#(*not actually revealing because only a nerd would have an entire blog dedicated to fish and post on it daily)

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

I hope this ask doesn't seem odd, or is out of your personal interests in biology, but; Your recent comments about Dolphin intelligence and anthropomorphizing animal intelligence (which I am unfortunately prone to) have really got me thinking about sapient/sophont alien species in specevo/specbio. If you don't mind giving your two cents, what do you think is the best way to portray alien intelligence without it seeming too 'human' or demonizing a species for being say, parasites (brood or otherwise), or practicing copulatory cannibalism? I'm not sure how prevalent these are in oceanic organisms, but I thought it'd be worth asking. Again, sorry if this isn't in the purview of your blog.

You're in luck, I love specevo and specbio! I don't reblog very much of it but trust me, I follow like five specbio alien creators right now. I dabble a little bit in creating it myself, but to answer your questions...

As humans, which are a result of millions of years of evolution, we are biased in some ways when it comes to other lifeforms. For example, parasitism often makes us uncomfortable because in nature parasites will take our resources and harm us, it's natural to feel uncomfortable even if the parasite has no choice! It can be hard to make things like that not seem icky, but you can definitely avoid demonising them. I think when it comes to making sophont aliens that partake in parasitism or copulatory cannibalism, you have to portray them in a neutral way (no "these horrible body-snatching aliens!!") and really focus on the fact that they really have no other choice, because this is how they've evolved and this is what's natural for them. It can be woven closely into their culture, maybe cannibalising one's mate is like a ceremony with a celebration of old life sacrificing itself to make way for new life! They aren't heartless, heavens no, this is just how their species evolved and this is what they do.

The same goes for parasitism! If you're going to do brood parasitism, hammer it down that this species just isn't built for raising its own young in any way and would perish if it didn't partake in brood parasitism. If you have ecto- or endoparasites, you can also do a little "twist" like the Symbiote species in C. M. Kösemen's All Tomorrows. They're a sapient human descendant really made up of two species, the small parasitic sapient species which controls the larger species, doing all the thinking so the larger species can simply focus its resources on everything else. While what they exhibit would be mutualism, the small species started out as a parasite, and I don't think I've ever seen people expressing that they feel the Symbiote is "gnarly" in any way.

As for your first question regarding portraying alien intelligence in a way that doesn't seem very "human"... well, that can be quite hard! Making a sapient species be more intelligent than us can be hard to write, since, you know, we're kind of the most intelligent things around we know. It's hard to write something you aren't. In the case of a species with a different evolution path to us (as in a sapient alien that didn't evolve from social savannah-travelling persistence hunter-gatherer omnivores), I would personally focus on writing a species with different senses to us, either heightened or dulled out compared to us. This can already help out with making the species seem less human! And then there's something that I don't often see but would love to see more of due to how "alien" it feels, colonial and hivemind aliens! And I just don't mean aliens with "queens" that control the rest, though I think those are a cool concept too. Tumblr user charseraph executes these really well, I think! They have at least three species of aliens which are "hiveminds" in a way: Trumpets, which are entire ecosystems whose individual living producers and consumers contribute to their intelligence as a whole, Wards, which are networks of connected bodies with millions of intelligences, and Towers, which consist of one main hub controlling several bodies. And how about sapient colonial aliens? Something like a siphonophore, an alien consisting of multiple individuals, either all sapient or forming a sapient unit, would be extremely cool! But I understand that this may not be what you're going for with your aliens.

I hope this helps! ^^