@sundogplanets I was listening to a piece on NPR the other day talking about the mitochondria, and that the endosymbiosis between it and cells was such an unlikely event that if there is other life in the universe, it's probably microbial.
Does that count as homeostatic awakening? It's not that they've moved to a lower energy state, it's that they never got the energy to become larger in the first place without something like the mitochondria.