Seriously, understanding the "real answer" is a combination of lack of imagination plus producers' concerns about the viewing audience not "getting" an alien shaped like a sponge or something ...
is there in fact some advantage to being bipedal? Like offering better mobility without the metabolic cost of additional limbs?
The aliens' faces in this film's preview, though, look unforgivably humanoid IMHO
Humans evolved as bipedal, due to the advantage of being able to look out for predators in the savannah, but the real advantage is the use of one's hands for tools, rather than using them for transport.
It makes sense that other advanced alien species could be bipedal. Under the same energy availability (Oxygen as the determining factor) and similar gravity situations, I personally believe that evolution will eventually always produce a higher organism, capable of complex thought, which always depends on the brain. The bigger the brain, the less developed the rest of the body, due to (in our case as mammals) the size of the head vs the vaginal opening and the energy required to maintain such a powerful organ.
By definition a space-faring species would be sentient and technologically advanced. This would logically make them smart, i.e. having highly developed brains. You see where Im going with this.
The only other possibilities of contact with aliens is probably something brought to earth by other celestial objects, or found by us on other planets.
TL:DR
They will be bipedal, if we assume they went through (carbon-based-lifeform) evolution on an (oxygen-rich) earth-like planet.
I kinda disagree.
I agree that we can accomplish incredible achievements by combining powerful brain with free hands capable of holding tools.
But there are also many disadvantages in being biped. We have many vertebral and legs issues, we have trouble to equilibrate, we can't run fast.
If it was to have free creativity in designing a highly evolved created, I'd use centaus as a base. Maybe a centaur based create capable of doing fotosintese lol
One leading hypothesis says that our brains grew bigger as a result of our bipedalism. The smaller area exposed to the heat of the sun allowing the body to cool enough to have a larger brain pan. Not sure I subscribe to that as the reason but if that is the trigger, then the same happening to bipedal aliens would account for the domination in bipedalism for technological species.
shareWell why then other bipeds, older than aples, didn't do the same?
shareThey kinda did. For example Homo Erectus had and even bigger brain thatn Homo Sapiens, and he was stronger too, but We worked together while they were loners, so we hunted them to extinction.
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Applied Science? All science is applied. Eventually.
Interesting.
I'm sure that society and family, making people work together, was essential for the spiece success. Sadly, today, society and family are cause of a lot of trouble and problems, because people can't work together anymore.
Anyway, it's hard to figure out what made their brains grow and evolve so quickly. We have some brain areas that only our spiece has.
I'd expect much more than 100 milion years for these areas to evolve. And I don't see how exactly these areas were relevant so that people with more advanced ones would prevail and move on evolution while people less advanced would extinguish.
I mean, as I understand evolution, each advance would take hundreds of years to happen. And during that time, 2 kinds of people would coexist for a lot time. They'd expand in territory, make different path choides. So, the tendency would be many different spieces to be created over the milions of years. A change so big as that, would create a wide range of different spieces. Not a unique spiece to survive while all the few others extinguish.
But people work together all the time. for example im willing to bet you did not built the device you typed this message on from scartch. you have worked with other people to get this device. some people smelter ore, some invented the technology, some built the device, some brought the device for you and whatever you did to earn the money you paid for it was probably beneficial to them. Its just that cooperation nowadays is way bigger than just your immediate kin.
What made our brains grow is survival. People with bigger brains tend to be smarter, smarter people are more likely to survive and ensure survival of their children. thus natural selection increased brain size, just like every other organ we have. Since our species are kinda special in that we have made wast advances in technology, different parts of our brain got stimulated and this it evolved a bit differently than some species. however many human behaviuos are in fact found in animals. animals can feel emotions, have empathy, kill for sport.
We are still figuring out exactly what our brain does and how it affects us, so i dont think anyone knows why those areas were relevant. We do know that we use pretty much entire brain we have, so they are used for something.
you dont understand it well enough then. see, there are millions of variations in humans, we are not "all the same", and we constantly intermix between ourselves. This has been beneficial for us in changing enviroment, its the reason why there pretty much does not exist a disease where at least 1% of human population would be naturally immune for some reason. some of those variations die off, some new ones are formed. constantly. likely every day. the variations are only different in a very miniscule part from others, so we do not normally notice this. however over many generations with certain type of variations more likely to survive the entire block will shift towards them without any major change event happening at once. for people living in that block, it would be unnoticable. it can only be noticed when spectating that block over long period of time and comparing large time differences. New species dont just appear one day, they get there very very slowly over many generations.
And there were in fact times where two isolated areas resulted in different species, like the nendarthals i mentioned. its also worth noting that we see this exist right now as well. we just call it "Races".
