Actually the chemistry mitigates against most common variations of life as we sort of know it, such as chlorine breathers, or silicon based life to name a couple of the more popular ones. One of the most intelligent non human species are squid. If they weren't stuck in a liquid environment they'd make a good candidate as tool users and it would be hard to be less humanoid than that.
At 11:28 AM 6/1/03 -0400, you wrote:
Frank wrote; But, back to the question at hand. I'd say that you're limiting yourself somewhat, Butch. You're assuming (it seems to me) that in order to be intelligent, life has to follow a similar evolution to us. Why does all life have to be carbon based? Just because we can't imagine any other way? Why does all life have to evolve from the sea? Is there no other way to manipulate materials into tools but with opposable thumbs?
Yes it is somewhat limiting, though my original thread mentioned space faring species. My understanding is that next to our intelligence, opposable thumbs is our most significant evolutionary advantage. If the breakthrough in physics ever comes that allows us to travel out of our solar system we may very well find intelligent life looking very different then us.
The problem with sci-fi depicting alien species as basically humanoid is strictly marketing. They discovered that the audience related more to them if they were humanoid. Plus make-up is probably easier<VBG>
I do agree with the concern that any other space faring species would be no less aggressive then our own and would result in a major conflict. I also worry about our tendency to do that and what we would do if we found a less advanced civilization. Would we repeat the atrocities we did to the indigenous civilizations that were found in the New World?
BUTCH
Each man had only one genuine vocation - to find the way to himself.
Hermann Hess (Damien)
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. --Groucho Marx
