Animals on a terraformed Mars - what should we populate Mars with?

farmountain · 2007-09-29 17:00:00

Well eventually maybe, but
+ that is about developing a space faring human variant rather than a Mars human variant/race
+ That is probably a 1000 to 10,000 year timeframe away technolywise

Id prefer the topic wasnt dismissed so easily.. we are at the technology borderline already to make some changes to ourselves which would be an advantage in colonising mars, and which would give us a race of ourselves which would still be human to our current ethical standards.

Weve already started the discussion when we talk about fixing bad genes that cause genetic diseases. Thats all we are talking about.. fiddling a few genes to move along the path.

What is this whole terraforming idea proposing.. that Mankinds approach to locating anywhere is to completely change the ecosystem whereever we get to, and not adapting ourselves to any degree. Like British colonialists taking Oak trees, rabbits and deer everywhere with them.

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-09-29 22:04:56

If an alien ecosystem already exists, we might choose to adapt ourselve to it. Sooner or later we will encounter an alien ecosystem on an Earthlike planet many light years away. The ecosystem may be incompatible with current human life forms, but we may choose to engineer the local advanced lifeforms into something resembling humans in both appearance and with humanlike reasoning skills. There might be an alien planet whose atmosphere was 20% carbon dioxide, 20% oxygen, and 60% nitrogen with water vapor and oceans. Its land surface may be covered in lush vegatation and forests, there might be a wide variety of life forms prancing across its surface and swimming in its ocean, yet we wouldn't be able to live there as the carbondioxide percentage would poison us if we tried breathing its atmosphere. We might however deliberately evolve some of its advanced lifeforms to create a humanoid form resembling us both in form and function, these would not really be humans, its genertic material would be quite alien and incopatible with our own, by we'd create a sort of human species that could imhabit this planet, eat its food and breath its air.

farmountain · 2007-09-30 03:16:17

Haha... this leads into the whole question of why we want to go to another planet terraform it and populate it in the first place.

.. i would like personally to see the human race populating two petri dishes rather than one. When I examine why it is i might feel that way, I would rely back on the selfish gene theory where i would care about the propogation of my genes, then my families, then the human race in general, then other dna based lifeforms in that order.

So i guess my proposition of contemplating changing ourselves to inhabit Mars more quickly and more successfully, is that by changing what might be 1% of human genes to get to Mars, we would be preserving and protecting 99% of them.

.. but i believe we are close to straying off topic of terraforming, except as to say, i believe we should not consider terraforming as 100% of the solution to surviving long term on Mars, but to change ourselves as a fractional part of that solution to surviving there.

Ron Carlson · 2007-12-08 18:21:24

Once a human presence is established on Mars along with a steady and reliable source of oxygen and water, chickens, turkeys and fish could be raised under artificial domes in the Martian colonies. This could lead to food being produced on Mars long before the entire atmosphere is terraformed.

Who knows, perhaps a very lucratrive market could be established for Martian caviar!

Ron Carlson

cIclops · 2007-12-09 09:03:55

Hi Ron!

Yep all that and much more is possible. There needs to be a better reason to settle Mars than just raising livestock, even if it green and three times the size Domes should work fine as long as they can handle meteor punctures.

Ron Carlson · 2007-12-09 20:55:41

Hi Ron!
Yep all that and much more is possible. There needs to be a better reason to settle Mars than just raising livestock, even if it green and three times the size Domes should work fine as long as they can handle meteor punctures.

Hi, cIclops!

I think two better reasons for settling Mars are:

1) To insure survival of the human race in case Earth gets blasted by another asteroid as happened 65,000,000 years ago when virtually all animal life was destroyed, and

2)Settling Mars would cause us to push development of our space travel propulsion technologies eventually enabling us to travel to other solar systems and settle other planets similar to Earth.

Ron Carlson

cIclops · 2007-12-23 16:29:25

Agreed and furthermore:

a) Enabling the creation of new societies as independent as possible of previous ones

b) Providing a vast new territory for human expansion, Mars has an enormous land area that will relieve the increasing population pressure on Earth

c) Insurance against other global catastrophes both natural (pandemics, ice age) and human made (war etc etc)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-09-07 05:22:39

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

Well if you go that route, we could turn ourselves into full-bodied cyborgs that can subsist in space. Just place our brains into robot bodies that recycle the nutrients from our wastes produced by our brains using some hefty power source and we can survive in space.

Japanese Researchers have created a cyborg cockroach. They combined rechargeable solar powered robotic elements with a 6 cm Madagascar cockroach, and are able to remotely control its movement.

https://techxplore.com/news/2022-09-rob … roach.html

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-10-04 06:34:17

Perhaps also a Park for Animals that have been at risk on Earth?

