"Complications of alien anatomy" Topic

While sketching out a few alien concepts today, it occured to me that certain anatomical arrangements might precule a species from using certain sorts of equipment.

The main thing that popped up was how hard it would be to fire linear missile weapons with arms and/or neck that are not able to come together and line up.

Surely the alien would have some sort of brain structure that allowed it to compensate to a degree for these offset features, but would it be able to aim properly?

what others issues can you envision interfacing with technology? Any of them that you think might preclude the alien from developing advanced technology?

-Eli

"All problems are opportunities in disguise. Every problem is a prospective opportunity"
- M.V.Hansen & R.Allen

Best to just make your aliens as you like. Fit the equipment like a puzzle later.

If you can suspend the belief to make the squishy alien then coming up with the equipment is easy enough :)

Not a problem for me 28mmMan but I was just curious about this as a point of conversation.

I have given this much thought…usually in regard to an Alien Legion…how to equip such odd creatures with standard issue equipment and weapons.

Usually I just end up going with the ones that can use the standard issue stuff, let the others be cantina denizens :)

alien Legion actually addressed that and it even became a major point of contention in later story lines.

Early on they are pretty much taking everybody. They had a slime guy who could be cut apart. There was a guy from a Zero G race who was given a full on battlesuit with an environment inside it. I recall the big purple guy, Tonk was so big that he carried a light cannon as a rifle.

Later on, government policy changed and irregular shaped aliens were religated to support roles only.

The funniest alien in Alien Legion had to be the guy who was so huge that everything from the knee up was out of frame right next to human-sized aliens.

-Eli

Only Monkey-Boys need to look down a sight to hit the target…

emu2020, your question cuts to the heart of the development of sentience itself- How does a tool-using race develop given the features a precursotr may have?

Classical biologists would dismiss any creature that could not see what it could manipulate closely as being unable to achieve such a skill: Larry Niven satirised this and made a credible non-human life form with the Pierson's Puppeteer, a creature whose eyes are actually on the top of it's "hands", which are in fact mouths. Modern biologists however note that proprioception ( The ability to tell where one's body is in space by internal senses) can in fact extend to outside the body, and allows many creature of low complexity to throw with accuracy, for instance.

In fact, aliens with their limbs organised in clusters and circles would have very good proprioception skills and may in fact be better at this than bilateral creatures like ourselves. In any case, given sufficiently advanced technology, the differences you are thinking about disappear; After all, you don't need to have telescopic vision and IR sight to fire a modern sniper rifle as these things are built in, so aliens that in their past have neede to concisously think about compensating for target angles ( Like when spearing fish ) they could have a kind of Bluetooth link to a sight on the weapon.

Eli,

Does this help a little?

TMP link

A while back I asked why it seems like all the alien figures produced so far use weapons that look like they originated on Earth.

Unless the Aliens were Space Pirates* that preyed mostly on humans, and if their alien anatomy somehow permitted the use of such equipment, then I would expect them to use the weapons that developed in their worlds according to their specific anatomy.

Dan
* See TMP link

@Covert Walrus – Yeah, the tech thing makes it a moot point, though I often wonders if there are anatomical elements that might retard or even halt the development of more advanced technologies.

I suppose even with human technologies we can attain a great degree of accuracy without having to aim down our arm. Throwing a spear, knife, axe, or using a sling really doesn't use linear sighting.

King of the cross-thread there Dan LOL!

That's me!!! I'm "loopy" I guess. :)

Dan

Arms and head don't need to line up if they developed some sort of goggles and a camera targeting system allowing them to fire from what we could consider, "the hip" ;P Or if they developed more shoulder mounted weapons. Or as some above posters mentioned, however their tools are adapted to their physiology.

Or if you're familiar with Halo at all…(Which I am not completely myself, but I know enough to make this point.) They could be an infection type species like The Flood who make use of hosts capable of using tools. Again, on that note. That could have been part of their evolution. Gather knowledge over the ages, changing their own primary form and spawning methods.

I would think cultural evolution follows from the biological. So if an intelligent alien can't use a gunsight in a human-conventional manner it probably won't have a weapon that has such a gunsight. Assuming it has not been in contact with other aliens, of course.

The weapon must of course fit the alien anatomy. I hate non-humanoid alien designs that "just happen" to be able to operate an AK-47 clone.

ALIEN WEAPONS FOR ALIENS!!!

Hoser

Why non of you consider idea of periscope scope, or periscope styled traditional sight with similarly styled protruding elements ?

