WaterWorld

[Asperion]

Suppose that people discover an exoplanet that is totally water. In and of this itself is nothing unusual since we have discovered great quantities of it in Sol System already. The strange thing is that we send probes there and discover life - and some turns out to be intelligent! Some questions come to mind:

 

Appearance - What will they look like?

 

Food - How do they consume their food: cooked or raw? If cooked, how do they cook it underwater?

 

Religion(s) - What form of religious belief systems will they possess: primary, secondary, etc gods, angels, demons, heavens, hells, afterlife, etc.

 

Tools - If they use tools, what form do they take and how are they used?

 

Misc - Anything else that anyone would like to mention?

 

Greatly appreciate all your comments and inputs.

[Badger]

Form would likely be towards similarities of dolphin, whale, or squid (since they seem to bear higher than expected intellect here

 

[Sociotard]

How watery are we talking? Just some islands? No islands but a few shallower seas? All deep sea? No solid core at all?

 

Let's go with all deep sea until you say otherwise. 

 

If they're intelligent, we need to ask if they use tools? Features that enable tool use include pincers, tentacles, prehensile tongues, or even psionics. (This is scifi after all). They don't have to use tools; they may just use their intelligence for complex social interactions. 

[Scott Ruggels]

Are they sir breathers or water breathers? Water breathers would have problems with complex instrumentalities withou fire or forging. Due Laba vents exists, but water can transfer heat away quickly. 

[Lord Liaden]

Magnesium burns under water, hotter than the melting point of iron.

[L. Marcus]

You'd have great trouble producing and handling it.

[Starlord]

Evidence suggests they would look like Kevin Costner and drink filtered urine.

[assault]

16 minutes ago, Starlord said:

They would look like Kevin Costner and they would drink filtered urine.

 

Or they would look like Jason Momoa and would drink whatever they felt like.

[Sundog]

Technologically they're in a bind. Application of heat is a cornerstone of our tech.

Now, IF their planet is tectonically active, they'll be able to get heat from volcanic vents and underwater volcanoes - dangerous work, but doable with bone and stone tools. But if it isn't, likely they have no source of heat and no or little source of stone. By the time an intelligent species evolved on a water world, erosion would probably have worn down any pinnacles remaining and buried the actual dirt and rock under sediments miles deep.

That leaves them with bone and biology. The only way they're going to get past a basically neolithic tech base (neoskeletal?) is by controlled breeding of domesticated animals. Which they could, frankly, get very good at indeed. Once they work out genetic structures (or local equivalent) their entire biological base would be at their fingertips.

 

[Lord Liaden]

There's a precedent in fiction, Harry Harrison's "Eden" trilogy (West of Eden/ Winter in Eden/ Return to Eden). The premise of this series is that the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago never happened. A sapient dinosaur species, the Yilanè, evolved and became the dominant species on the planet. With a civilization dating back millions of years, their technology is the result of controlled breeding of living organisms, which mostly take the place of our inanimate tools. For example, their boats were originally squids, their submarines are modified ichthyosaurs, while their guns are rigid snakelike creatures which expel projectiles using pressurized gas.

[Tjack]

The ratio of food being raw or cooked would be the opposite of The norms of our world.  Most food would be eaten raw, though not unprepared (think sushi).  While some special treats are cooked on or near hot vents.

[death tribble]

And one of the life forms will be villainous and oddly enough resemble Dennis Hopper whilst one of his opponents will resemble Kevin Costner.

 

I'm just saying.....

[Grailknight]

George R. R. Martin describes such a world in his short story collection Tuf Voyaging. The dominant native life forms were telepathic oyster like beings who anchored in the shallows of scattered islands. They had no visible tech but were capable of remote command and genetic manipulation of the lesser species thru psionic means. They quickly developed and bred the crablike creatures that they used for maintenance from dog sized to armored tanks to deal with the human settlers who were eating them until the protagonist devised a means of communication.

 

David Brin's uplifted dolphins had a philosophy that said that cetaceans did not hate humanity for preying upon them. Life in the ocean was centralized around the food chain being the natural order so while  the deaths humanity caused with fishing and whaling were regrettable, they were part of the natural order and not something to take personally.

[Sundog]

I remember. Brin also noted that made humans feel more, not less, guilty about it all.