Imagine that we find life on Mars but it is very tiny – say the size of a microbe. Then let’s say that those Martian life forms are super intelligent, and friendly, and peaceful. The only thing wrong with them is that they are really, really small. And Mars is covered with them. This raises a host of ethical questions.
Would we leave the tiny aliens to live in peace, or would we scoop up a few truckloads with our next probe and not give a shit because they are so tiny. Size matters when it comes to respecting other life forms. For example, you can easily swat a mosquito and it doesn’t bother you because the mosquito is so small. But it would be hard for most people to take a sledgehammer to a kangaroo. The nearer the victim is to your own size, the more empathy you have for it.
This phenomenon is consistent in the “large” directions too. If something is much bigger than you, it’s easier to watch it get hurt. For example, I think we’d all agree that it would be kind of neat to watch Godzilla get disemboweled. It would be entertaining to see a spleen the size of a bus fall on the freeway and block traffic. I don’t think I’m the only one who feels that way.
So anyway, I think that the super-tiny, genius Martians would be treated like trained fleas by their Earth-sized overlords. We’d get little cameras and make the Martians do Riverdancing for us. If they refused, we’d kill them with tweezers. It would be a very one-sided relationship.
Eventually there would be laws that say Earthlings can’t buy a bag full of Martians from the Russians and keep them (the Martians, not the Russians) in a terrarium. But until that law is passed, let’s say there’s a golden period where you can have your own tiny army of alien slaves. The Martians couldn’t do much for you that is useful, but maybe they could stand on each others’ shoulders inside their glass container and spell out the names of your house guests or something.
No matter how open-minded you are, the Martians would still be too small to be friends. You can’t go throw a ball with a friend who is smaller than an ant’s pecker on a cold day. At least not after the first few throws, assuming you have good aim.
The reason it’s legal to have pets is because they aren’t human. Just because the Martians are smart, that wouldn’t make any difference when it comes to classifying them as pets. There’s no law that says your pet has to be dumber than you. It just has to fear you. Intelligence is irrelevant. I mean, if your cat could read, you still wouldn’t let it drive your car to the library. You’d make it stay home and lay around on the rug. It’s your frickin’ cat, not a professor.
So I don’t think that the tiny genius aliens will have much hope of ascending beyond the status of goldfish once we start sending shovels to Mars. But hey, they probably had a good run.