceed the speed of light**, they don't travel in hyperspace, they don't have warp drives, they don't use Spice, and they don't use wormholes.

Yes but...

A) Are these aliens your protagonists?
B) Does the story take place both within and outside their originating solar system?

 

[psychotick]

Hi Gumboot,

Dolphins and sharks look fairly similar because of a phenomenon known as parallel evolution. In essence the fact that they live in the ocean means that swimming is of paramount importance to them, and to swim quickly there are certain hydrodynamic proportions / shapes that work better than others. Any mutation, say for greater intelligence, that took them away from this streamlined (one could say fish like) shape, would work against them.

Quadropedia is a useful format, but there's no reason to assume that it is the only successful body format, or that intelligence will arise from that particular form. Six legs (insects), eight legs (arachnids), and more legs (centipedes etc) are also successfuly body formats.

Intelligence will arise in a species when it becomes an evolutionary advantage for that species to have it. Then those that are smarter for whatever mutation they have will be selected for. As long as that intelligence doesn't come with a disadvantage as well.

And there are many reasons why it's advantageous for a creature to be smarter. To recognise foes and prey, to work out how to hide, to make better use of the sensory data that they have, to cooperate in hunting, to rise in social orders etc. These reasons are not in any way limited to quadropeds.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Gumboot]

Hi Gumboot,

Dolphins and sharks look fairly similar because of a phenomenon known as parallel evolution. In essence the fact that they live in the ocean means that swimming is of paramount importance to them, and to swim quickly there are certain hydrodynamic proportions / shapes that work better than others. Any mutation, say for greater intelligence, that took them away from this streamlined (one could say fish like) shape, would work against them.

Except it's not parallel evolution. Dolphins evolved on land for millions of years, and only then entered the water, during which time sharks remained relatively unchanged.

A shark and a snapper feature parallel evolution. Not a dolphin. And a dolphin has vastly higher intelligence than sharks or snapper. Why? Because of all that time as a mammal on land, in circumstances that enabled higher intelligence.

Quadropedia is a useful format, but there's no reason to assume that it is the only successful body format, or that intelligence will arise from that particular form. Six legs (insects), eight legs (arachnids), and more legs (centipedes etc) are also successfuly body formats.

This is true, but only in very small animals.

The advantage of higher numbers of legs is stability and mobility in very uneven terrain. For tiny animals such as insects and spiders, even the smallest ground variations act as enormous obstacles, so being able to maneuver around sheer walls and difficult terrain is vital.

Once you get to the size of larger animals, the advantage offered by more legs is countered by lost efficiency because all of those legs require energy to function. The likely reason all limbed terrestrial vertebrates are tetrapods is because the earliest limbs (pectoral fins, in primitive fish) acted to provide steering and to provide buoyancy by generating lift. Having multiple ranks of fins would not offer any significant benefit as the secondary and tertiary pairs of fins would be in stalled water behind the front fins, and therefore incapable of providing an advantage in maneuvering or lift generation.

Once vertebrates looked to move onto land the most efficient and expedient way of this occurring is through the addition of a second pair of limbs. As a result all large land animals (and their descendants) are tetrapods.

Arthropods aren't capable of developing to the size necessary for dominating the land and becoming a super-predator, because they're invertebrates. Again we see evolution forcing development along a narrow range of options.

Once you get into flat open terrain (which is what motivates the bipedal arrangement that enables tool use and leads to brain development) the advantages of having more than four legs become even less significant, and having less limbs actually starts to be an advantage. Even if it were possible to come up with a scenario where, say, large six-limbed terrestrial vertebrate evolved (in all honesty I am pretty confidence it would be evolutionarily improbable), you would probably find that they would have lost one set of limbs long before becoming bipedal. You'd still end up with a species that had a basically humanoid appearance.

Intelligence will arise in a species when it becomes an evolutionary advantage for that species to have it. Then those that are smarter for whatever mutation they have will be selected for. As long as that intelligence doesn't come with a disadvantage as well.

And there are many reasons why it's advantageous for a creature to be smarter. To recognise foes and prey, to work out how to hide, to make better use of the sensory data that they have, to cooperate in hunting, to rise in social orders etc. These reasons are not in any way limited to quadropeds.

You're approaching this argument entirely backwards. It's not really a question of which traits offer an advantage. Given how beneficial higher intelligence is, it goes without saying that every single species on this planet would benefit enormously from higher intelligence. Yet exactly one species has developed it.

Evidence increasingly suggests that intelligence was the last major characteristic humans picked up, and it seems more and more likely that our higher level intelligence developed long after we'd essentially placed ourselves outside the evolutionary game by becoming the planet's top super-predator.

The fossil record indicates humans were bipedal and using tools some 4 million years ago, yet only developed the first stages of a proto-language between 2.3 and 0.6 million years ago, and only developed true language about 100,000 years ago, by which time man was anatomically speaking no different than man today. Modern behavioral man didn't appear until around 50,000 years ago.

