1. Organ(s) to process information - something like a nervous system and a brain, but I am not even sure if the "brain" would have to be similar to the spheroidal thing we have. Why not a cyllinder? Maybe not, because better electrochemical exchanges would require proximity of neuron-like cells and this would drive towards sphericity?
Spherical shape because a sphere is the simplest, most natural shape anything in existence will form. Why else are there no observed planets in any other shape but a spheroid?
2. Organs to gather sensorial data about the critters' environment. It will depend on environment and the evolutionary history of the species. It could have sonar, extra sets of "eyes" to gather wavelenghts other than those picked by ours, etc.
Because in order to envision, design, build, manipulate, and maintain it they would need sensory input similar to ours. Maybe better to a certain degree, maybe worse by a lot.
This is a case where better isn't better.
3. Organs to manipulate the environments. This could be the equivalent of hands but also tentacles, pincers, proboscis and maybe even other things I can't imagine. Just two? Don't know. Maybe four? Or three? I guess it will depend on the evolutionary path and environment.
Tentacles, pincers, tails, and proboscis do not trump fingers and opposable thumbs.
They can't have too many limbs, because they would just get in the way. They can't have too few because they wouldn't be able to do any useful work. Three arms, maybe. Four at the most.
4. Locomotion organs. Legs (DUH!), but not sure on how many. Or something like tentacles, maybe... Why not use the same organs for locomotion and manipulation, like apes do? One can also think about locomotion modes like those used by squids or even jellyfishes if we imagine certain types of environments.
Tentacles aren't really an effective means of locomotion, as far as I know. Sure it works for octopi, but they live in water. And any lifeforms we encounter in space probably won't be aquatic in nature.
Spherical shape because a sphere is the simplest, most natural shape anything in existence will form. Why else are there no observed planets in any other shape but a spheroid?
But a brain isn't formed in the same way that a planet is shaped.
In fact, the brain is the shape it is not because of simplicity but because it's shape allows a greater surface area (that's what all those complex curvy ridges are). The exact opposite of a sphere which is the minimum surface area for a given volume.
This topic has come up before. I think the reason we always see humanoid aliens is for purposes of theatrical impact. It's hard to be scared of a representation of something literally unearthly: there's nothing to latch onto. Carl Sagan said, "Imagine you didn't know what birds are, and you were suddenly confronted with a macaw."
Well, there's also the pathetic poverty of imagination among the ufoologists.
Depends of the effect you want. I remember reading about the design of "Alien". Originally the creature had eyes, or at least eye sockets. They thought it was good, but not good enough. Then they removed the eyes, creating that smooth upper skull we all know. And it became much scarier, there was nothing people could relate to in that "face" other than the mouth.
Now, this case apart, its just like you wrote - if you want people to understand, recognize or relate to the feelings of the alien, you will need some human (or recognizable) element. Check the aliens from "District 9". Big bug-like humanoid things. Now, check their faces - mammal-like eyes and the equivalents of eyebrows. Without those features, empathy would not be possible. This guideline is valid for any SF / Fantasy creature.
If we go back in time, its mostly a combination of this need for empathy with available FX technology and budget. Quite often the solution was "paint the actor green or silver"...
We aren't even the dominant life form on this planet, so why assume humanoid shapes succeed elsewhere?
If you really want to have fun, try to imagine what intelligent life in earth would look like had the dinosaurs not gone extinct, and continued to evolve over the last 65 million years. Humans aren't much past 120 thousand yet.
...If you really want to have fun, try to imagine what intelligent life in earth would look like had the dinosaurs not gone extinct, and continued to evolve over the last 65 million years. Humans aren't much past 120 thousand yet.
It'd look much like crocodiles do I imagine... and some birds.
It wouldn't have cars and microwave ovens and stuff because lizardy things lack the dexterity.
It'd look much like crocodiles do I imagine... and some birds.
It wouldn't have cars and microwave ovens and stuff because lizardy things lack the dexterity.
Yes and the surviving dinosaurs evolved into birds and crocodiles.
The lack of massive predators gave the small rodent like mammals an opportunity to evolve and dominate. They already had more dexterity than lizard like giants.
Now of course lizard like giants could have developed intelligence... but the surviving ancestors of the dinosaurs didn't... at least not beyond that which they needed to survive.
There are some traits (binocular vision, for example) that might be evolutionarily advantageous and therefore might occur elsewhere; however, generally speaking, I think it is extremely unlikely that alien life would look anything like anything on earth.
