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The spherebuilders could have hyperevolved the 6 species in the past

The problem with Xindi evolution, are the Insectoids. The others you can accept having a common ancestor. But the insectoids? Insects are just so fundamentally different from all the others.

this makes me think of the Mon Cala and Quarren races in starwars, they shared a planet and both co-evolved into sentient species

Couldn't the Xindi species have been the result of development guided by the Sphere Builders pushing them towards a form that was useful to the extradimensional race?

As a anthropologist I can say you got your homonid evolution very accurate for being under 130 pages!!!! :)

My personal theory is that the died out species of Xindi were the ones to bring all the others together. They were the ones to get the others to share technology and cooperate. So the Sphere Builders had them wiped out because they would have been the ones to curb their cousins more violent tendencies. Unlike what happened with Earth, the Sphere builders were successful with the last Xindi species. But again, that is just my theory.

Our evolutionary history is indeed fascinating

I love this type of analysis! I personally would consider the xindi an allegory for the US and not Al Queda, but that's a different topic. Thank you!! 🖖🏻

Here's an idea - since having 99.5% common DNA amongst the Xindi species (plural) seems like it ought to cause them all to be very similar, perhaps we should assume that each Xindi has all the DNA of every species, and their differences are due to which groups of genes are expressed.

I love clever Star Trek content like this.

Thanks for the update Mr. River

Kudos for getting in the ‘Mycelial Network’ in there😊. I’m currently watching ST:Enterprise and I’ve been watching for any commonalities between the Xindi races. There is a structure common to all the races in addition to the forehead ridges. This is the line of bony projections on the upper cheek area of their skulls. I suppose that the writers and designers of the characters used this feature as a way of pointing to the various Xindi races having a common ancestor. Even the Avians had them, illustrated by the projections on the skull of the now extinct Xindi race.

Evolutionary biology is also a hobby of mine (just casually of course). I would imagine that really rigid separation between land masses would be a key factor in the evolution of so many intelligent species. With our own planet, land masses were constantly reshuffling as a result of tectonic activity, etc...Easier to imagine the evolution of so many intelligent species on a planet without these mechanics. The idea of the planet being very geologically active (in reality) would probably _not_ give rise to this - it's more conducive to the blending of different homonid species as happened with all the various homonids on earth. Of course, this is scifi.

I'm curious you didn't propose the theory that another species/outsiders help/tampering could have been responsible for the number of intelligent species evolving together

I have a great deal of admiration for very smart people. This was a fascinating little video, mostly because of that. Keep up the good work.

Is it actually established lore that they're all from the same planet? As opposed to from the same system? Two or even three planets in the same solar system would make this parallel evolution much more plausible as different planets could have much more diverse environments that would be more suitable to this. I.e. the insectoids and repitlians could be from a planet with a much higher concentration of oxygen and higher temperatures. This would also help explain why they have all survived as they would have had to develop technology before they could interact.

Too bad the other shows were written before the Xindi were created. Because the Xindi were the most fascinating group of alien spieces in the Star Trek franchise. It's kinda of sad that none of the shows had a species as interesting as them. Then maybe they could've showed up in the other shows.

great videos and presentation

I learned something today, thanks.

4:02 We tend to underestimate animals ability to pass information from parent to child, both through communication and through a genetic/epigenetic memory. Octopus and primates are both comparatively well studied examples.

Nice overview before watching ST:Prodigy S01E14 - thanks!

Good stuff.

Could planetary size have an effect on sapient species generation?

Does any of the script explicitly say it was natural evolution? Some of them could've been uplifted species.

the octopus guards its young until it dies so even with language that wouldnt help :-) also their life span is a bit short

Thanks, I was hoping you would have gone into the science 21st century of how 6 races could coexist, I.E.a mother race, or mother races, or off world help

I think they used a giraffe skull for the Xindi Avians, yes?

Really enjoying your content.✌🏻 There's a nagging lil whisp of a memory in my brain. Did I not see another very similar multi intelligent species in a different universe? Seems the Avians were extinct in that one too.... 🖖🏼

Live long and prosper and gobless

1:37...the way he said it. 😂

Liked and comment! Live long and prosper!

Felixsapians or cat people are my favorite

Brilliant you are, science's loss is sci fi's gain.