Australia lists small wallaby among new endangered species
https://www.terradaily.com/reports/Aust … s_999.html

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-10-05 07:18:31

Birds can't drink in zero G and will typically die in space but maybe there is a way to get to to a Mars biodome and Toxic lakes are a paradise for flamingos.

Flamingos, Riverbanks Zoo animals get annual checkups this fall
https://www.wltx.com/article/news/local … 38cc112874

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-10-19 13:05:12

Ultra-Processed Meals Are Unhealthier Than You Think

https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 … ou-thought

For a long time it has been known that diets dominated by ultra-processed food (UPF) are more likely to lead to obesity. But recent research suggests that high UPF consumption also increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia and, according to a recent American study involving 50,000 health professionals, of developing colon cancer. From a report:
On a more general note, last month a study in Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology found that people born after 1990 are more likely to develop cancer before they're 50 than people born before 1970. It's suspected that UPF might be a contributing factor to this development.

As the UK is estimated to draw more than 50% of its calorie intake from UPF, this is no passing health scare but an issue that goes to the very heart of our culinary lifestyle. But before looking deeper into the issue there is an obvious question: what is a UPF? NOVA (not an acronym) is a widely used food classification system that separates foods into four categories based upon their level of processing. Almost all foods, aside from fresh fruit and raw vegetables, undergo some degree of process. Cooking is a process, and it usually involves added ingredients such as oil and salt. In NOVA's first category, Group 1 is unprocessed or minimally processed foods (fruit, vegetables, meat, eggs, milk). Group 2 is made up of processed culinary ingredients such as sugars, oils and butter. Group 3 is processed foods (canned vegetables and fish, bread, jam). Group 4 is ultra-high processed foods, which are mostly low in protein and fibre, and high in salt, sugar and fat, and have undergone industrial interventions such as extrusion, moulding and milling.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-02-20 13:29:29

How totally 'Terraformed' would Mars truly be?

The natural state of Mars is a cold planet so one wise decision could be to have life that can survive extremes in case there is an interruption of power or worst case scenario, you don't want all your livestock and crop to die off because of one night of frost.
If types of Fish or Lizard or Worm or Insect or Crocodile have survived on Earth for millions of years, even survived extremes of Heat and Ice Ages and Meteor world changing strikes and Volcanic global scale disasters then why not use their ability to survive on a Biosphere on Mars. Another old species is the Frog, the Frog legs are a famous French dish consisting of the legs of frogs, cooked in a wide variety of ways. Also known as Cuisses de Grenouilles, frog legs can either be grilled, stewed in a soup, stir-fried, baked, boiled, sautéed or battered and fried. Eaten for over a thousand years, they have been part of the national diet of France. Roughly 4,000 tonnes of frog legs are consumed every year in France. Another possibility on an artificial farm and sea and river of Mars is the creation of a man-made Lake or robot made farm inside Mars-Lakes, Artificial Lake perhaps a type of Aquarium or 'Fish Farm', a Martain eco-system might have its own predators like Shark or Eel or Predator Mammal to weed out the weak and keep colonies healthy.

I have usually said Mars will be populated with the weird, perhaps even robots and a soup of exotic creatures will populate Mars long before humans arrive. You could have different biosphere and sealed ecosystems that eventually connect and support another bidome and colony that eventually becomes a place for human habitation. Inside the deeps of Caves a different type of Astrobio, the unusual Troglobite & Troglophiles, maybe they will even be engineered for offworld for habitation inside Caves of Mars, the Moon, Titan, Europa. The Artificial Intelligence Robot can be the Farmer without risk to human life, some of the early Biosphere and Greenhouses might even be toxic for human, perhaps a Cyborg type might move more easily before the humans build their towns and start to get around. Risks and Costs will bring scrutiny and sometimes public anger and a media that demands more cost cutting in recession can have manipulation by broadcast, a US public opposed to spending on human Mars or Moon missions. Underground Habitats of Ceres, the Extremeophile life that survives in more harsh environment might naturally make chemical and biological process and a soup of chemistry and biology that eventually support another separate human colony, but eventually all these separate Artificial Biosphere systems will join. Old animals that have survived millions upon millions of years might have the ability to do just as good with extremes from another world.

