CHANDRA WICKRAMASINGHE:
Almost every ancient
civilization looks to the skies
as the source
for their own existence.
And I think modern science
has very, very slowly
come to the same conclusion.
All the little bits and pieces
that ended up with humans
and plants and animals
came from the skies.
One of the most
recent discoveries--
that the octopus genome,
the DNA of the octopus,
suddenly arrived or emerged
in the Earth's, uh,
record of fossils, uh, something
like 400 million years ago,
and has DNA that is more complex
than human, uh, DNA.
JOHN BRANDENBURG:
The octopus has 30,000 more
genome protein writing pairs
than human beings.
It's almost as if somebody's
being paid by the word
to do this.
It is a remarkable animal.
Its genetics
look absolutely unearthly.
It has no relationship
whatsoever to the rest
of the mollusk family,
snails and things like this.
An incredibly gifted predator.
And it learns very quickly.
And they've even on occasion
been thought to play pranks
on their human keepers.
And they change color.
So, this is
a truly remarkable creature.
It has no evolutionary bridge
to anything.
TRAVIS TAYLOR:
If you look at the evolution
of the octopus
and compare it to creatures
that are very similar
that should've been
its predecessors
in its evolutionary path,
like squids, for example,
the genetic makeup
is quite different.
And there's one theory
that suggests the reason
the octopus
is so much more intelligent
and has a different genome
is because
meteorites crashed
into the ocean...
that may have had organic
material in it,
and this organic material
from these meteorites
infected or affected
in some way this creature
that eventually
would become the octopus.
So as we look at the evolution
of Earth,
we have to recognize
it's not a closed system.
It's a system that has a history
of meteorites coming,
and those meteorites very likely
could be coming
from other places that also
had the same basic chemistry
of life being developed.
So you have to wonder
whether extraterrestrials
were sending meteorites
here to Earth
in order to interact with life
that was already here
and-and accelerate that life
and make it more intelligent.
