Why Ants—Not Humans—Might Be the First Animal That Aliens Want to Study
Human athletes test their mettle in elite competitions like the Olympics. You can almost count on our feats of strength and agility to exceed previous accomplishments. Yet, if we opened the Olympics to all animals, humans wouldn’t win a single event. Kind of humbling.
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In the seventh installment of Pop Mech Explains the Universe with Neil deGrasse Tyson, the astrophysicist and science communicator opens the door to imagining a universe that doesn’t revolve around our human definitions of “smart” or “strong.” If aliens were to come to Earth, they’d have their pick of creatures to study first. They may not choose the most brawny animals, but they would choose the most intriguing, right?
That depends on what you mean by “intriguing.” Humans do seem to be the brainiest. But measuring brains isn’t straightforward, and it’s also not necessarily a good indication of how aliens would view us. After all, whales, elephants, and dolphins all have bigger brains than humans. So what about largest brains relative to our body weight? It looks at first like we win here—but not by much. Mice have the same brain-to-body-weight ratio as we do.
And there’s a huge additional caveat: “That contest that we just barely win—that only applies to mammals,” Tyson says. Mid-sized birds have a higher brain-to-body-weight ratio than humans do. Take magpies, which are smarter than we think. After drinking some water from a bottle, a magpie in a YouTube video can’t reach far enough with its beak to keep sipping. It looks around, finds a pebble small enough to fit through the bottle’s neck, and drops it in, raising the level till it can drink again. The magpie does this eight times, apparently demonstrating an understanding of displacement. “Every time you want to claim that no other animals have intelligence, or nothing compared to us—you see things like this, and it makes you take pause,” Tyson says.
But the biggest brain-to-body-weight ratio winners are some species of ants. No matter how you dice it, we can’t prove we’d be the most intriguing species to otherworldly lifeforms.
So would aliens necessarily pay attention to us first? Tyson thinks we might be sixth on their list. “We hope we’d make the shortlist, but I wouldn’t guarantee it.”
New episodes in our multi-part video series will debut every week, so be sure to check back for more, including Tyson’s thoughts on the greatest scientific achievement of 2022 (so far).
🎥 Catch up on our first six videos:
Neil deGrasse Tyson Once Thought the Number of Stars in the Sky Was a ‘Hoax’
How the James Webb Space Telescope Lets Us See ‘Ghosts’ of the Past
Why We Really Could Be Living in Some Teenage Alien’s Computer Game
Aliens Probably Already Found Us, But They Have Damn Good Reasons to Stay Hidden
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