Futuristic farming robots demonstrate a new era of food production
https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/business/2 … roduction/

The importance of extremophile cyanobacteria in the production of biologically active compounds
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio … _compounds

Scientists Discover Exposed Bacteria Can Survive in Space for Years
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science- … 180975660/
An experiment conducted outside the International Space Station leads to a controversial theory about how life might travel between planets

Psychrophilic and Psychrotolerant Microbial Extremophiles in Polar Environments
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20100002095

An example of hypolithic cyanobacteria on a quartzite rock
https://web.archive.org/web/20201108130 … y-on-mars/

Echidna ancestors swam with platypuses
https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles … 692080.htm
DNA analysis of the land-loving, spiny echidna has found it was once an amphibious platypus-like creature.
The study by Australian evolutionary biologists shows the platypus and echidna diverged from the same ancestor between 19 and 48 million years ago.

Do Turtles Eat Jellyfish? How Do They Eat Jellyfish Without Getting Stung?
https://www.serendipitywave.com/do-turt … jellyfish/

Why Do Some Cicadas Appear Only Every 17 Years?
https://www.britannica.com/story/why-do … y-17-years

You already know why cicadas are so unbelievably noisy. But why do some of them appear aboveground only every 17 years?
The 17-year cicadas are species of periodical cicadas, a group of homopterans with the longest known insect life cycle. The largest brood makes its appearance every 17 years, like clockwork, in the northeastern quarter of the United States. Shortly after a 17-year cicada nymph hatches from its egg, it burrows into the ground, where it spends—as its name suggests—the first 17 years of its life. When it emerges from the ground, it lives only four to six more weeks—just long enough to mate, fertilize or lay eggs, and start the cycle all over again.
Contrary to popular misconception, periodical cicadas don’t spend their years underground in hibernation. Rather, they are conscious and active in their wingless nymph forms, excavating tunnels and feeding on the sap from tree roots.

Mysterious coelacanth fish can live for 100 years – study
https://www.theguardian.com/environment … ears-study
Research sheds more light on the giant ‘living fossils’ once thought extinct but which have survived since the age of the dinosaurs

World's oldest animal turns 175
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl … 15322.html
Harriet was picked up on the Galapagos by Darwin and brought to England. She has spent the past 160 years in Australia, but her fame is about to become worldwide

She was born when slavery was still legal in Britain, and was an adult by the time of the American Civil War. She witnessed the invention of the bicycle and Morse Code, and helped Charles Darwin to formulate his theory of evolution. Her name is Harriet, and next week she celebrates her 175th birthday, the oldest creature on Earth.
A giant Galapagos land tortoise, Harriet lives in a spacious enclosure, complete with mud-bath and heated cave, on Queensland's Sunshine Coast. Darwin picked her up during his epic voyage aboard HMS Beagle, so the story goes, and transported her home to England. She was then taken to Australia, where she has ended up in a zoo run by Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, who infamously dangled his baby in front of a crocodile a couple of years ago.
Harriet was one of three tortoises collected by Darwin in the Galapagos; he called them Tom, Dick and Harry, believing them all to be male. They were only the size of dinner-plates back then, and thus escaped the indignity inflicted on adult tortoises by Darwin, who rode on their backs, rapping on their shells to persuade them to lumber along. Not the behaviour that one expects from one of the greatest scientific minds ever, but those were different times.
Harriet now weighs 150kg and is treated with the respect appropriate for a lady of her extremely advanced years. She receives a wash and rub-down from keepers at the Australian Zoo every morning, and is fed a nutritious vegetarian diet that includes courgettes, celery and green beans. For a special treat she is given red hibiscus flowers, which she adores – equivalent, perhaps, to a chocolate bar for humans.
The Guinness Book of Records cites her as the world's oldest living animal, not far off smashing the all-time record of 188 years, set by another Galapagos tortoise, now deceased. Harriet, whose correct gender was established only a few decades ago, was born in 1830, when Charles Dickens was still an 18-year-old lad.
Much of her lengthy life story is shrouded in mystery, for the only records documenting it were washed away in floods that swept Brisbane in 1893. Harriet was living at the time in the city's Botanical Gardens, where she spent nearly a century in the zoo after emigrating to the Antipodes in 1842.

World's Oldest Rain Forest Frogs Found in Amber
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/scie … rs-science
“It was exhilarating to hold these small fossils up to the light to reveal the frogs within.”

Robots in the Food Industry: Product Packaging and Palletizing
https://www.azorobotics.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=582

How Horseshoe Crabs Outlived Crocodiles By 250 Million Years
https://reptilecity.com/how-horseshoe-c … ion-years/

Bloodsucking-fish fossils overturn once-popular theory about our evolution
https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/lamprey … -1.5947054

Lampreys are boneless, blood-sucking snake-like fish considered to be "living fossils" that have barely changed since they first arose during the Paleozoic era, more than 100 million years before the first dinosaurs.