In other words, we only achieved higher intelligence because we were H. sapiens sapiens. Our intelligence was a direct result of us occupying a sort of evolutionary "perfect storm" where a wide variety of factors came together to enable development of higher intelligence. And intelligence being what it is, once it gets to a point it becomes self-sustaining, leading to increasingly accelerated intelligence.

So while every other species on this planet would benefit enormously from having our intelligence, none of them will ever evolve it, because none of them have found that "perfect storm" spot where higher intelligence is able to take seed.

 

[Boneman]

Wow, I think I've learned more from this thread, than I considered possible - thanks guys! Going back to the original question, I feel that the answer must be 'imagination'. Backed up by some cool realities that we can all relate to (even if we don't recognise them). Dune was brilliant and had a unique universe... or did it? We all recognised desert, we all accepted melange could alter the mind, and that mentats were possible. I guess the only truly 'unique' aspect were the sandworms - but it's only a short hop to looking at basking sharks in the sea, to see where the idea may have come from. (I'm not saying it did, but an illustration on one book reminded me of them.) And the universe cannot be unique, we have to have it translated into our mother tongue, to understand it.

There was an appalling, truly appalling, slew of books about the planet Gor, and when the rulers were finally revealed, the Priest-Kings, they were large insects... Now that hundred shades of Grey has done 'well' maybe the publishers should consider re-releasing these books. Can't believe they were written by a professor of philosophy! And it wasn't unique universe, just an Earth-type planet manipulated by superior intelligence - insects.

 

[HareBrain]

Now that hundred shades of Grey has done 'well' maybe the publishers should consider re-releasing these books. Can't believe they were written by a professor of philosophy! And it wasn't unique universe, just an Earth-type planet manipulated by superior intelligence - insects.

The most successful books tap into either a taboo desire (billionnaire bondage) or fear (giant insect-priests). That's why I'm putting all my efforts into otters, which fulfill both categories: no one will admit to wanting to kiss them (though everyone secretly does), but an otter with a dirty bomb is humanity's worst nightmare.

 

[Gumboot]

The most successful books tap into either a taboo desire (billionnaire bondage) or fear (giant insect-priests). That's why I'm putting all my efforts into otters, which fulfill both categories: no one will admit to wanting to kiss them (though everyone secretly does), but an otter with a dirty bomb is humanity's worst nightmare.

I would read that book.

 

[psychotick]

Hi Gumboot,

I'm afraid that it's you that's got the argument backwards. Evolution by natural selection works on the basis of picking advantagous mutations. The mutations are completely random. What you're suggesting for man is that instead our ancestors somehow directed their own evolution towards greater intelligence. That makes no sense.

Next, no. With regard to intelligence producing a massive advantage for every species of animal on the planet, no. It will likely be of great benefit to some, but of little benefit to others. And you have to consider the costs. Our brains use truck loads of energy to run, which is one reason we have to eat a lot compared to many other creatures. That creates its own problems, and it is completely likely that for many creatures the advantage of superior intelligence would be outweighed by the metabolic cost, as well as many other costs.

A better reasoning for why mankind developed superior intelligence would be that because we were disadvantaged in many other ways, slow moving, not very strong, etc, the advantage confered upon us by increased intelligence was greater. It allowed us to work better in social orders, to communicate, to use tools etc.

And again there is no reason to assume that the same would not be true of other creatures on other worlds. Wildly different creatures. As long as intelligence confers upon them a significant advantage compared to the disadvantages, then natural selection will favour the trait.

Lets face it, if we are seeing higher levels of intelligence in whales, octopi, elephants and apes, then we have enough of a pattern to assume that given time and the right conditions these creatures could well evolve into true sapients. As long as intelligence still confers upon them relative advantages they will continue to evolve in that direction. And this is Earth. By definition the planet most perfectly located within the Goldilocks zone.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Ursa major]

Yes but...

A) Are these aliens your protagonists?
B) Does the story take place both within and outside their originating solar system?

A) Yes

B) No and yes. (The no is because the reader never sees the originating solar system, which the aliens left a millennium or more before the story in the books begins.)

 

[Gumboot]

I'm afraid that it's you that's got the argument backwards. Evolution by natural selection works on the basis of picking advantagous mutations. The mutations are completely random.

They're not completely random. The range of mutations is limited by what already exists.

What you're suggesting for man is that instead our ancestors somehow directed their own evolution towards greater intelligence. That makes no sense.

I've said, and suggested, nothing of the sort. Our intelligence is more a by-product of our evolution. The key characteristics necessary to develop higher intelligence didn't emerge in humans so that we could develop intelligence. They develop for other more traditional evolutionary reasons, and together just happened to provide the right circumstances in which intelligence could develop.

Next, no. With regard to intelligence producing a massive advantage for every species of animal on the planet, no. It will likely be of great benefit to some, but of little benefit to others. And you have to consider the costs. Our brains use truck loads of energy to run, which is one reason we have to eat a lot compared to many other creatures. That creates its own problems, and it is completely likely that for many creatures the advantage of superior intelligence would be outweighed by the metabolic cost, as well as many other costs.

