People who tell of alleged encounters with aliens, often tell of “Reptillians”, Reptile-like advanced ET’s. Anyways, their claims are all nonsense. I assume we can all agree on that, on these boards at least.
But this has got me thinking about the topic nonetheless. What would advanced aliens be like, if they were quasi-reptiles, just like we are quasi-primates? Would they be nice? Or, would they be evil to the core? And if they were evil-to-the-core, would they even survive their own primitive, nuclear war state of development?
Also, what about insectoids, i.e., insect-brained ET’s? On one question I posted, someone said most insects are actually very pragmatic, in their approach to life. Would they be like that? Totally logical? And would that be a good thing or bad?
There are literally billions of galaxies, in just the known universe. And in each one of these galaxies, there are as many stars as there is grains of sand on the beach. Surely some of them must contain intelligent life. And if they do, surely almost every combination of evolutionary factors has come into play. So my question may have practical applications as well.
Also, consider of Fermi’s Paradox (this isn’t a thread about it–so please don’t make it into one). But I might as well tell you my view on it, as long as I brought the subject up. I think if there are advanced ET’s, they are waiting for us to build hyper-light-speed ships, just like in the fictional Star Trek universe, a kind real “Prime Directive”, in this case. Star Trek wasn’t necessarily right about everything. But I think they may have been about this one. But that is a discussion for another thread altogether:cool:.
I have a little mantra about extra-terrestrial taxonomy which I trot out for questions like this. Reptile and insect are both classes of Earth life. They do not exist as such outside the Earth. I note that you have acknowledged this when you call the aliens ‘insectoids’ rather than ‘insects’.
There are no reptiles anywhere in the universe except on Earth. There may be organisms that resemble reptiles on other worlds, but they will be entirely unrelated to Earth life, have a completely separate evolutionary descent and have some or many different characteristics.
There are no insects anywhere in the universe except on Earth. There may be organisms that resemble insects on other worlds, but they will be entirely unrelated to Earth life, have a completely separate evolutionary descent and have some or many different characteristics.
Reptiloids and insectoids on other worlds will be different from Earth insects and reptiles in unexpected and unpredictable ways, so it is meaningless to try to project the characteristics of Earth life onto them.
How are we so different from our primate ancestors? Sure our bodies changed and our brains expanded, http://anthro.palomar.edu/primate/prim_8.htm but our underlying sociological similarities stayed as fairly accurate mirrors of each other. Take the world’s oldest profession, when apes were taught about money they quickly used it to pay for sex. Monkey Business - The New York Times Or we could equate how apes comprehend and keep track of their increasing numbers of meaningful family/social relationships and see when they start to lose track of them. This Dunbar number (our monkeysphere) has related quite well with how large our own human societies and various relationship spheres can grow, until we start to forget and abandon old relations that we just can’t keep straight in our heads anymore. Dunbar's number - Wikipedia
As such, when you ask about what quasi-reptiles or quasi-insects or complete aliens or whatever might be like, I say that they will be fairly close to however their descended-from forms behaved socially together, and towards other life (towards others seen as food or as threats) in their world. Are there socializing reptiles? Sure, a few. Are there unsocial reptiles? Sure. It is like asking what “mammals" would be like at our level, we are different from dolphins, and bats, and rats; yet all are mammals. It really depends on which reptiles do the evolving, but there is some interesting stuff in this link about the complexity of reptile socialization http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tiMJDThMtGkJ:http://dinets.info/sociality_in_reptiles.pdf%2Bcial,r&hl=en&gbv=1&ct=clnk
In the book A Mote in God’s Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, we see that alien life would simply be different. Just because one cell type became the dominant form of life on Earth 3.8 billion years ago and spread into every available niche from there, The Origin and Evolution of Cells - The Cell - NCBI Bookshelf does not mean that our DNA has every possible trick in the book up its sleeve just waiting to be unlocked. The aliens found in Mote simply never had even the potential for “spinal vertebrae” available to their weird version of DNA, just as we do not have the possibility of sexual reproduction needing 3 partners from each distinct “sex” at different life stages to carry a baby to term with the then mature adults naturally morphing into each consecutive sex on a seasonal cycle.
What do the descriptors “nice” or “evil” or even “logical” or “pragmatic” or anything else really mean in relation to societies or individuals? Is slavery evil? but thoughtless ants practice it, are they evil for being compelled by their DNA to follow their instincts? https://www.cals.ncsu.edu/course/ent525/close/SlaveAnt.html Is there a grander logicality or pragmatism when many bees pile on top of an invading wasp, and work together to cook it to death with their collective heat? If there is, why do they have a genetic heat timer that tells them when to stop cooking their target? National Geographic I wouldn’t say “logic” or “pragmatic” about something that is carved into your DNA, I feel that those words should describe something more than a bird’s nest, or a clock chiming the hour, or mold solving the traveling salesman problem. Shrinking blob speeds traveling salesman on his way
Surviving past nuclear annihilation seems to be pretty easy as long as you don’t get a bomb right on your head.
1 breed with the survivors, there is a lot of land mass on the Earth and plenty of out of the way places will stay un-bombed. your babies that live will thrive more than you will.