890-million-year-old sponge fossil may be the earliest animal yet found
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/scie … imal-known
The mesh-like fossil would push back the oldest known animal on Earth by more than 300 million years. But like many claims of very old life, the study is kicking up lively debate.

Artificial skin has been created for robots so humanoids can feel things you can’t
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/21166805/ … eels-pain/

Oldest Horseshoe Crab Fossil Found, 445 Million Years Old
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 … 135801.htm

The oldest fish in the world lived 500 million years ago
https://theconversation.com/the-oldest- … -ago-27710
It looked more like the worm on an angler’s hook than any living fish we might recognise today but it still takes the record for the oldest known fish to date.
The first fossil fishes are known from scant and often ambiguous fossil remains, and research published today in Nature gives us the first clear picture of exactly what these earliest fishes were really like.
The 518 million-year-old fish Metaspriggina walcotti was about 6cm long, bore a pair of large protruding eyes and small paired nasal capsules

In July 2018, scientists from four Russian institutions collaborating with Princeton University reported that they had analyzed about 300 prehistoric nematode worms recovered from permafrost above the Arctic Circle in Sakha Republic, and that after being thawed, two of the nematodes revived and began moving and eating. One found in a Pleistocene squirrel burrow in the Duvanny Yar outcrop on the Kolyma River was believed to be about 32,000 years old, while the other, recovered in 2015 near the Alazeya River, was dated at approximately 30,000-40,000 years old. These nematodes were believed to be the oldest living multicellular animals on Earth.
https://archive.fo/IZ6V7

A fairy-like robot flies by the power of wind and light
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 … 090353.htm

Here is a thread by RobertDyck on Bees
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=9715

and how one might one day have a successful pollination colony on Mars

Moss Newmars discussion
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=274

Newmars Algae topic life support
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=9947

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-02-20 13:37:48)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-08-21 17:38:16

Tiny 'ice mouse' survived Arctic cold in the age of dinosaurs
https://phys.org/news/2023-08-tiny-ice- … rctic.html

with Mice ...you could introduce a problem in your big village sized Biosphere perhaps you might need a Cat or Bird of Prey or Ratting with terriers?

Worms and Bee and other Bugs might be important for pollination and breaking down soil

I was also thinking a type 'Dog' is not a bad animal, it can be trained is a good working animal perhaps a beast of burden, a good companion for people and if Mars expands into a bigger town and city with crime a dog a useful asset when dealing with smuggling and 'Law and Order' however I do confess I can not support a breed such as the Pit and I understand why nations ban them. I believe a lot of animals might have a "Food" element to them, before Mars becomes more hospitable for mankind I believe the animals would perhaps live inside Caves or Lakes or have high radiation tolerance and resistance to toxins, survive comfortable in cold climate and be comfortable in a thinner atmosphere like you see animals survive at higher altitude on Earth, the animal might even be genetically engineered for offworld.

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-08-21 17:42:10)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-08-25 03:50:49

Karen Wooley, a Texas-based chemistry scientist, is using insect carcasses to develop plastics that will degrade naturally in the environment.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment … scientists

New Mars Forums

Announcement

#26 2007-09-29 17:00:00

Re: Animals on a terraformed Mars - what should we populate Mars with?

#27 2007-09-29 22:04:56

Re: Animals on a terraformed Mars - what should we populate Mars with?

#28 2007-09-30 03:16:17

Re: Animals on a terraformed Mars - what should we populate Mars with?

#29 2007-12-08 18:21:24

Re: Animals on a terraformed Mars - what should we populate Mars with?

#30 2007-12-09 09:03:55

Re: Animals on a terraformed Mars - what should we populate Mars with?

#31 2007-12-09 20:55:41

Re: Animals on a terraformed Mars - what should we populate Mars with?

#32 2007-12-23 16:29:25

Re: Animals on a terraformed Mars - what should we populate Mars with?

#33 2022-09-07 05:22:39

Re: Animals on a terraformed Mars - what should we populate Mars with?

#34 2022-10-04 06:34:17

Re: Animals on a terraformed Mars - what should we populate Mars with?

#35 2022-10-05 07:18:31

Re: Animals on a terraformed Mars - what should we populate Mars with?

#36 2022-10-19 13:05:12

Re: Animals on a terraformed Mars - what should we populate Mars with?

#37 2023-02-20 13:29:29

Re: Animals on a terraformed Mars - what should we populate Mars with?

#38 2023-08-21 17:38:16

Re: Animals on a terraformed Mars - what should we populate Mars with?

#39 2023-08-25 03:50:49

Re: Animals on a terraformed Mars - what should we populate Mars with?

Board footer