And this is why higher intelligence only emerges in an incredibly narrow set of circumstances; crucially, only once the organism has achieved a level of environmental dominance that it's no longer competing with other organisms for survival.

A better reasoning for why mankind developed superior intelligence would be that because we were disadvantaged in many other ways, slow moving, not very strong, etc, the advantage confered upon us by increased intelligence was greater. It allowed us to work better in social orders, to communicate, to use tools etc.

The evidence firmly suggests we lost our physical strength as a result of becoming more intelligent, not the other way around. Chimpanzees, for example, are enormously strong.

And again there is no reason to assume that the same would not be true of other creatures on other worlds. Wildly different creatures. As long as intelligence confers upon them a significant advantage compared to the disadvantages, then natural selection will favour the trait.

Yes, but only if they're already arrived at an evolutionary position that allows the trait to develop. My entire point is that the evolutionary process rail-roads any future potential intelligent organism in a particular direction long before intelligence emerges.

Lets face it, if we are seeing higher levels of intelligence in whales, octopi, elephants and apes, then we have enough of a pattern to assume that given time and the right conditions these creatures could well evolve into true sapients.

None of those animals display higher level intelligence. While much is made of the intelligence of a variety of animals, none of them comes remotely close to humans. Even chimpanzees (by far more intelligent than any of the others) are substantially less intelligent than humans.

This seems to be a common misunderstanding.

 

[psychotick]

Hi Gumboot,

Just a few points. First, I have never heard it expressed and have no way of checking any idea that we lost our physical strength as a result of becoming intelligent. Can you provide a reference please.

Second, higher intelligence only develops in creatures after they've achieved some form of dominence? Evolutionarily speaking that makes no sense at all. At present lions will not achieve intelligence because they are peak predators. They have no competition. Therefore what benefit will superior intelligence be to them? So the mutation provides them little or no advantage and will come with costs. The selective pressure goes against increasing intelligence for them. And until something happens that makes intelligence a significant advantage to them, faster prey maybe, things will stay that way.

Third, I was not saying that these other animals have achieved human level cognition. I was saying that they have developed intelligence superior to that of most other creatures. They have done this because it has been an advantage to them. If that advantage remains, if the brighter members of their species survive to have more offspring, then that trend will continue, and one day they could achieve intelligence comparible to our own. And this is despite the fact that save for the apes, they don't really follow our body plan.

On an alien world I would expect that the variations in body plan from what we're familiar with would be even greater than those we see on Earth.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[nubins]

Hi Greg, I think there is a little dsicussion at cross purposes here. Noone is arguing that dolphins etc. are not intelligent...

What is meant by enviromental dominance isnt just about being top of the food chain, it's literally being in control of your environment. Lions are not, they have a major predator (man), they cannot influence their environment and as such are extremely vulnerable to drought and food shortages.

Man's environmental dominance was a gradual process. Our early ancestors had rudimentary intelligence that many many species exhibit today - that intelligence combined with the fact we had developed fingers and thumbs for climbing trees and collecting food - this allowed tool use - as shown in 2001 - allowing a sudden jump up the food chain. With tools came the start of manipulating our environment and then finally the control of fire.

At this point we transcended the levels of intelligence shown by other animals on the planet. Fire was the final piece of the puzzle that allowed us to dominate our entire environment. Cold? Doesn't matter - make a fire and use animal skins for extra warmth and now vast swathes of previously hostile lands are not hostile any more. Food shortages? Store the food using rudimentary tools, this was the start of agriculture which is nothing except our ancestors controlling their food supply, rather than their food supply controlling them.

There were several branches of homo-whatever, but the one that survived and achieved dominance was the one that had the final key attribute to our eventual ascendance on this planet - advanced communication. Homo-sapiens brains were better at communicating than others. Subsequently we advanced at a faster rate.

All of these things are necessary for full higher intelligence. It doesnt mean neanderthals couldnt have got there, but they would have done it slower, because they were not as good at communicating as we were.

Our ancestors strength was required, the physically strongest survived - again, watch 2001 - take a moderately strong ape armed with a bone club and they are instantly on a par or stronger than the strongest without that weapon. Strength is no longer needed and not a pre-requsite for those that are likely to survive and pass their genes on any more.

All the animals you mention have no dominance of their environment, they are slaves to it and if it changes they must adapt or die out. If our environment changes, we can adapt it to suit us.

We are talking abotu sci-fi worlds, so advanced alien species are really going to have to show the same traits as us to get there -
Advanced communication
Ability to use tools.
Problem solving levels of intelligence.

Lions exhibit none of these traits. Octopi - could perhaps manipulate tools, communication.. pretty limited and intelligence levels are questionnable.

Dolphins - problem solving intelligence, advanced communication but can barely use tools (some have been seen to use things to protect their snouts when forraging for material in rocky seabed), but they have a long way to go and a snout is never going to compare to hands for this.

Monkeys/Apes - have it all, but they are our ancestors and simply havent got there yet.