Wow. Can you infer vessel speed by assuming the run always concluded at the start position? The bottom line doesn’t meet back at the top line because the ship and runner were going in opposite directions.

I’d take it a step further—there is no evolutionary chain. A chain implies linear direction. I’d argue it’s more like a rhizome, evolving in a rather random direction at every moment. Intelligence as we know it is just (1) a single arbitrary attribute and (2) a single arbitrary form of intelligence. Something with more capacity toward intelligence might not even share the same kind of intelligence as us, which could mean their logic would be incomprehensible.