Your face is just a sensor cluster. We should not expect other creatures to have sensor clusters that are arranged anything like ours.
However, just as one could argue 4 limbs are more parsimonious than 6, and 6 more than 8, so, too, we might expect some kind of smell and taste things in or near the food intake port, and eyes near that as well. That's probably why eyes, ears, nose, and taste are all right there next to food intake and brain -- short distance to the processor probably helps some, and since it's growing out of a simple set of nerves, right there is more beneficial than 5 feet away.
lack of massive predators gave the small rodent like mammals an opportunity to evolve and dominate. They already had more dexterity than lizard like giants.
Now of course lizard like giants could have developed intelligence... but the surviving ancestors of the dinosaurs didn't... at least not beyond that which they needed to survive.
Decades ago there Dale Russell proposed a hypothetical sentient creature evolved from troodontids (a type of raptor -like dinosaur), the dinosauroid. It was an upright scaly critter, not unlike a sleestak (or a gray alien if you are deeper in to UFOlogy - I believe it is the source of Icke's lunacies). But it was from a time when dinosaurs were slumbering scaly tail-draggers and not the active fast feathery critters using tails to ballance heads and "upper" body as we know them nowadays. Well, at least the raptor-like dinos.
I've seen more recent extrapolations and they show more bird-like creatures which do not stand upright. Feathery raptors with big brains. It really not hard to imagine raptors could have evolved to sentient creatures. They were not cold blooded (or at least so say some paleontologists), had binocular vision, big brains (at least for reptiles) and free upper limbs to manipulate things.
No, I didn't know that... I always thought that crocs were the only remaining dinosauresque (I invented a new word) animal left with any credible direct lineage, so thanks for the new info.
Decades ago there Dale Russell proposed a hypothetical sentient creature evolved from troodontids (a type of raptor -like dinosaur), the dinosauroid. It was an upright scaly critter, not unlike a sleestak (or a gray alien if you are deeper in to UFOlogy - I believe it is the source of Icke's lunacies). But it was from a time when dinosaurs were slumbering scaly tail-draggers and not the active fast feathery critters using tails to ballance heads and "upper" body as we know them nowadays. Well, at least the raptor-like dinos.
I've seen more recent extrapolations and they show more bird-like creatures which do not stand upright. Feathery raptors with big brains. It really not hard to imagine raptors could have evolved to sentient creatures. They were not cold blooded (or at least so say some paleontologists), had binocular vision, big brains (at least for reptiles) and free upper limbs to manipulate things.
Yes, it's not hard to imagine evolution and even evolution that is different to how we know it turned out. I think the problem comes when you look at other present day species that have had longer to evolve than we have and see that the path of evolution is based upon survival, not arriving at a goal of the cushy life we have attained (in comparison).
A lot of animals also use their limbs to manipulate things, even birds have been videoed making bent hooks to retrieve food from bell jars that they otherwise couldn't reach and various apes also use sticks as basic tools... and this is the main problem when imagining how evolution might have been different. We have evidence that evolutionary trails haven't lead to anything as dexterous as us with a capacity for thought as complex as ours is... but then we aren't too great at balance or achieving the same speeds as animals that have those traits as their speciality. Here on Earth, the unique combination of sentience and dexterity have given us the edge over the other species.
Evolution does not follow a predetermined path; its just about spreading genesand making sure they will survive. If a species developed a certain trait, thats because several things happened which lead towards that particular outcome.
- The trait must be possible to exist (no teleporting species, for example).
- The trait must be within the probability and utility "landscapes". Eyes are very usefull for several environments on Earth and evolved independently a number of times. Same is valid for wings, legs and fins.
- Chance has a big role here. If the specimens with a given developing trait are killed somehow (predation, natural catastrophes, diseases, etc.) then the trait will not be fully developed.
- We can also think in terms of trait utility competition. Trait A may not be useful now, but later, it has the potential to become a key element for species' evolutionary success and future. However, if right now its not useful, it may (or may not) be preserved.
So, primates had binocular vision, big brains and good tools to manipulate objects. They stood for quite a while without evolving towards humans. Check lemurs, for example. An unique chain of events caused the evolution of smart primate species and eventually humans. If big cats and / or snakes and maybe even some competitors of the same species had managed by sheer chance to kill a certain key group of primates, maybe we would not be having this conversation. Brains are energy-hungry organs. Our ancestors with slightly bigger brains could have been killed if they were at the wrong time and the wrong places.