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Applied Science? All science is applied. Eventually.
I disagree. Bipedalism is a direct result of evolving from quadrupeds. And quadrupeds in turn evolved from a simplification of the ancestral bodyplan of bilaterians (animals with mirrored left and right body plans).
The ancestors of all animals had a pair of appendages (two pairs even) for each body segment. We "devolved" appendages somewhere along the evolutionary line because the direct ancestors of higher animals didn't need them. And thus when later it was needed again, the descendants (tetrapods) had to make do with the two pairs left.
To put this in layman's terms, we became bipedal due to the circumstances of our heritage. Every higher animal today, from birds to lizards to humans, all of them evolved from fish.
Because in terms of the ability to use appendages as tools, a bipedal bodyplan is very inefficient. Like almost every product of evolution, we are simply making do.
Neither does the conditions of the Earth mean that if evolution had to go through the same environmental pressures again that it would end up with a bipedal sentient animal. Convergent evolution might be a big factor in certain things like flight and swimming, but when it comes to walking on surfaces, no. Even Earth has multiple methods of achieving that - from centipedes to crabs to ants to snakes. Several of them are more promising in terms of the ability to use limbs for manipulation of the environment. Cephalopods for instance might achieve sentience if left to evolve further. They already have much of the necessary building blocks - arms, eyesight rivaling that of most land animals, and rudimentary communication (visual). The only thing missing is that final evolutionary push for bigger brains (probably hampered by the fact that most are not social animals).
Most aliens in movies are bipeds for several reasons. None of them biologically feasible. It's usually the following: budget (easier to have actors dress up as aliens when the limbs match up) or audience engagement (you can't have Captain Kirk seduce an alien when the alien looks like a floating balloon with twigs stuck on it).
I agree that aliens could be something other than bipedal. For instance, there's no reason an insect-like creature - say, a highly evolved praying mantis type being couldn't handle tools, develop math and engineering skills, and travel the stars.
A note on the cephalopods, though - While I agree that they're quite intelligent creatures, I don't think they could ever become a space-faring civilization. Their lack of bones coupled with their aquatic lifestyle make them unlikely candidates for discovering fire or electricity, much less building electronic equipment capable of space flight. It's also unfortunate that their lifespans are so short and many tend to die not long after breeding.
Cephalopods would have to evolve longer lifespans so they could have the capacity to hold more knowledge. They would also benefit if they could live long enough to care for their offspring and actively educate them as well. Beyond that, while many can venture out of the water for short periods of time, they will have to have some permanent adaptation that allows them to spend the vast majority of their time out of water in order to use fire, electricity, most electronics, etc.
Granted, the Pacific Northwest tree octopus is a surprising step up in evolution, but as you can see, it's an endangered species. It just can't handle so many natural predators - especially the Sasquatch.
http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/
;)
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Signs? Starship troopers? Battle: LA leaders? Not all bipedal right?
shareSigns aliens are bipedal.
The arachnids are a great example of non-humanoid aliens.
Why are most aliens bipedal? Because most productions don't have the budget to come up with any convincing non-bipedals.
shareYou are correct. We offered to model for them but they couldn't afford our modelling fees. The Zaradonians also offered their modeling services at a very cheap rate, but they just look like sponges and aren't very scary at all.
shareIntelligent aliens are very likely to be bipedal because of general evolutionary pressure.
There's only so much brain power available. Every extra limb requires some amount of brain power that'll be used to control it, rather than to think about other stuff.
So zero-limbed, and one-limbed animals would have plenty of brain power to use, but they can't move. So they will get eaten before they can evolve to be intelligent.
Two-limbed animals would be able to walk, but don't have limbs to hold things.
Three limbs allows you to walk, but only one limb is available to hold things. Think about how limited your set of skills would be - just ask anyone who lost an arm (by the way - I'm sure such people manage to achieve a lot, but it would be so much easier for them with two arms).
So four limbs turns out to be the lowest number of limbs to allow us to combine mobility with efficient use of tools.
Adding more limbs then four has no evolutionary benefit - they would just get in the way.
For example, animals like the octopus actually have very developed brains, but they use most of that brain power to control their legs, and not to create faster than light propulsion or teleportation devices.
" ...Adding more limbs then four has no evolutionary benefit - they would just get in the way... "
That's what you say...
Signed,
Clyde the Sentient Centipede
I agree spudmachine,
That's a very good evolutionnary choice.
More limbs would mean waste of other things (not especially another part in brain to handle it or being in the way; simply a question of commerce in the gene pool : an extra third limb investement does not provide the same return as the second leg/arm).
Less would mean walking one one leg or using only one arm; this does not help either.