Remember, creation is not older than 6-12k years

I wonder if it's possible that the 6 races came about after a very bad mass extinction causing their common ancestor to radiate into many different biomes and changing drastically. The Primates and Ahboreals are clearly mammals; the Aquatics could be mammals as well only adapted to the oceans. What if the Reptilians are only called that because of outward appearance; some mammals can develop scale armor on skin. Avians are never confirmed to be birds or just flyers meaning they could have been mammals like bats. Last is the Insectoids which I'd still consider a separate species entirely but are considered Xindi out of common home and banding together to survive. All in all it's possible that most of the races had one common ancestor not long ago that radically diversified after an extinction like The Great Dying in Earth's past.

I actually know a guy who really looks very much like this!!

Live long and prosper 🖖

It could well be that their common ancestor is much older maybe far over 100 million or more years old and spread around the globe during that period. But due to the geological instability of the planet mybe the landmasses drifted away from one another and isolated them for millions of years. Maybe their technological advancement wasn't as fast as ours. Or was based more on ensuring survival rather then quality of life improvements and exploring like ours. Since the aquatics seem to be the most advanced I guess they started earlyer with that because they aren't as directly affected under water and they could be anphibious since they got hands and when life likely started in the oceans as well might be the oldest living ancestor maybe even split off the evelotionary tree right before the common ancestor conquered the land. It is definetely interesting and you could continue this theory further and further but in the end it is just an interesting species in a sci fy franshise:-).

Even accounting for insectoids only being called so for descriptive reasons and not literally being some invertebrate its a hell of a request from the show to expect us to believe all these creatures, with such drastic anatomical differences, are so closely related. That seams absurd aaalmost beyond reason. Unless it was genetic engineering. The base model would be too far manipulated thoroughly for natural selection to have resulted in so fundamentally drastically different species, However gene editing, which can be very "slap it together" without any of the intermediate processes of change involved, Has way more potential for them to have closely related dna. Just my take, but them being naturally 95% related is astronomically crazy.

They need more none humanoid species on star trek

Yuri Bezmenov gave a great explaination on how to overcome climate change.

When you say "safari" do you mean "savannah"?

the Aquatics appear to be very ethical writers

Six intelligent species on one planet. They must have had a lot of conflict. The arboreals and apes were probably close with the humans probably being dominant when they allied, the reptiles are the aggressors for most conflicts and insects make hasty decisions so they sided with the reptiles a lot. Aquatics only join once they have enough time and info, the avians seems advanced and may have been somewhat neutral a lot like the aquatics. Both the insects and aquatics had a much harder time communicating so I imagine there was a lot of conflict before they could all reconcile. I’d like to see the avians one day, maybe they just got out away by the sphere builders, I find it hard to believe that none left Xindus. Given that all six have the holes in their heads, they must be fairly closely related. That means that they did likely have a common ancestor, all six sharing one trait? Unless it’s an environmental trait from living on Xindus. Like wasps and ants, humonids and great apes , it’s possible such divergences could take place.

including dinos? O2 levels where about the same as they are now. the insecta got big during the carboniferous. dinos are just chungus

Progenitor Sandbox.

Those dislikes are all from paleontologists

Didn't dogs evolve from 2 different species. The wolf and the fox.

FIRST! :)

Fast and lose with the rules or Darwinian selection??? Star Trek made two characters evolve into slug like creatures because they claimed that was the peak of human evolution even though slug like has nothing to do with the environment of where Tom Paris Was. Fast and lose is one way to put it lol

All aliens in star have forehead things(?). The trans spacial entities who started the xindi war, may have manipulated the xindi species evolution as part of a long game to destroy earth.

I could be mistaken but I thought Kronos had 3 sentient species and the Klingons enslaved the other two.

Dude, look up how to pronounce "genus." It's the same vowel as in "gene."

subspace fungus isnt cannon

The Xindi were ridiculous from the get go & the main detractor from the goodness of the Enterprise series. Like most of ST all sister species, with the exception of the Aquatics are humanoid regardless of type which is evolutionarily silly, even more so than the rest of the humanoidcentric ST universe. It also peeved me that the mammalian species were implied to be more inherently virtuous followed by the Aquatics (Because they were so dolphin like right? 🤦‍♂️) with the insectoid and reptilian species being inherently evil, because they are cold (or non) blooded I guess? 🤦‍♂️ talk about mammalian supremacy. The race, though conceptually interesting, was about the poorest played out ideas in the whole ST universe.

Crap!

What a waste of time the whole Xindi story line was. Should have done the Romulan war. .