SPACE.com columnist Gentry Lee is a noted space systems engineer, TV producer and SF author. This month, he brings us the report of an intergalactic foundation contemplating Earth's present --and future -- dominant species.

As required by the intergalactic foundation that had established the periodic survey eons previously, a detailed report on the planet was compiled from all the data gathered by the nanoprobes. The report itself was extremely lengthy, and contained an accurate snapshot of the existing conditions on the planet. As was customary for such reports, an overview section at the beginning presented an incisive summary of the major findings of the survey.

The highlight of the first part of this summary was a discussion of the surprisingly rapid evolutionary development of an intelligent species, a bipedal, carbon-based creature whose hunter-gatherer societies had been described in the last previous survey. "Homo sapiens, as they call themselves," the report said in the precise, mathematical language used for all official foundation documents, "now dominate the planet to an alarming extent. In the last epoch they have multiplied prodigiously, and have spread throughout the planet from the original continent to which they were confined at the time of the last survey. Their population now numbers more than 6 billion. Except for the huge, ice-covered continent in the southern polar region, Homo sapiens now occupies all the land habitats on the planet, including the isolated volcanic islands scattered among the great oceans that cover 70 percent of the planet’s surface.

"Unfettered by conflict with any rival species, Homo sapiens progressed quickly through all the early stages of socialization that are standard for emerging intelligent species. Usage of tools was already common at the time of the last survey, when virtually all the members of the species belonged to nomadic tribes of a relatively small size. In the later periods of the most recent epoch, the domestication of the food supply spurred the creation of permanent towns and villages, and sophisticated written languages were developed that permitted widespread communications both among different groups and succeeding generations. The evolution of a more complex social structure, one that permitted and even rewarded individual specialization in tasks not associated with simply providing the survival essentials, naturally followed. This specialization provided the societal impetus for an explosion of creativity of all kinds, which in turn accelerated the development of the species into a technological entity."

The summary then continued with a recitation of the key milestones in the social and technological evolution of Homo sapiens, followed by a concise synopsis of current conditions on the planet that was based on the data recently acquired by the hundreds of thousands of nanoprobes. The richness and complexity of human culture were depicted and compared with near-equivalent extraterrestrial societies that had emerged on other planets. The full extent of the hegemony of Homo sapiens on the planet was also clearly defined in quantitative terms. The last two paragraphs of this section, however, obviously foreshadowing the concluding sections of the summary in which the future of the planet would be discussed, were sober in tone.

"The current dominance of Homo sapiens is so complete that the near-term fate of the planet is inextricably entangled with the future history of the species itself. At present, their stewardship of the planet is remarkably shortsighted. Even though the evidence is abundant that the rapacious humans not only are squandering the critical resources that are essential for the survival of their progeny, but also are guaranteeing that major portions of the planet will be virtually uninhabitable in the near future, their individual selfishness and deeply ingrained aggressiveness and territoriality has so far prevented them from committing any substantial effort to a systematic, global plan for the planet’s conservation. There are individuals and groups among them that foresee the coming calamity, and offer dire warnings about its impact. Nevertheless, most of the 6 billion members of the species live their daily lives without any thought about the ramifications of their lifestyle on the future of the planet.

"Homo sapiens has recently become a Class I spacefaring species. Its primitive robotic spacecraft have explored virtually all the planets and moons of its solar system. Spaceships containing humans have even traveled to the solo moon of the planet for brief stays. Photographs of its home planet as an entity, taken by all kinds of spacecraft, have implanted in the collective mind of Homo sapiens an image of a magnificent blue, spherical island of plenty in the void of space. For many other developing intelligences, even those with behavioral coefficients as negative as those of Homo sapiens, this recognition of the uniqueness of their home planet has catalyzed the beginnings of sustained cooperative efforts to preserve the planet that has given them life. Will a similar preservation movement occur with this species?

"At present it is not possible to answer this question definitively. Homo sapiens is extremely young as an advanced technological species. Its group-behavior parameters are not yet completely characterized. However, using the quantitative indices developed by the foundation over the past eons to compare and contrast emerging species, as well as the preliminary parameters computed for Homo sapiens, there is a clear and unmistakable suggestion that this species will not heed the warnings of its own farsighted members. Without any kind of coordinated global preservation effort, the time-tested prediction models unanimously predict the demise of the advanced civilization of this species during the early phases of the next epoch."