2 live with your cancer, it is a slow killer anyway. See Chernobyl for life such as radiation eating fungus and giant pigs/wolves that have adapted National Geographic
3 aliens might not even be all-in on mechanical technology anyway. Where we move towards cyberpunk, they might move towards biopunk. If you want to see an example of life that only uses other lives as technology (like a twisted Flintstones), read the comic Orc Stain Read the First Full Issue of ‘Orc Stain,’ A Gorgeous Comic that Looks Like a Beating Heart this is the first issue ~37 pgs~ for free
Although I don’t think ‘reptilian’ has much value as a description of alien life, since the possibilities are too broad, there may be something to be said about the term ‘insectoid’. If we broaden it out to mean ‘any small creature with an exoskeleton, jointed legs and a diffusion-based respiratory system’, then a broad range of arthropod-like creatures might be included. These creatures will tend to be small, due to the restrictive natures of their exoskeleton and breathing system, so that tends to rule out human-sized insectoids.
Small insectoids that can form group-minds by distributing their processing power are a different proposition, and I wouldn’t like to rule those out.
No “quasi” about our status as primates. You might start with the famous Scientific American article from years ago about an alternative evolution when Theropods evolved sentience. I can’t find the original article, but here’s a discussion of it.
There are probably no intelligent “insectoids.” On this planet, the cube-square law limits the size of arthropods. It would be the same on any planet with similar gravity.
Change the gravity a great deal and you change conditions so much, compared to Earth, that the shapes life will take on that world become utterly imponderable.
Why do you believe it is possible to correctly presume behavioral attributes of alien beings (or any beings for that matter) based solely on their physiology?
It’s hard to imagine a non-social species advancing in technology. Reptiles (at least on Earth) tend to be quite anti-social, indicating reptilian like creatures are unlike to develop communication and consequently no technology.
Insect-like creatures, however, could develop “hive minds” and advance. Bees and ants are quite amazing in what they can accomplish.
I believe the only intelligent forms of life on earth are social mammals. Non-mammals and solitary animals are not nearly as intelligent.
Reptiles are neither, but who knows how their evolution would have worked. Reptiels could’ve developed larger brains. However in order to develop a space faring civilization you pretty much have to have a global civilization, which means billions of life forms working together. So at minimum they would be social animals.
Also intelligence is to a large degree an arms race in social animals, they constantly try to outsmart each other. So reptiles could be possible, but they’d have to be social animals for various reasons.
Social insects that had large brains could be technologically advanced, but I don’t know how it would happen.
Now, you could never get, say, an ant that big, but that’s not because of something inherent in the physical structure of arthropods, that’s because of the specific biology of an ant, whose spindly little legs wouldn’t scale up appropriately. Give a giant ant big, thicker, and more numerous legs (and a tank of oxygen) and they’d do fine. They just wouldn’t resemble ants much.
It isn’t my place to criticize or to correct:). But just to answer your question, and to also make it clear what I mean to other posters:
“Pseudo-” means, “it appears to be N., but it obviously isn’t”. Scientists call astrology a “pseudo-science”, because they want to make clear, it is in fact not a science at all.
“Quasi-” is different, though. It means “it appears to be N.” Period. You fill in the rest. Disorderly conduct is a quasi-crime, because it does not rise to the level of other crimes. So some may argue, it is not a crime at all. But others would argue, you still have certain due-process rights that must be respected. So it is indeed a crime. So we just call it a “quasi-crime”, meaning maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. You fill in the rest.
Actually, now I am beginning to see your point. “Quasi-primate” is a little confusing, and maybe a little inaccurate too. But it was late at night, and I was tired when I wrote it;).
You actually provide me with an opportunity to make clear what I meant. I think I meant a couple of things, actually.
I guess I have to confess, I was partly inspired by Star Trek, and Vulcans, specifically. Vulcans have no emotions. Now, I am not saying there could be an alien civilization with no emotions. But what about just, say, less emotions, or more blunted emotions? This actually would make a good thread in itself (can a humanoid civilization exist, where the “people” have no emotions?).
I also was envisioning an advanced being that is less-compassionate and less caring than us. Reptiles, I think (at least on earth), are often like this, in my opinion, at least. Again, though, I have to wonder if they wouldn’t just annihilate themselves, with nuclear weapons, or even just genocide. But as many of you have suggested, or at least alluded to, I am just using earth and human values when I say this.
As most reptiles leverage their low metabolic rate as a survival tool it would be quite a thing for them to dedicate a huge amount of energy to a large brain when self regulating temperature would probably provide a larger benefit.
Also while I do agree that empathy is a universal mammalian trait it does not mean that being social leads to intelligence, it could very well that having less prepared offspring drove the need to be social outside of intelligence.
Some cephalopods are tool users something that my cute little Husky will never accomplish despite her social intelligence.
They would need at least a human-sized body to support a human-sized brain. I know intelligence is not strictly a function of brain size, but neither is it the case that size doesn’t matter.
Well lets say on another planet the dinosaurs, instead of dieing off, maybe one branch actually did develop the larger brain, opposable thumbs, and other such attributes and become a sentient species just like humans. I once read where a scientist speculated that a certain dinosaur was on track for this.
In any case as the species would have kept evolving and like humans they would eventually have created societies and began to use tools and then who knows?
I’d guess over millennia their tools would have favored their clawed hands.
