What type of biological life will more than likely be found on other planets?

Is Venus similar enough in size and location to Earth in order to make this argument questionable? Venus is not much like earth.

How few of those things can dolphins do? How many of those things can you do?

Are you quite sure that dolphins do not create music or have complex communications? I am not. Those things do not require hands as some have suggested,

If you are going to define intelligence as separating us from every other animal (and plants too I'm sure) then you would seem to be using a rather biased screen to identify intelligent life on other planets as well.

Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I don't think getting past the blob stage requires other planets, but becoming able to support life might well require some well placed giant planets forming along with the smaller rocky ones.

I'm not sure what is and is not "art", but even if bird songs are not music, and I accept that they are not, it is not clear to me that dolphins and other whales cannot and do not create music. No technical aids are needed to do those things. Similarly, math and complex communications do not require hands. Only writing those things down requires thumbs and technical aids. Science can be done using observing and reasoning. Beakers and microscopes are not required to observe experiments.

What if we found a human like species on a distant planet that had no music or had no artists? Would we consider them unintelligent if they had all of the other characteristics? I think that would be a ridiculous way to proceed.

Not that I am agreeing with jar on this, but no technology means no guitar, and certainly no electric guitar.

I understand that, but I am responding to your statement below [emphasis added by me]. Technology has everything to do with "going off on a guitar" like Jimi Hendrix.

An intelligent rat might have better chances for survival then an unintelligent one. But perhaps other strategies can give unintelligent rats and edge over intelligent humans. We may actually outnumber rats on earth, but their population is likely on the same order of magnitude as the human population.

And there might well be circumstances in which no degree of intelligence will enable survival, but some of those other strategies (like being able to forgo eating and drinking for a few days or months or being able to survive after flash freezing) will allow unintelligent animals to survive when any human would be long dead.

How many species have changed intelligence at all over time? Have homo sapiens increased in intelligence?