Lilly, on 09 February 2012 - 11:57 AM, said:
An alien lifeform could readily have appendages that function as our fingers do for us and not be biologically similar to humans in the least. Humans were in essence formed by various circumstances and the forces of evolution taking place here on planet Earth. It stands to reason any alien life would have been subject to the circumstances and forces of evolution on their respective planets. The likelyhood of running into ETs that look 'just like us' is based on more on popular culture than anything else. But, since no one can produce an ET for comparison, such discussion remains purely speculative.
Obviously we don't have an E.T. to examine. However, that doesn't mean that we can't talk about evolution on other planets or that what we "speculate" is inherently wrong. Evolution produces designs that work and if we are going to talk about technological civilizations then there must be some serious physical constraints that limit what body-types such a species must have. Wild imagination may be fun to contemplate but evolution itself must follow relatively straight forward pathways to achieve the end result, in this case a technological civilization.
Here any imaginary body-type simply won't do. The reason for that is simple, a species that develops intelligence must have a body that allows it to capitalize on that intelligence and allows for it to be manifest in the physical environment the species inhabits so that this intelligence can actually become itself an evolutionary advantage. Other wise intelligence in a species that doesn't have a body-type to take advantage of it is nothing more than a quirk at best. Therefore the body-type is of extreme importance and must be present in order for intelligence to become a meaningful and useful trait that gives a species an advantage in that it has the body-type that allows it to physically translate that intelligence into technology that is useful in it's environment.
O.k. so an Alien civilization would have to have the right type of body first before intelligence can flourish in that species. The clear example of that here on Earth is found in Hominids. Once the bi-pedal line arose all the conditions of body-type were met to allow intelligence to be translated into simple technology that gave "smart" groups an advantage in the environment, meaning that the natural selection for intelligence itself became a useful trait. But not only that but also simple ideas can also reverberate across the population of species laterally because the body-type allows the individual and the group/s to mimic eachother. We see mimicking in other species here on Earth the difference between those species and bi-pedal hominids is that the latter can carry a simple tool around and use it again.
Not to get ahead of myself, the point here is a technological species must have a body-type that will allow it to both capitalize on intelligence first in its immediate environment and afterwards need only minor tweaking to allow the species to achieve a true technological civilization. So clearly many body-types evolution tends to produce in nature here on Earth can not meet this simple criteria, but one certainly does the bi-pedal Hominid.
So what body-types that are so far nothing more than 'thought experiments', excluding the bi-pedal Hominid which is real, would fit the bill? I'm not sure as I personally have a hard time imagining something else that would work and be different without being redundant. Therefore I'd ask those who disagree to, at least as a thought experiment, present a body-type for discussion.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you. - Friedrich Nietzsche
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