I also recall a segment from BBC's Blue Planet, where an octopus and another fish whose name I cannot recall (grouper?), two entirely different species, communicate with each other via the color of their skin to surround and trap prey.

> Our most amazing ancestors were not kings and emperors, but rather these pre-historic hunters and gatherers who carved out a niche as alpha predators using brains, language, and primitive tech.

Of course. What profoundly intrigues me though, is trying to imagine what it must have been like to be -conscious- even before that primal epoch:

To be just on the cusp of awareness and intelligence.

To have thoughts and desires and fears and hopes and loves and hates and plans and dreams, but not knowing what to do with them, or being able to communicate them.

We spent tens of thousands of years being helpless against the environment, against hunger, disease, predators, against each other's instincts and urges.

Imagine being left behind during a hunt, broken and bleeding out.. All the individual suffering that has taken place on this planet, all the sentient thoughts that died alone and confused.

Then imagine how many other worlds out there must be going through the same development right at this very moment.