Invasive species are simply those species that are transported from one region to another region with a similar environment, where they can out-compete the native species. This usually means they can eat what is available if it is an animal, but there are no predators for them among the native species. They have free rein to survive and multiply fast, and even to drive some native species into extinction. Plants colonize some areas, spread rapidly, and choke out native plants.
Since it takes a
long time for a predator for these plants and animals to evolve from
native species, or for the prey to develop means of surviving them,
there is often a large overshoot of population, which is what leads
to the extinction of the prey species, or the pushing out of native
plant species from whichever type of habitat the invasive plant can
occupy. This invasion of non-local species has probably been going
on for billions of years, but recently mankind became involved, by
being the vector by which the animals or plants travel to their new
location. They might go on ships or airplanes, or be brought as
decorative plants or pets, or via many other human interactions.
Humanity’s
response to noticing this is to sometimes try to eliminate the
invasive species, which rarely but occasionally works or at least
serves to keep down the population of invaders. Mostly it is simply
given up as a hopeless problem. Maybe someday there will be some
robotic or genetic technology to restore an ecology to the way it was
before mankind introduced the invasive species, but for now, there is
none. People just see it as a sad situation.
Invasion can also
occur at the microbe level, but that would be mostly invisible to
humans. The exception is when the bacteria or virus involved preys
on humans. The “Black Death” in Europe, killing off a large
fraction of the population, was an invasive bacteria transported by
trade from Asia, where it was endemic. Similar die-offs happened
when diseases common in Europe arrived in the Americas. We also see
these invasions in our food crops, where some monoculture is affected
by a fungus or a virus or something else microscopic that lived in
some wild area, but found the monocultured crop to its liking.
Because of the immense investment in food crops, these invasions are
often met by the best killing techniques technology can offer, or alternatively genetic
alteration of the monocultured crop to resist the invader.
On any alien world
where tectonics has divided up the land mass into regions, or climate
has, there is the same possibility. An alien civilization would seem
to be likely to make the same introduction of non-local species and
see the same result. If the civilization had passed the agricultural
grand transition, their food crops might be affected, leading to
occasional widespread famines. If, later on, they were interested in preserving
natural areas, with native plants and animals, they could easily find
themselves victimized by some invasive species from another part of
their world. Perhaps they would have found some solution in a bit
higher technology that we possess or perhaps they would be forced to
regard the problem as much too expensive to cure. Being able to build
robots that can hunt down some invasive predator and kill it might
mean too much expense on these robots, or side effects might happen.
They might just have the same response that we do: sadness and
resignation, and a set of techniques or preventive methods to
minimize the number of occurrences.
When an alien
species becomes intelligent and climbs the mountain to asymptotic
technology, the ultimate stage of technological capability and
knowledge, and generates for itself the ability to travel to other
solar systems, will this experience affect their thinking? Will they
ask themselves: Do we want to make ourselves into an invasive
species? This is the exact opposite viewpoint that nations have used
when exploring other parts of our world. "We are bringing our culture
to new regions." Is that what the alien civilization would want to
do, or would it instead just stay at home, trying among myriad other projects, to keep some of its remaining natural areas undespoiled by
either its own intrusions or by invasive species from wild areas in
other parts of the globe?
Recall that, if
technology becomes available to travel to other stars and start a
civilization on other planets, exo-planets (to the aliens – it
might be Earth to us), the question as to where to go and if they
should go becomes one of culture-wide philosophy or psychology. We
on Earth can’t easily deduce what answer they will come up with, as
we have stalled in our search for asymptotic philosophy, the end-all
answer to philosophical questions. We are still circling around
trying to figure out what philosophy is and what questions it should
answer and how to integrate our knowledge of the universe into it,
and many, many other aspects which we haven’t elucidated yet. It
seems weird to say that we should be studying philosophy in
conjunction with harder technologies if we want to coherently answer
the questions of alienology, which is figuring out in the abstract
what an alien civilization would do, as well as how it would develop.
The question that
would face a potent alien civilization of whether they want to become
a conquering people or an invasive species, which is exactly the same
thing just with different points of view, or they want to stay home
until something happens to exterminate them, is an essential one. We
already have deduced that this question would be asked and answered
in an alien civilization around the time it was passing through the
genetic grand transition, because in conjunction with that would be a
set of breakthroughs in neurology and training. These breakthroughs
would enable those having the most influence on the alien
civilization’s path forward to cast their opinions into the
repetitive training that new generations would receive, and have these
teachings, which we call memes here, preserved for very long periods
into the era of asymptotic technology.
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