The main consequence that comes to my mind is that sapience should have been a characteristic that has existed in a multitude of species throughout evolutionary history pretty much continuously.
Because on Earth, eyes have evolved multiple times separately (and with some very different solutions), as has flight, gills, secondary aquaticism, legs, and so forth. But not all at the same time.
It would be astonishing if on Oddworld sapience evolved in several species at approximately the same time (evolutionarily speaking). Regardless, something had to prevent the first sapient species from inhibiting the evolution of the other species.
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