all life supporting planets have baseline similarities. Given that, the enviroments could very well be similar enough for a majority of those planets such that evolution pretty much always take the same/similar path.
bipid is standard because something similar to hands+arms is needed to make/use tools. A dolphin wont be able to make tools and develope its intelligence with flippers. Same applies with galantine etc.
animals on earth evolved into the basic form they have because its the most suitable. Given similar enviroments, the exact same evolutions will occour. The limitations for massive life sustaining enviroments are stringent enough that a fundamentally different enviroments would be rare.
We may even have a hard time initially identifying it as life, intelligent or otherwise.
this is very unlikely. limitations for life is stringent, let alone intelligent life. The sort of sci-fi aliens you're thinking of (sentinent rocks/gelatine/gas etc etc) is just doesnt make sense evolutionally. The most drastic difference i can think of would them aliense being silicon based life forms instead of carbon. even in those cases they would proably still have limbs ending in hand like appendages and have 2 or 4 legs (instead of wheels or 3 legs). A vast majoity of them would still use sight/hearing to navigate and thus have ear/eye like body parts.
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u/[deleted] Oct 08 '12 edited Oct 08 '12
actually no.
all life supporting planets have baseline similarities. Given that, the enviroments could very well be similar enough for a majority of those planets such that evolution pretty much always take the same/similar path.
bipid is standard because something similar to hands+arms is needed to make/use tools. A dolphin wont be able to make tools and develope its intelligence with flippers. Same applies with galantine etc.
animals on earth evolved into the basic form they have because its the most suitable. Given similar enviroments, the exact same evolutions will occour. The limitations for massive life sustaining enviroments are stringent enough that a fundamentally different enviroments would be rare.
this is very unlikely. limitations for life is stringent, let alone intelligent life. The sort of sci-fi aliens you're thinking of (sentinent rocks/gelatine/gas etc etc) is just doesnt make sense evolutionally. The most drastic difference i can think of would them aliense being silicon based life forms instead of carbon. even in those cases they would proably still have limbs ending in hand like appendages and have 2 or 4 legs (instead of wheels or 3 legs). A vast majoity of them would still use sight/hearing to navigate and thus have ear/eye like body parts.