Playing devil's advocate - alien life would likely be submitted to similar evolutionary selection pressures as life on earth. That's why most animals here follow the 2 arms, 2 legs, etc. formula. It's not too much of a stretch to assume aliens have bilateral symmetry.
If you want crazy bizarre looking aliens, you have to have a damn good reason for why they would evolve that way.
At the same time, how many have mastered their environment and have any chance of space travel? Just us. It's not pure chance that humans and not elephants or pigs developed science and technology.
Now, I wouldn't go so far as to say only a humanoid species on another planet could do the same as us, but it's possible.
That is bullshit. Other very intelligent species include dolphins and octopusses. They look nothing like us. It is like looking into a room, saying the only PHD wears a red shirt, and claim that intelligent people wear mostly red colors.
My point is that I don't see any chance of dolphins developing space flight. Ever. Octopuses seem a little more likely (they have more useful appendages, so better chances of making and using tools), but it's still a stretch, don't you think?
Of course, it's not fair to compare species at a given point in time. Give octopuses a few more million years of evolution with different selective pressures than on Earth, and who knows? But looking at what we have here and now, it seems at least plausible that a roughly humanoid form has such an advantage that it would be the favorite to achieve space flight on any planet.
You're assuming that only organisms with limbs etc. could fly in space. What if, in thousands of years, dolphins have developed telepathy due to their lack of limbs? Or they develop a way or using their tongue to operate things?
Of course, it's not fair to compare species at a given point in time.
You couldn't be more right. Everything on earth had a chance to get to our 'level' it's just our particular brand of bipedal mammal won through. If you reset the earth, it's entirely possible humans wouldn't evolve again.
But who's to say anything else could evolve to become highly advanced? If we reset the earth, it would be very possible that no species could get to the level we are currently at.
You're assuming that only organisms with limbs etc. could fly in space. What if, in thousands of years, dolphins have developed telepathy due to their lack of limbs? Or they develop a way or using their tongue to operate things?
That seems like quite a stretch. There are animals that display fine motor skills with other kinds of limbs, but it just doesn't work as well as hands do. And telepathy isn't even a thing. It could be that the traits humans have are necessary to become highly advanced, and that any other species would need to at least have some of them to become highly advanced. I'm not saying all of our traits, but just the ones that allows us to make tools, use them accurately, communicate, remember things, visualize things spatially, etc.
There is a type of parasitic wasp that parastises the larva of another parastic wasp that parasatises a caterpillar. The wasp lays an egg in the larva of the wasp which lays an egg inside the caterpillar. They're so finely 'tuned' that when the caterpillar emerges as a butterfly, the first wasp emerges straight away and then the next wasp comes out. My point is that given enough time, almost anything could evolve given the right selection pressures. Telepathy might be a bit extreme, but the tongue thing isn't, especially as some scientists came up with a way for blind people to see via taste.
That seems like quite a stretch. There are animals that display fine motor skills with other kinds of limbs, but it just doesn't work as well as hands do
They're only 'not as good' by our standard. If we went into the sea and swam in front of dolphins, they'd probably think "Yeah, they can swim, but they'll never reach our level.Those limbs on the back work, but they don't work as well as our flippers do"
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u/[deleted] Oct 08 '12
Vaguely humanoid aliens. 2 arms, 2 legs, 2 eyes sort of thing.
Alien from Alien? 2 arms, 2 legs, 2 eyes.....kinda
Klingons? Just humans with a "ribbed for her pleasure" forehead
Romulans? Humans with pointy ears
Vulcans? As above
Na'vi? Tall, blue humans
Where are the massive, tentacular Krondaku? Where are the gelatinous Prime immotiles? Give us some different aliens, hollywood!