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This is an interesting way to think about it. For one thing, the ocean is most teeming with life near the surface and almost all life in the air is on the groun
by cletus 5y ago
This is an interesting way to think about it. For one thing, the ocean is most teeming with life near the surface and almost all life in the air is on the ground most of the time.
But consider an alternative. What if the surface was inhospitable to life and likewise the shallow regions of the ocean were likewise.
Imagine something like Venus with huge mountains, like Mons Olympus type mountains. The upper atmosphere and those mountain peaks might be amenable to life.
Now imagine that same place had oceans of an alien variety. Maybe water trapped beneath the surface like lakes under Antarctica. And imagine those places could support life.
So you'd have two or more ecosystems that either never allowed life to move between them or they once were able to but no longer could.
You'd then have two environments where life could evolve completely independently. What a fascinating place that might be.
- chmod775 5y ago> You'd then have two environments where life could evolve completely independently. Earth definitely has places where evolution happened in a more-or-less isolated environment for a long time, though probably not from "zero". For example Movile Cave: Life in the cave has been separated from the outside for the past 5.5 million years and it is based completely on chemosynthesis rather than photosynthesis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movile_Cave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movile_Cave Look up pictures from that cave at your own risk. Personally I think those critters are the stuff of nightmares. I don't doubt there's an uncountable amount of ecosystems on Earth we haven't even found, much less understood. We (literally) have hardly scratched the surface of this planet.
- rcurry 5y agoAs I like to tell people - thank {god} we live on the ground instead of in the ocean. I mean, when's the last time you walked past a mailbox, or your couch, and it suddenly turned into some horrifying predator and ate you? life is pretty good up here on the terra firma.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- CogitoCogito 5y agoI'd guess that's more the result of us being a bit larger than your average land animal (most small land animals deal with exactly your scenario all the time) as well as our destruction of so much natural habitat. I'm sure if we killed everything around our ocean homes, we'd do okay as well.
- saurik 5y agoFWIW, many (aka, enough) scientists now believe that life may have originated at the bottom of the ocean, and so we have slowly been evolving "up and out"... maybe in another million years or so something will finally figure out how to live in the stratosphere ;P.