That's why I think we can not say too much about the plausibility and possibility of certain groups of animals developing -or not- intelligence. Chance has a huge role in the path towards intelligence and eventually developing a civilization. Maybe the troodontids or some other type of dinosaurs naver had their chance. Maybe meerkats and squids never had it too. Maybe orcas will never have theirs because they lack organs to properly manipulate their environments, despite their big brains and obvious intelligence. Quite possibly treefrogs, despite the binocular vision and "hands", will never develop big brains due to their metabolism and competition with other tree-dwelling animals.
Deep downs its all a SWAG. Who knows? Millions of years in the future orcas may develop "hands" from their fins or some sort of proboscis. Or treefrogs may evolve to occupy the niches left by the then extinct marmosets, then proceed ahead mimicking humans' evolutionary path (yes, I know, "wet" skins, gotta get rid of them too). Maybe chamaleons, then... Or Humboldt squids, free of predators, developed group hunting tactics and started taking advantage of having more brain power and more skilled tentacles...
The more I think about it, the less I find humanoid bodies and faces are the single answer to sentinence and civilization. It was ours. It may not be theirs. If they exist (existed or will exist). Add to this changing bodies due to technology and I can not help but see the predominance of humanoid fictional aliens as the product of lack of imagination, need for empathy with the audience, plot needs and restrictions imposed by budget and FX technology.
There are some traits (binocular vision, for example) that might be evolutionarily advantageous and therefore might occur elsewhere; however, generally speaking, I think it is extremely unlikely that alien life would look anything like anything on earth.
Binocular vision concept was discussed in one of Major Donald Kehoe's UFO books. Unfortunately, the person being interviewed then went on to include numerous other human traits like opposable thumbs, bipedal, two ears, multiple fingers, etc. to conclude that aliens most likely would look just like us. Bit of a stretch I'd say.
A short Sci-Fi story I recall had the protagonist falling asleep in a remote cabin when a huge "cockroach" climbed onto his bed. Being a guy in a remote cabin naturally he had a pistol on the bedside table, so he shot it. But when he took a closer look he found it was wearing a Bat Man type "utility belt" crammed with tiny little tools. Moral of the story is that we might well not recognize an alien when we encounter one. And I guess it says a lot about how humans might react to something alien when we encounter it.
A short Sci-Fi story I recall had the protagonist falling asleep in a remote cabin when a huge "cockroach" climbed onto his bed. Being a guy in a remote cabin naturally he had a pistol on the bedside table, so he shot it. But when he took a closer look he found it was wearing a Bat Man type "utility belt" crammed with tiny little tools. Moral of the story is that we might well not recognize an alien when we encounter one. And I guess it says a lot about how humans might react to something alien when we encounter it.
It reminds me of the Buggers in Ender's Game, in which each entity was a hive intelligence with a whole bunch of mindless "drones" to go out and do stuff. The first time they encountered a human ship, they dispatched the crew thinking they were just killing drones and that it was no big deal. We saw their merciless slaughter of hundreds of humans and responded by annihilating their whole species in interstellar war.
Now, I'm not a frequent watcher of Sci-Fi movies, but at least the stereotype representation of extra-terrestrials is pretty ubiquitous. (Although, this claim might need confirmation from more experienced fans). As far as the typical artist representation goes (excluding evolutionarily informed speculations such as Carl Sagan's jovial "floaters", "hunters" and "sinkers"), the faces of aliens look suspiciously similar to human infants with large black eyes, a big head and comparatively small body. (Alternatively, similarities with other terrestrial species can be found).
Assuming this or similar stereotype is correct, [qimg]http://images.wikia.com/sims/images/5/57/Aliens1.jpg[/qimg]
I will now get to the point of this thread, which is the question of how to interpret these similarities. Is it a meme gone viral, simply unimaginative, or a result of neurological face-recognition mechanisms?
Nonhumans have been suspiciously human in our fiction for thousands of years. It's easier to identify them as smart beigns if they have features we can interpret, and easier for characters in stories to interact with humans if they are humanoid, etc.
Well, I think the actual problem is functionality and not appearance. It doesn't matter if the form is outlandish - what matters is if the form is functional and evolutionarily wise, plausible (within the boundaries of our knowledge, of course).
This put, I disagree with what you wrote about some of those aliens and some of those movies / series / game.
First, "Avatar". Those aliens were humanoid, very humanoid, actually. They departed only slightly from humans, especially for a world where most animals had six limbs...
