What do the biologists think of the so-called fermi paradox?

Question

I heard of the idea that life may be indeed common in other planets,but intelligence, at least at the level humans are at,may be really rare.What do U make of that?

Answer 1

If a stray asteroid had not hit the Earth and helped to wipe out the dinosaurs, they may still be around. Not because they were intelligent, but because they were suited to survival as they were. Similarly, mass extinctions had occurred before, without a rise to the same intelligence we have now, but allowing for the eventual rise of the dinosaurs.
The fact is, that most life on Earth is still simple, single celled organisms, and there is no reason to expect it to rise above that except under rare circumstances. The conditions which may stimulate simple life may be quite common, such as water, hot springs, mineral etc. But conditions which induce rapid changes in organisms to more complex beings might be extremely rare, such as land masses, large tidal forces (such as we get from our single large moon), mass extinctions, or even radioactivity. So we are looking at a very small percentage of a small percentage, making it extremely rare that intelligent life may exist. We may be unique, unlikely as it seems, or more likely, just extremely rare.

Answer 2

It's a rather pointless notion. We'll probably never come into contact with life on other planets, so it's probably not worth worrying about. Besides, you can take all kinds of animals with novel adaptations and make a generic statement like "Life may be common on other planets but _______ may be really rare". The blank could be the ability to navigate using echolocation (bats), having two eyes on one side of the body (flatfish), being able to not breathe for an hour (sperm whale), etc. It's just not a very meaningful concept.

Answer 3

Intellegance is a cultural tag we humans use, we see an animal as intellegent if it displays human behaviourial traits, but these responses are not intelegence as many are developed through conditioning and do not develop naturally.
If there are other life froms out there then intellegence is the feature that that culture hold to be most important, Here on earth, particularly in western culture numerical ability is used as a measure of intelegence, in some african tribes to speak very little is a sign of intelegence, there are many forms of intellegence.
Personally if we do find life on other planets i think the first thing biologists will be interested is any evidence of evolution, to finally put the nail in the idiotic creationist and intellegent design, coffin.