The final part of the report summary attempted to describe the near-term future of the planet by extrapolating from the recently acquired data by the nanoprobes. After first acknowledging that the entire planetary system was chaotic, from a mathematical point of view, and that infinitesimally small perturbations in boundary conditions could lead to widely divergent outcomes, the summary presented some additional observations about Homo sapiens from the recent data. Most of these buttressed the summary’s contention that the next periodic survey would not find the presently dominant species still in complete control of the planet.

"In several earlier surveys of this planet," the summary continued, shifting its focus, "the existence of a remarkable family of precursor superorganism species has been cited. This family, which consists of almost 10,000 separate species scattered into every biological niche on the land, has many common characteristics. Although the family, called ants by Homo sapiens, has not yet developed the kinds of superior brains and concomitant language capability that would be necessary for them to create any advanced technology, their complex social structure and tenacious aggressiveness provides them with an extraordinarily high survival coefficient. Of all the other life forms on the planet, the ants seem uniquely positioned for further evolution into a dominant species.

"What are the characteristics of these creatures that make them so exceptional? First and foremost, ants live in social groups, called colonies, that are, in a sense, primitive precursors of the superorganisms that dominate the life forms in the galaxy. Each individual ant is capable of independent action, but its genes are programmed so that it always behaves as if its own needs and desires are less important than the welfare of the overall colony. Furthermore, individual ants are designed, as a result of evolution, to perform certain circumscribed tasks within the framework of the colony. The queen’s tasks, for example, include the creation of the nest, the laying of the right combination of initial eggs, the nurturing of the early offspring until they reach maturity and can perform their predetermined tasks, and the subsequent generation of thousands, or even millions of new eggs for the colony. The males live for only one event, the prenuptial mating flight in which they may, if they are lucky, inseminate a queen who will survive to found her own colony. The infertile daughter workers, by far the most numerous of the morphs in each of the ant species, spend their entire lives feeding, foraging, defending and doing whatever is necessary to support the colony.

"Communication is a hallmark of all highly-evolved species. Ants employ a variety of means of communicating, including squeaking, tapping and stroking, but by far their most sophisticated way of exchanging information is the use of chemical substances from their battery of exocrine glands. Each particular chemical compound has a distinct and well-understood meaning to all members of that species of ant. Altogether, depending upon the particular species, ants use between 10 and 20 separate words and phrases, each defined by a specific chemical compound, to talk among themselves. It is easy to imagine that a very complex language, capable of communicating complicated concepts, could easily be created from these basic building blocks. With the future advent of this more advanced language, ants would obviously be able to perform the tasks necessary to develop technology.

"The ascendance of Homo sapiens during the last epoch has not significantly diminished the population of the ants. Based on the data from our recent survey, the ubiquitous ants still have an enormous presence on the planet. There are at least 10 quadrillion ants alive at present, which means that there are roughly 2 million ants for every member of the species Homo sapiens. Although most ants are tiny creatures, approximately one-millionth the size of a human, there are so many of them that the total weight of all ants on the planet is roughly the same as the total weight of all humans.

"Ant colonies vary in size from species to species, but are often as large as several million individuals. One ant colony investigated by our probes had over 300 million inhabitants in 45,000 interconnected nests…."

The summary continued with its description of the basic characteristics of ants and then, in its final two paragraphs, compared ants with humans in terms of their impact on the other living creatures on the planet. "The explosive growth of the Homo sapiens population, and the near utter disregard of the species for the impact of its actions on the livelihood of the other millions of creatures on the planet, has created a serious biodiversity crisis on the planet. The species extinction rate is presently at an alarmingly high level, and will not be reduced unless Homo sapiens undergoes a radical change in its approach to living.

"By contrast, the ants coexist comfortably in the planetary ecosystem with all kinds of flora and fauna. Many of the species, in fact, owe their very existence to a symbiotic relationship with the ants. If, as seems likely in future epochs, the evolutionary descendants of the present ants become the nominal masters of the planet, then it is reasonable to expect that eventually the collective damage done by Homo sapiens will no longer be measurable."