Why Are So Many Sci Fi Aliens Bipedal?

hello and welcome back to the episode of generation films my name is american ben and today we're going to do a sort of random one-off video and discuss whether or not it makes sense that so many aliens in sci-fi are bipedal and more generally that they take cues from animal life on earth sometimes our brains are more capable than we think and others they are less able to conceive of things than we give them credit for and in the case of imagining what aliens would look like the latter statement is more relevant to us we can't understand what we don't know and we can't perceive of things that we have no basis for imagining everything we think up is actually a product of something we've experienced or a collection of experiences and then on top of that our brains may all together have limits as to the complexity of forms they can imagine okay i'm kind of blabbing and even i don't know what the hell i just said but i think the point is that i'm not sure if most sci-fi aliens represent what real aliens would look like we're limited to basing the aliens we create on the life that we know that is life on earth even if on the whole sci-fi aliens look unlike any creature we've seen before their fundamental physical and mental qualities reflect earth-based life most aliens we've seen in movies and shows are either bipedal or quadrupedal have two eyes excuse me have eyes are bilaterally symmetrical and function in ways that are familiar to us xenomorphs for instance look nothing like life on earth except they actually do take inspiration from earth-based animals they act kind of like some of nature's top predators or what about the blob this is me on a sunday so does this make sense could aliens look like life forms on earth well you may say ben given the extreme variation of life on earth say between a salmon and a human how much different could an alien look from every life form on our planet well i suppose it's possible aliens could look akin to earth life i mean they would exist within our laws of physics i.e within the universe but on the other hand they may look very different see there actually is some common ancestor between a salmon and a human even if that ancestor goes back hundreds of millions of years we're related to salmon in a weird way we're related to lettuce for god's sakes there may be no common ancestor between humans and aliens and thus their forms and functions could be so different from ours that we can barely conceive of them at best the common ancestor between humans and aliens will probably go back to an inconceivable point in time unless the whole scientology xenu thing turns out to be true and if you're watching this video at a point in time in which it has and a reanimated robotic john travolta rules the world you may disregard this video but before i continue to ruminate on my own here let's look into what some experts have to say on this issue there's a great article on popular mechanics called what do aliens actually look like in which a range of sci-fi authors and scientists are interviewed about the realism of aliens in sci-fi and there's some really interesting tidbits in there sci-fi author kevin anderson says quote look at the incredible diversity of biotypes here on earth all of which evolved under the same planetary environment i don't believe an alien species from an entirely different biochemical foundation would happen to turn out with two arms two legs two eyes ears nostrils two genders warm-blooded and so on but for intelligence one would assume brain capacity and therefore the body would need some sort of protective mechanism for the vital brain an exoskeleton a skull something like that to build tools they would need some kind of manipulative digits like fingers not necessarily an opposable thumb maybe prehensile tentacles there would have to be a reproductive system but it could be budding seeding fission egg laying not necessarily live warm-blooded birth they would require some sort of sensory systems the analogs of eyes ears smelling apparatuses but their eyes would have evolved for the peak spectrum of their own sun not necessarily ours end quote so anderson does think that aliens would have some of the same parts as earth life but he also thinks that those parts would have a different form based on the planet a given race hails from he also points out the silliness of assuming aliens would share certain traits in common with humans for instance most aliens we see in sci-fi have two sexes even two genders and it's sort of funny that so few sci-fi creators have broken from this norm university of puget sound physics professor bernard bates has a similar approach as anderson and trying to theorize about the appearance of aliens based on adaptation aliens with advanced technology would have to be on land technology needs fire to kickstart it what would we expect in order to develop a technology comparable to arms hands with fingers or delicate precise manipulation are important at least two legs are needed for locomotion you need binocular vision to judge distance to prey elevated head to see predators eyes near the brain to reduce the time delay of the visual signal sound and smell sensors your survival chances improve if you can use all the ways you can to detect food mates and predators living in an atmosphere means sounds and smells will arrive before the stinky noisy predator end quote i think what's implied in bates comments is that because aliens share our universe they would be prone to adapting in similar ways if they were to survive over a significant portion of time at all chemistry professor harry e keller also imagines aliens through the lens of survival quote first a real alien is bilaterally symmetrical endothermic with excellent manipulative abilities and has a hard container for our brain eyes of course you have to see to build a civilization our alien will have eyes that may only resemble ours superficially a lens and iris are almost an absolute requirement the whites do not have to be white neither does the iris have to be colored in anything like the way ours are if you read the rest of professor keller's response he thinks aliens will share a lot of physical parts with humans and earth-based life at large but perhaps not quite in the same size shape or structure they just i get from our professors that aliens will be different from us but perhaps not inconceivably different however not all of the experts think that aliens would reflect earth-based life tv producer and sci-fi author darren campo points out quote when it comes to film and tv it's problematic to make a race of aliens that does not resemble humans actors have to play these roles end quote star trek comes to mind here there are a lot of humanoid aliens in star trek but this may have been more of an issue with budget than with the imagination of the show's creators and so as campo implies the goal may be realism but that goal is difficult to accomplish given budget constraints titan ae comes to mind here it's an animated film so it was able to be more creative with its aliens the dredge are energy based aliens with no fixed form and a nervous system completely well alien to humans the dredge are seriously one of the most underrated alien races in sci-fi and why the hell did i not include them in the video i did on that very subject ah yes because i'm overrated anyway when pressed to add what he thinks aliens could look like campo states quote when we consider that 95 of the universe