Mass Effect had few non-humanoid races. The jellyfish-like Hanar, the Leviathans and to a certain stretch the knuckle-walking Elcors - but I think they could be labelled as humanoid too, even if marginally. Most of the species (Asari, Prothean and Turians, for example) were humanoid and could very well be part of a Star Trek episodes, species name starting with a "t".
Most Star Wars aliens I can remember were humanoid too. Wookies, the cloners, Yoda's species, those from the Trade Federation, Ewoks, the pink alien band, those with tentacle-like appendages in the heads and even the insectoids from Geonosis. Now, Star Wars had some rather silly alien concepts, humanoid or not, designed just for the lulz. Episode I had Gungans, that two-headed race narrator and Anakin's master with those tiny wings, just to mention a few...
At last but not least, Star Trek had some non-humanoid aliens with interesting concepts - the Crystalline Entity, the Horta, Tholians and that insectoid-like race from another universe featured in Voyager (can't remember their name). Just to mention a few.
Another possibility is implied by a condition in which people simultaneously have some of the signs of being asleep but other signs of being awake. A lot of them report getting the feeling that there are others in the room with them when there aren't, and some of those even specify the color of the people they can't see. And that color is gray.
What was the cetera there? I don't know what else goes with "paragraphs are your friend", or what complete saying "paragraphs are your friend" would be only the beginning of.
A lack of aliens having used it to come here isn't evidence that they can't do it. The ones that have already advanced enough to do it (if they exist) could just have a home planet that's very very very very very very far away.
Maybe the ones we think we've seen so far were robotic, or at least biorobotic, and we just didn't know it.
But seriously, at interstellar distances, the same challenges would plague robotic vehicles that plague manned ones. Unless we're going back to warp/hyperspace stuff, the travel time would be in multiples of our entire history so far on this planet, and that's just one way; then there's the same travel time again to get any information back home about what the robots found, not to mention time for the robots to collect it here and probably also to build something capable of getting the information back home.
I realize your argument stems from the fact that life anywhere in the universe must have arisen and evolved obeying the laws of the universe that govern us all. However, what about the vastly different conditions that can exist within the universe, even within our planet, and that still allow life to evolve?
If the question is what other kinds of life could exist at all, then there's a problem of trying to figure out which ideas are too imaginative and which ones aren't imaginative enough. But if the question is what aliens who invent and use advanced technology like us will be like, then we can address it with more of a realistic focus on known causes and effects. Specific abilities like that are associated with specific kinds of traits and origins of those traits.
I can give specific cause-&-effect reasons to expect the inventors & users of advanced technology to have right & left sides that mirror each other (thus an even number of limbs), an upright body with a head on top featuring a symmetrical set of eyes and a single mouth, and a skeleton of rigid materials (not specifying inside or outside). Those traits are practically guaranteed. The exact number of pairs of limbs can't be guaranteed but there is also sound reason to expect the most likely/common arrangement to be the minimum for serving the basic purposes: 1 for stance & locomotion, 1 (divided into sub-limbs comparable to our fingers) for manipulation. Most or all of the critters in the bar in Star Wars fit this description, I think.
Traits of ours that seem more incidental and not so likely to appear in aliens would include our chins, noses, protruding ears on the head, and overall color & texture of skin. Take away those, though, and I think we still would have no problem recognizing aliens' faces as faces (just as we recognize the face of a spider when we see one), and might even call them "humanoid" based on that and overall body arrangement. Some might say some of the possibilities that includes don't count as "humanoid", like an insectish head on a large, bipedal body with two "arms" like subdivided tentacles, especially if their impression of that word comes from Star Trek, but that's the vagueness of semantics. You could be much more specific with lists of individual similarities & differences, and I'd say most of the significant stuff is in the "similarities" list (but just isn't enough to get to the level of similarity seen on Star Trek or in the original post's picture).
Interesting that even though a tripod is the most efficient means of making a table, stool or other thing that need to be stable on the ground, there are no animals (that I can think of) that naturally have three legs.
The key is the word "stable" that you used in there. Animals' limbs are used mainly for movement, not stability. Also, the bilaterally symmetrical body pattern got set before there were any such things as legs, a bilaterally symmetrical body tends to do things in pairs, and four is the lowest even number that's at least three. The tripod effect you're talking about does show up in 4-legged and 6-legged critters when they're walking (at slow enough speeds), though. They tend to have 3 feet on the ground at a time, while moving the other 1 or 3 in the air, then switch from one set of 3 to another set of 3 while all are temporarily on the ground. In insects, it's called the "alternating tripod" gait.
something like a nervous system and a brain, but I am not even sure if the "brain" would have to be similar to the spheroidal thing we have. Why not a cyllinder? Maybe not, because better electrochemical exchanges would require proximity of neuron-like cells and this would drive towards sphericity?
