They COULD be evil aliens, but they didn’t come here for us. We showed up LOOOOOOOONG after they took over.
So we are the evil aliens then
Honestly, it checks out.
from an evolutionary biology standpoint… We’re basically on the order (and quite possibly worse than) of the giant meteor that killed off the dinos. Like, if you tally up the number of extinctions caused by humans, the Anthropocene Era is a mass extinction event.
I highly suggest reading the Hitchikers guide to the galaxy. A theme along these lines comes up, but less evil and more incompetent.
Plants don’t appear to be of a different origin than animals on this planet. They share most of the genetic code* with all other life we know about. The simplest explanation is that we share a common origin, and furthermore that was a common ancestor that likely began from simpler materials on this planet.
*The genetic code is the translation of nucleotide triplets into amino acid sequences
“Daddy, why do people have to eat?”
[long pull from cig] “Plants… They came here. Now we are enslaved to eat them. It is their way.”
If we want to believe the evil alien theory, viruses might actually fit the bill better than plants, with fungi as a possible unlikely second.
There is one type of virus that you can not convince me isn’t some kind of mechanical device. Other viruses and bacteria look organic; but bacteriophage look straight up like man-made robots.
I just looked up some images out of curiosity and you aren’t lying. It looks like a little spider/robot/drone thing with the sole purpose of injecting it’s syringe full of DNA into things. Thanks for the rabbit hole.
This is by far my favorite answer.
Fungi scare me
If it makes you feel better, we descend from fungi.
You’d need to explain how they’re evil. We use them as a resource, as food, as an oxygen source, as shade, as animal habitat and food… even if they had “evil” intentions I don’t see what they would have been or how it wood have played out.
No no, see, maybe they’re evil because they produced an oxygen rich atmosphere in the first place and caused the collapse of other would-be lifefor-
Uh? Cyanowhat did what? You mean not the trees? But weren’t they up here during the carbonara making all the coal? Oh, I see. Ah. Okay.
EXACTLY
I love this comment.
This is…certainly a question I just read.
No, we are related to plants, like everything else
IN what way would that be evil? They produce the very thing that keeps us alive by transforming what kills us.
^big plant shill
I meant like before “us” plants came along and made whatever was alive back then (our ancestors way up in the ladder) dependent on them. But someone else clarified they came first. So ya, they aren’t I guess.
I think we’ve been far more evil towards them than the other way around. We cut the most beautiful of them to make furniture after all.
Trees and plantlife have existed much longer than animals on land. Trees existed before fungus developed the ability to break down lignin, which is why we have huge deposits of coal underground.
probably not, they’re about as smart as wood.
If anything humans are the evil aliens. We arrive, use up all the resources, multiply to beyond sustainability and destroy our host. We’re a virus.
Nice try, Agent Smith.
I doubt it, they are aliens as for evil, at some point they did caused some fair share of extinction. When they started to grow roots, causing minerals getting thrown to the seas creating deadzones killing a lot of life. Their ancestors likely algae who produced oxygen so much that killed of a lot of life that relied on low oxygen environment. I guess that could be considered evil. But then again they were not aware of doing it, and this process took millions of years. On the other hand here we are speed running to extinction. While being aware of doing it lmao 🤣.
No we share a huge amount of DNA with plants indicating common ancestry.
*hits blunt*
Well trees can communicate through their roots right? So what if clusters of trees act as one big brain either each tree being like a cluster of neurons, and they are more intelligent than even us, but work in such different ways and slower timescales than us that thye don’t seem intelligent to us. And we’re like parasites that they can’t do anything about that gradually destroy them… or something
It goes deeper than that. We’re fighting the war between chlorophyll and mitochondria.
