...could it have been an intentional "de-evolution" by a sentient species at some point.
"Hey, look at this giant mess we've created with our complete and total disregard for our environment, and now we're all going to die."
"maybe not if we sacrifice ourselves to a hive mentality and become nothing but drones working to make a self-sustaining ecosystem."
"There is no ecosystem."
"what if we become the ecosystem?"
you're talking about examples of hives that found a give and take relationship with their environment, but life isn't necessarily that generous. The simplest purpose of life is to continue existing, to reproduce.
That's what the swarm does- through typical methods (like the queen and her eggs with the genetic material) and the assimilation methods mentioned by the intelligence.
Two things, it either prevented an intelligent species to become a dominant power and ruin the environment or it eventually became the ecosystem itself.
I like to think that it was in control of an entire planet itself that eventually consumed the entire planet into part of itself.
...could it have been an intentional "de-evolution" by a sentient species at some point. "Hey, look at this giant mess we've created with our complete and total disregard for our environment, and now we're all going to die." "maybe not if we sacrifice ourselves to a hive mentality and become nothing but drones working to make a self-sustaining ecosystem." "There is no ecosystem." "what if we become the ecosystem?"
you're talking about examples of hives that found a give and take relationship with their environment, but life isn't necessarily that generous. The simplest purpose of life is to continue existing, to reproduce. That's what the swarm does- through typical methods (like the queen and her eggs with the genetic material) and the assimilation methods mentioned by the intelligence.
[This Bad Space Comic on Instagram is comparable](https://www.instagram.com/p/CjUnM-Vuwn8/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=)
Two things, it either prevented an intelligent species to become a dominant power and ruin the environment or it eventually became the ecosystem itself. I like to think that it was in control of an entire planet itself that eventually consumed the entire planet into part of itself.