How believable is the evolution of sapient intelligence in Godzillasaurus maximus?

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GodzillaLouise
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How believable is the evolution of sapient intelligence in Godzillasaurus maximus?

Post by GodzillaLouise »

The question is as stated in the thread’s title: How believable is the evolution of sapient intelligence in Godzillasaurus maximus? For context, Godzillasaurus maximus is a species of saurian ‘Titanfauna’ from my Godzilla/Ultraman Fanfiction world that evolved on the fictional Odo Island in the South Pacific. They are highly, highly social animals, practically eusocial (not sure if they qualify as eusocial, but they seem to be close to meeting the qualifications), that can be up to 60 feet tall and 140 feet long from their nose to the end of their tail.

I also have an evolutionary bio on them on my Deviantart (https://www.deviantart.com/godzillaloui ... -959980678), which describes how the Godzillasaurus genus evolved from Finagosaurus, a Late Cretaceous genus of theropods that evolved from Acrocanthosaurus atokensis.

Now, here’s where we get into the intelligence of the Godzillasaurus Maximus, for the following is from an ecology section on my WIP document on the species:
All Godzillasaurus Maximus live in rather advanced societies, which are referred to as tribes. When a new tribe is being formed, the males make room for nesting grounds by tearing down several trees in large areas while the females find mates. The females will then dig out nests to lay their eggs in, with most of the males leaving the nesting grounds to form packs of 3 or 4 individuals to hunt. The rest of the males will stay behind to protect the eggs alongside the females. When the eggs hatch, the hatchlings will stay with their mothers between 9 and 10 years, after which they begin to fulfill the same roles their parents filled.

Within every tribe of Godzillasaurus Maximus, there is a pair that are at the top of their tribe’s hierarchy, consisting of an Alpha Male and Female. Between 9 and 10 years after their first clutch of eggs hatch, the strongest male offspring of the Alpha Male and Female’s first clutch will become the new Alpha. Usually, the title of ‘strongest’ goes to the offspring who can create the longest lasting plume of fire breath, though this can vary between tribes.

Though extremely territorial, tribes of Godzillasaurus Maximus will sometimes start turf wars with each other, similar to meerkats. However, they are known to avoid these conflicts by a variety of means.
Additionally, according to my doc on my world’s take on Godzilla himself, Godzilla is “smarter than the average human, but not as smart as the smartest human.”

Given all this information, how believable is the evolution of such intelligence, and what could some potential evolutionary catalysts be for such intelligence?

(Also, I know I said ‘fire breath’, which is contradictory of what Godzilla’s atomic breath is: a form of thermonuclear plasma shot out of the mouth as a laser-like beam. But Maximus aren’t Kaiju, they’re titanfuana. When exposed to enough thermonuclear radiation, their fuel source changes from a limited amount of methanol gained from diet to allow them to fire a more conventional beam of nuclear plasma.)
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Re: How believable is the evolution of sapient intelligence in Godzillasaurus maximus?

Post by lurker »

GodzillaLouise wrote: 03 Jan 2024 16:47 But Maximus aren’t Kaiju, they’re titanfuana.
What makes kaiju different from titanfauna?
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GodzillaLouise
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Re: How believable is the evolution of sapient intelligence in Godzillasaurus maximus?

Post by GodzillaLouise »

lurker wrote: 03 Jan 2024 19:13
GodzillaLouise wrote: 03 Jan 2024 16:47 But Maximus aren’t Kaiju, they’re titanfuana.
What makes kaiju different from titanfauna?
For an animal to be classified as a titanfauna (which is a term I came up with for my universe by myself, believe it or not), it has to be an animal with the potential to survive and adapt to any of a vast range of biohazards by having the potential to grow rapidly and become a Kaiju, though only some individuals will survive this: the Godzillasaurus maximus population on Odo island was decimated by this process.

Titanflora also exist, but only in certain environments, and the same ideas that apply to titanfauna apply to them.

Kaiju is a more broad term, but can refer to both plants and animals of giant size that are able to generate their own energy, nuclear or otherwise, without needing external sources to supply it. For example, while the plant-based Kaiju do photosynthesize, they don’t technically need to, as even the animal-based Kaiju are basically limitless, living power generators. Kaiju also tend to have very unconventional biological processes, which Titanfauna lack.
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Re: How believable is the evolution of sapient intelligence in Godzillasaurus maximus?

Post by Khemehekis »

I'd suggest Titanofauna. Like "Titanoboa".
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Re: How believable is the evolution of sapient intelligence in Godzillasaurus maximus?

Post by GodzillaLouise »

Khemehekis wrote: 04 Jan 2024 00:04 I'd suggest Titanofauna. Like "Titanoboa".
That’s a fair suggestion, though seeing as I already have a very, very large number of docs using the “titanfauna” spelling, it will take quite some time for me to get used to. I’ll try it, though.
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Re: How believable is the evolution of sapient intelligence in Godzillasaurus maximus?