In fact, the brain is the shape it is not because of simplicity but because it's shape allows a greater surface area (that's what all those complex curvy ridges are). The exact opposite of a sphere which is the minimum surface area for a given volume.
Round isn't the fundamental shape for our brains. For one thing, if you look at the bottom of the brain, or perhaps more easily the bottom of the space that contains it, as viewed from above (with the top of the skull taken out of the way for visibility), you can see that it really doesn't look very round/spheroidal at all. The top of the brain might, but that's where it doesn't have other stuff getting in the way. The bottom is where it runs into parts associated with the throat, mouth, ears, nose, and eye sockets, and that's where the brain's shape gets several big peaks & valleys. Also, keep in mind that your retinas and optic nerves could be considered part of the brain, as they start off development there and then extrude out from the rest of the brain to get to where they end up, and having those bits sticking out like that certainly doesn't contribute much to overall roundness.
Also, here is an illustration of a fish brain. It's a pile of separate pieces with different shapes & sizes. Some are round, but the bits in front and back, which need to fit through narrow spaces to reach the taste/smell sensors in front and the spinal chord in back, get narrower and more cone-like. Ours is derived from an assortment of mismatched shapes like that; it just got rounder in general, particularly on top, when a couple of parts of it got a lot bigger and ended up on top (because the whole thing also curved up a bit like a question mark along the way).
There could be a general tendency for the separate chunks of a brain to start off as round blobs and still be round as they get bigger, if they're allowed to. But that seems to apply to separate parts of a brain separately rather than to the whole brain together, and there's also a tendency for them to sort of pour into whatever space adjacent parts will let them have.
I'm putting the rest of this in a spoiler box to control post length, because the rest is really just expansion on the above using the main brainy examples from Earth, which would set off the "TLDR!!!1!!" types.
What's going on is that a brain isn't exactly a single object. It's what you get when several ganglia near each other enlarge until the space between them is reduced to nothing. A ganglion is a cluster of nerve cells somewhere along a nerve line, usually (maybe always) at a junction of two or more lines, where there are some extra cells because there's some extra responsibility in either routing signals where they're supposed to go or independently controlling local actions. You have ganglia associated with each of your vertebrae, where nerves running to different parts of your body connect to the spinal chord. The ones in your pelvis control reflexes in your legs (and I think some habitual movement patterns such as walking/running, although I'm not sure of that) without your brain being involved. Usually, a "ganglion" has just a few simple functions, but they can accumulate more functionality if they grow bigger (add more neurons) and/or work together more.
Concerning cylindrical brains, you can find something sort of like that in squids and their relatives, although a better description than "cylinder" might be "lumpy donut"... with an esophagus running through the hole in the middle. In simpler molluscs, some ganglia and the lines connecting between them do loop around the esophagus, but more loosely, not so crowded. Wikipedia's page on molluscs has a couple of good drawings of that. Wrapping a brain around an esophagus might sound silly, but, back when the brain's parts were just separate little ganglia, there was no reason for them not to be scattered around and no reason for any one ganglion not to be wherever it was. Make those ganglia thicker without moving them farther apart, and they bunch up into the lumpy donut.
For vertebrates, the ganglia that expanded to form the brain were the first few spinal ganglia, associated with what were once the front few vertebrae. In this image, you can see how the back of the fish's head is open and the spine runs right inside it, straight through where you might expect a brain case to be, to the eye sockets. If you just close the back of that head with bone plates like it already has on the sides and in front and above, you enclose a few vertebrae and the ganglia on top of them (parts of the brain) inside the head. Those vertebrae, with modification (and some cases of fusion with more superficial bone plates around the front, sides, and back of the brain), become the bottom of the brain case, from the base/core section of the occipital bone to the ethmoid bone, ending right between & behind your eyes & nose.
The same thing shows up with arthropod brains as well. The original ancestor was segmented but not cephalized yet, and then formed a head by fusion & reshaping of the front few body segments, so the first few segmental ganglia became a brain and took on whatever shape was necessary for the shape of the head. (The same segments' legs got modified into mouth parts. One of the basic ways to distinguish different arthropod lineages from each other is by counting how many segments the head is made of.)
Same basic principle in each case: the brain's shape is pretty arbitrary, just molded by whatever happens to it as it grows and gets assembled from its contitutent parts.
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