9 Ways You're Picturing Aliens Wrong

4. Successful Intelligent

If Donald Trump is anything to go by, we all know that success isn't always an indicator of intelligence, and that goes for the evolution of species too.

When we talk about the discovery of extraterrestrial life, we tend to put emphasis on intelligence. In particular, human like intelligence.

Whilst you can't blame us for looking for someone we might be able to hold a conversation with, the idea that intelligence and civilisation building are markers of a species' success is a very anthropocentric one.

By scanning the skies for bleeps and bloops from a technologically advanced civilisation, we could be missing a galaxy-spanning alien species sitting under our noses for all we know. In the majority of the animal kingdom here on Earth, intelligence does not necessarily equal success. Ants, for example, are currently estimated to outnumber humans by 1.5 million to 1 and, so far, none of them has come close to inventing calculus.

It could be that the universe is teeming with life, but none of it is thinking. Alternatively, it could have such a vastly different way of thinking that neither one of us would recognise the other for what it is.