Post by Arayaz »

GodzillaLouise wrote: 04 Jan 2024 00:09
Khemehekis wrote: 04 Jan 2024 00:04 I'd suggest Titanofauna. Like "Titanoboa".
That’s a fair suggestion, though seeing as I already have a very, very large number of docs using the “titanfauna” spelling, it will take quite some time for me to get used to. I’ll try it, though.
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GodzillaLouise
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Re: How believable is the evolution of sapient intelligence in Godzillasaurus maximus?

Post by GodzillaLouise »

Arayaz wrote: 04 Jan 2024 00:24
GodzillaLouise wrote: 04 Jan 2024 00:09
Khemehekis wrote: 04 Jan 2024 00:04 I'd suggest Titanofauna. Like "Titanoboa".
That’s a fair suggestion, though seeing as I already have a very, very large number of docs using the “titanfauna” spelling, it will take quite some time for me to get used to. I’ll try it, though.
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Yeah, I already changed it out. I thought I had at least like 50 docs with the ‘titanfauna’ spelling that were still relevant and worth keeping, but it was more like 10 or 15.
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Re: How believable is the evolution of sapient intelligence in Godzillasaurus maximus?

Post by Arayaz »

GodzillaLouise wrote: 04 Jan 2024 02:45
Arayaz wrote: 04 Jan 2024 00:24
GodzillaLouise wrote: 04 Jan 2024 00:09
Khemehekis wrote: 04 Jan 2024 00:04 I'd suggest Titanofauna. Like "Titanoboa".
That’s a fair suggestion, though seeing as I already have a very, very large number of docs using the “titanfauna” spelling, it will take quite some time for me to get used to. I’ll try it, though.
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Yeah, I already changed it out. I thought I had at least like 50 docs with the ‘titanfauna’ spelling that were still relevant and worth keeping, but it was more like 10 or 15.
wow, that's a lot
I try to limit how many docs I have for one project
I have two for Ruykkarraber and two for all the Lua languages together
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Re: How believable is the evolution of sapient intelligence in Godzillasaurus maximus?

Post by lurker »

So to try and answer your OP, I'd say it depends.

Is this a speculative biology project or more of a general worldbuilding project? Your critters already flout both the square-cube law and the law of conservation of energy (you describe them as being able to create energy with no external source, although I may be misreading something.) So I'd say if you want them to be sophonts, just make them sophonts and don't worry.

At least when I think of sapience, I tend to look for a few things:

Being social rather than solitary

Having a high degree of parental care

The ability to learn and imitate through observation

Prehensility, allowing tool use and the manipulation and alteration of the environment

Language, including duality of patterning, recursion, etc.

Ritual

So get those things up and running and it's good enough for me. The last two in particular are where I would draw the line between mere cleverness and true rationality.
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Re: How believable is the evolution of sapient intelligence in Godzillasaurus maximus?

Post by GodzillaLouise »

lurker wrote: 04 Jan 2024 23:04 So to try and answer your OP, I'd say it depends.

Is this a speculative biology project or more of a general worldbuilding project? Your critters already flout both the square-cube law and the law of conservation of energy (you describe them as being able to create energy with no external source, although I may be misreading something.) So I'd say if you want them to be sophonts, just make them sophonts and don't worry.

At least when I think of sapience, I tend to look for a few things:

Being social rather than solitary

Having a high degree of parental care

The ability to learn and imitate through observation

Prehensility, allowing tool use and the manipulation and alteration of the environment

Language, including duality of patterning, recursion, etc.

Ritual

So get those things up and running and it's good enough for me. The last two in particular are where I would draw the line between mere cleverness and true rationality.
Ok, first up, this is more of a speculative biology thing, but with maintained connections to my fanfic world.

Secondly, just for the record, I’m unsure if I would say that the Kaiju forms of Godzillasaurus Maximus (or the majority of Kaiju in my fanfics, since it’s in general a Kaiju thing) outright break the law of the conservation of energy: some exceptionally powerful Kaiju do, admittedly, but Godzillasaurus Maximus, along with all other Titanfauna, do need an external source for their energy production: sunlight, which they convert into the biohazard that facilitated their transformation. In the case of my Godzilla, that’s thermonuclear radiation, so he converts sunlight into that. A bit far fetched, but my universe has Ultraman in it, so its science can be far-fetched at times.

As for your things you look for when determining sapience, I don’t know what you mean by “ritual”, but I’d say Godzillasaurus Maximus definitely meet all the other requirements, except maybe prehensility: they can definitely manipulate and alter their environment, but they definitely aren’t makers of tools (they are users of tools, but those are only pre-existing tools).
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