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If Humans Die Out, Octopuses Already Have the Chops to Build the Next Civilization, Scientist Claims
(www.popularmechanics.com)
Do we need to die for this to happen? 
It's real sad to me how all the other intelligent lifeforms on this planet are biologically limited in one way or another. Rats? Live a few years. Octopi? Live a few years. Dolphins? The fuck they gonna do with those flippers? Ravens? Ditto, but wings. They can't even masturbate. Humans hit the evolutionary jackpot.
Whenever I read an article like this or about the probability of extraterrestrial civilization, I think there is the enormously hubristic assumption that “technological civilization” is, from an evolutionary perspective, a long-term success strategy.
Like, behaviorally modern humans are maybe 100,000 years old, the epoch in humans actually do enough stuff in the world to be force relevant to climate and biodiversity is maybe 5-10,000 years.
Maybe the answer to the Fermi paradox is obvious and maybe being a shark who swims and eat fish is an evolutionarily superior pattern, technologically civilized societies are evidentially doomed by the observation made in the Fermi paradox.
Yeah if we accept that at the very base the only criteria for success in a living organism is propagation then bacteria are by far the most successful. I personally agree and think sapient life is an aberration.