Cenedro
For example, animals like the octopus actually have very developed brains, but they use most of that brain power to control their legs, and not to create faster than light propulsion or teleportation devices.
We didn't "evolve" as bipedal, we always have been bipedal, since the very beginning.
There is zero evidence to indicate anything else.
Do you belong to some crazy Christian cult that believes in "intelligent design" or some other stupid *beep*
share[deleted]
Why don't you find out what a scientific theory actually is before spouting off this nonsense. Typical bible thumper misusing the word theory in order to justify your own delusions. A theory is an explanation for how and why things happen. A theory can be excepted like a law when there's an abundance of EVIDENCE backing it up (which evolution has) and there's no real alternative theory (there's no real alternate theory to evolution). There are actually very few scientific laws with most of what we know being theory. Theories can only become laws after repeated observations under the same conditions, the key word being observation.
If that still doesn't sway you I'd like to point out that gravity is "only a theory."
I bet you think creationism is a theory too despite it having zero grounds in science.
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Gravity is not a theory, idiot. It is a fact.
My job is to watch stupid movies and complain about them on IMDBshare
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Can you read? He said the same thing as you.
"Gravity is not a theory, idiot. It is a fact. How gravity works is the theory."
~whodat_4
"Same with evolution. It is not a theory, it is a fact. How and why evolution takes place is "theory of evolution"."
~SkyfireX
By the way gravity is not a fact, it's a theory. We cannot call something fact when we do not know how it works.
Damn, it's like talking to a wall.
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By the way gravity is not a fact, it's a theory. We cannot call something fact when we do not know how it works.
You do know that a scientific theory is a fact based explanation of observations, don't you?
We have gravity. You drop a stone from your hand, it falls. That's the observation. The theory of gravity explains why and how it happens. The same with evolution. We see gradual changes in all living forms, the theory of evolution explains why and how that happens.
The theory of evolution is in fact the best understood and most backed up scientific principle we have. Not even gravity beats it. We still don't know as much about how gravity works as we do about evolution.
Hell, even the ancient Greeks noticed evolution. We've known about it for over 2000 years now. The only thing that changed in 1859 was that we got an explanation for it, an explanation that has since only got more and more backing to the point where several scientific disciplines depend on it. If it wasn't a fact, those scientific disciplines simply wouldn't work. Like medicine for example.
Some might find me morally challenged or morally ambigious. I prefer morally creative.
Of course it isnt a theory. its a reality that we can already replicated in our experiments with other species.
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Applied Science? All science is applied. Eventually.
Why don't you use what little brain power you have to do some research before you falsely claim that there's "zero evidence" of evolution and no, the bible doesn't count as a legitimate source.
shareI fail to see what their sexuality has to do with anything?
shareHumanoids are common throughout the galaxy. We are just one branch of a very large human family. We're not just a freak accident or an isolated incident.
"Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man."
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:)
shareWhat a worthless, ignorant response. Have you traveled the universe? Visited all of the planets have you? Please show us the proof that you have gathered proving a universe with countless planets and satellites is completely devoid of intelligent life. It's amazing you have been able to sit on these secrets for so long.
I don't know whether or not aliens have visited us or if interstellar travel is something that is even possible for any species, but math and statistics tell us that it is almost a guarantee that life exists and probably on planets older than ours with longer time to develop than we have had. It is ridiculous and arrogant to say that we are the most intelligent beings in the entire universe. You are not special.
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With quite a few billion planets able to support life in the milky way alone I highly doubt there would be no other form of intelligence out there >.<
share[deleted]
That's why I'm open to the possibility instead of excluding it without any actual reason.
I never said I'm stating facts >.<
Neither is "knowing" something doesn't exist based on an ignorant personal belief.
share[deleted]
I can be as ignorant as I want
My job is to watch stupid movies and complain about them on IMDBshare
It's also likely that at least one other planet and two planetoids in our solar system have supported or currently support life. To claim that there is no life on any of the trillions upon trillions of planets, planetoids, asteroids, comets, and moons without evidence is just ignorant.
shareIt is likely, but we do not have any evidence to back that up. Unless we discover an alien life, we can not say with certainty. As of now, it's just a mathematical probability.
My job is to watch stupid movies and complain about them on IMDBshare
"I don't need to "travel" the universe to know this."
~whodat_4
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
~Carl Sagan
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It would be statistically impossible that we were the only intelligent species in the universe. the chances of that happening are billion times lower than life evolution from amino acids.
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Applied Science? All science is applied. Eventually.
[deleted]
here are some facts to start you off with
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/02/ignoring-500-billion-galaxies-mathematics-vs-common-sense-in-the-debate-about-the-probability-of-ext.html
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Applied Science? All science is applied. Eventually.
Ah, the troll emerges
share