is not perceptible by our senses or technology dark matter and energy then it's most likely that's where the aliens are so one might say most aliens don't look like anything because they're invisible end quote i really like this train of thought maybe we shouldn't even expect to be able to visually perceive aliens sci-fi author aaron rosenberg adds quote bilateral symmetry is actually a pretty crappy design when you think about it yes it looks nice and even but what's the point why have two sides exactly the same when you could have something completely different on the other side even the daleks figured this one out they had a sucker arm on one side and a laser on the other and bipedal ridiculous one good push and we fall over why would another world's race evolve with that exact same design flaw why would another world's race grow eyes and nose and a tongue and all the other fiddly bits we have they wouldn't all life on earth is carbon based but that wouldn't be the case elsewhere life forms could be silicon based or iron based or anything else at all they could have any number of arms and legs or none at all perhaps life on other planets evolved without physical form or with no fixed form perhaps there are aliens who are nothing more than sentient clouds or who have mutable bodies that can alter to suit the needs of the moment maybe they can sail through space unaided and use stellar radiation for a food source and a sensory array detecting changes in the radiation the same way bats detect sound waves who needs eyes and ears when your entire being resonates who needs a distinct brain when your consciousness is spread throughout just like our nerve endings are with us why have skin when your form is held together by electrostatic shock and mental control and can condense or expand at will end quote mr rosenberg i will have what you are smoking sir though i'm annoyed you gave props to the daleks but you make an interesting observation the lack of symmetry on the dalek actually does divert from sci-fi convention finally sci-fi author nedi okorafor says quote i don't see why aliens couldn't be microscopic only be seen at wavelengths beyond human detection be built in a way so outside of human understanding that to look upon them would cause one to faint i don't think aliens will be what we are expecting and quote so we have two different views here as to what aliens will look like some experts say they will share traits with earth-based life-forms but have major differences as well and other experts imagine aliens that are entirely different from life on our planet in all ways and i can kind of see both sides here on one hand aliens born in a completely different environment may be completely different in form from us on the other hand being that life on earth has survived and evolved it's not unfathomable that life anywhere in the universe that can survive would have adapted in similar ways however that's not what experts say is the best explanation for why aliens may end up being humanoid in form in a 2011 article in discover magazine entitled the only sci-fi explanation of hominid aliens that makes scientific sense science writer kyle monkitrik lays out what he terms the hominid panspermia theory he asks quote why are most hominid species variations only cosmetic and cultural and then he answers because their genetics are designed to prevent significant deviation from the first intelligent species mold how can species interbreed they share a distant ancestor the way lions and tigers do how are there so many species at nearly the same level of technological development life was seated on many planets at approximately the same time end quote in other words aliens may very well look like us if an intelligent progenitor alien species of some sort seeded the entire universe with life in its own image if this species seeded every region of the universe with a single cell of identical makeup then there's a chance that life all over the universe would have evolved along similar paths of course there are sci-fi franchises that include life-seeding in their lore for instance star trek tries to explain away its humanoid aliens with such an explanation in a 2016 article on space.com entitled star trek science why vulcans and other aliens look like humans science writer nola taylor redd discusses the season 6 star trek the next generation episode called the chase she writes quote in the chase an ancient alien species called the preservers was revealed to have seeded many planets with the same genetic material over billions of years similar plants animals and humanoids developed on a variety of worlds according to the story presented in the episode end quote and in the article red interviews muhammad noor an evolutionary biologist at duke university about the soundness of this plot point he says quote the overall principle is more probable than the notion that the species evolved completely independently to look almost the same after billions of years end quote but then he adds quote even with the same initial conditions the probability of plants and animals with similar appearances and in species like vulcans able to breed with humans developing on multiple worlds from only genetic material is incredibly low with the passage of so much time the various worlds would evolve creatures very different from one another end quote in other words yes seeding life all over the universe makes the chances of similar life occurring in different parts of space more likely but given the long arc of unique adaptation each seat would go through on its respective world the chances of life on different planets evolving in similar ways is still very low so there you have it overall there are good reasons to believe that aliens may have some basic traits that reflect life on earth but on the whole they will likely be different from anything we've seen and could even be completely inconceivable to us so why do we continue to make aliens just like us well there's budget constraints laziness the limits of our minds and as an article on the bbc's website about swiss surrealist and artist h.r geiger the creator of the xenomorph puts it quote from the dawn of time to the present day will be conjure up as supposedly alien is very often ourselves in a fairground mirror regardless of the line in genesis that god created man in his own image there's ample evidence to support what the greek philosopher zenophonies observed 2 500 years ago that men always make gods in their own image not only deities but practically the entire mythical pantheon giants dwarves cloven-footed demons centaurs fairies and the rest it's just us size adjusted and crossed with a goat horse butterfly or whatever else our mix and match imaginations came up with end quote and what should we take from all that yeah nothing because i'm not going to trust a philosopher with the xeno in his name but still point is i'd welcome more sci-fi aliens in the vein of the dredge or elon musk something completely foreign to human conception anyways that is the video i hope you enjoyed if you did please do give it a big thumbs up let me know what you think down in the comments below remember to subscribe to our channel and hit that notification bell for now my name is american ben and i'll catch you next time generation films peace

Channel: Generation Films

Views: 16,132

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Id: ACpYd_IEDpw

Length: 14min 12sec (852 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 13 2021