What type of biological life will more than likely be found on other planets?

And the answer most of us are supplying is something along the lines of: Those that possess attributes which enable them to adapt and survive.And then intelligence is being forward as an attribute which potentially aids adaption and survival.I’m not sure why you keep insisting that this is off-topic. It seems very much on topic.

Hi, Jar. Take primates as an example.The most "primitive" lineage is the prosimians (lemurs, tarsiers, aye-ayes, etc.). They have modest intelligence, perhaps slightly higher than that of other mammals.Monkeys evolved from prosimian ancestors, and are generally more intelligent than prosimians.Apes evolved from monkeys, and are generally more intelligent than monkeys.Humans evolved from apes, and are generally more intelligent than apes.Each new lineage has higher intelligence than its ancestors. This resulted in animals that are more and more and more intelligent than previous species.

I agree.

I disagree but let's leave it until we go through the step by step effort because again, I think it is more an issue of communication.

I don’t know. But I would speculate that a strict predator prey relationship fosters rather niche physical specialisms whereas intelligence is more the result of having to continually adapt and more likely to come about in something that might be both prey and predator. Something with a more mid-range position in the food-chain that encourages adaptability..But I may well be talking completely out of my arse here.

Do you agree that there are other intelligent critters such as the cephalopods, elephants, crows and ravens and several of the other primates?

I agree

Do you agree that humans were able to expand their territory due to a very few technological advances, specifically domestication of fire and clothing and the fact that they were omnivores?

Hi, Jar. I disagree with this. We don't really know the dates of these advances with any certainty, so it's impossible to tell from the evidence. However, the expansion of humans across the globe was a very complex process, involving multiple waves and even some back-and-forth. I have a hard time attributing such a complex process to such a simple, specific explanation.

Could hominids have expanded into ice age areas without clothing or fire?

Could hominids have gotten clothing and fire without intelligence?

I think things that evolved early and then stayed forever are things we can expect to find in other highly evolved species. For example, bilateral symmetry. I think we could expect highly evolved aliens to look similiar to life on our planet in that regard.

We'll get to that.

Why not address it now? Because I think many here think you have the whole intelligence/technology thing completely arse over tit.

I tend to highly agree with this statement, but as I thought about it more I am not so sure.My thoughts are that we do not know what we don't know. If the life evolved on a planet similar to ours I think this is very likely.But there is the rub. We have no idea of what alien life could be like. Is bilateral symmetry a result of unique circumstances in the evolution of life on this planet?I think there is a very high likelihood that other life out there exhibits bilateral symmetry, but am very open to the idea that we may find something that utterly astounds us and falls completely outside of any of our expectations.To put it simply, with the knowledge we have I think you are correct. It is what we don't know that is the wild card.Edited by Theodoric, : subtitle added