Humans are pretty unique among life on Earth. As far as we know, we're the only living species to evolve a higher intelligence, wear clothes, cook our food, invent smartphones and then get locked out of them when we forget our passwords.
The classic example, Dixon said, is the fish shape. With their sleek, torpedo-like bodies and stabilizing fins, fish are optimized for life in water. However, dolphins have evolved a very similar body plan — and unlike fish, they are warm-blooded, air-breathing mammals with a totally different evolutionary background.
But any disaster potent enough to wipe out humans is also likely to wipe out chimps, which leaves another tool-using candidate to fill humans’ niche: birds. But there is another group of animals that is extremely adept at manipulating objects with their limbs — all eight of them.