I am not advocating that non humanoid aliens would develop human looking ones, but that its really simple way to make human weapons alien friendly, so they possibly could develop similar equipment with less problems than you are anticipating.
There are simple ways to do camera, or blue tooth targeters equivalents, really :>

I'll ask'm next time they land in my backyard … However, I do remember seeing on both the History and Sci-fi Channels, the "experts" saying something about bi-lateral symmetry … 2 arms, 2 legs, 1 head, 2 eyes, could/may be a universal constant(?!) for humanoids ?! Of course there could be the situation seen in AVATAR … humanoids are twice(or larger ?) then the size of Earthlings … So weapons would not necessarily work for both species. The Human/Na'vi hybrid Avatars had to have specially made weapons to fit their larger bodies. You see the same thing in (God forbid I'm using G/W as an example !!!) in G/W's Epic and 40k with Ogryn …

It's already been stated that nce a race is suitably advanced they can manage to find ways around anatomical limitations. I guess I am just curious if they woul;d pursue such technologies if they were not practical for their species in their earlier phases of technology.

Is a race with a long neck and long arms going to develop a firearm that needs to be held at the shoulder to fire or is their weapons technology going to go a different route because of this anatomy?

Are there anatomical deatures that might cause technology to stall out?

-Eli

Here's what I've thought about. We've been projectile throwers since our ape days. Chimps can be pretty accurate with the poo and the occasional stick or rock. Our bodies are perfect for throwing. Our weapons are all pretty much improvements on throwing a rock.

Would non-humanoid aliens without arms with our range of motion even develop projectile weapons? Take an evolved theropod dinosaur for example. Not only do they not have the ability to put a human gun to their shoulder, their arm movement is totally different than a humans and wouldn't be good for throwing.

Again, as I saw on the History and Sci-fi Channels … if they don't have the ability to make tools … Like Primates (including us)having prehensile thumbs … the example sited was Dolphins, IIRC … no matter how intelligent they are, since they can't make tools(weapons)they probably won't be driving, flying, etc., etc., … I guess …

Legion 4, exactly! However, that is the Classical Biology approach, and other branches of science like neurology have been poking some hole sin that theory for some time.

The modern biological school of thought is more broad in scope and has considered what happens when organisms strike problems they cannot solve with their own bodies; The first answer is of course tool use, and this has been seen even in sheep! They pick up lumps of wood in their mouths to scrape off food when it is cold, such as frozen salt licks or moss.

But there are examples of organisms that use other organisms to do jobs for them – not just as slaves either; For example, the Tongue Louse in the Schnapper, which attaches itself to the tongue of the fish and once it has eaten it, keeps the host alive by *becoming* it's tongue, though one with jaws that actually assist the fish to break its food up better. Extreme example, but it shows possibilities.

In any event, like language, tool use is a feedback loop for the development of intellect, and possibly even physical development as well. We are moulded by our tools as they in turn are moulded by us. For any other sentients, this would also apply. Arguably, this means that dolphins are stuck as 'philosopher kings' rather than developing a technology, nevertheless there may be ways out for other species in other environments.

Well only time will tell if Dolphins' flippers turn into hands and legs and start building cars and planes … I even remember a Star Trek Voyager episode where dinosaurs evolved into bipedal upright walking humanoid-like Saurians …

Verner Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep had a species of dog like alien who had short ranged radio based collective minds. (3+ individuals for a human like intelligence) They got over their lack of manipulator limbs through unification of effort in each "pack" and had advanced to medieval tech by the time of the story.

It is possible that colonies of creatures with no apparent individual means of producing advanced tools could still do so with coordinated effort. Maybe even leading to the point where they create cybernetics to improve individual capabilities. This interdependency would definitely affect the way they look at the world and afford opportunities to make them seem more alien.

There's also the possibility of Uplift, grafts of limbs or cybernetics, and other such gifts from a patron species. And the aforementioned parasites and symbiotes could provide another avenue of tool use or even be a technology in itself through selective breeding.

Legion4: "I even remember a Star Trek Voyager episode where dinosaurs evolved into bipedal upright walking humanoid-like Saurians …"

Careful what you say, heretic. The Voth may consider that blasphemy!!!

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memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Voth
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YouTube link

Dan
Background:
TMP link
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"…bi-lateral symmetry … 2 arms, 2 legs, 1 head, 2 eyes, could/may be a universal constant(?!) for humanoids…"

Possibly true, but triminoids are superior!

Yes, Dan … that's it !!! Odala certainly would think I'm a heretic !!! She was mean … even for a Voth !!! @Hey Ace … I'm not saying either way … just relaying what I saw and heard !

Legion 4 26 Jan 2011 7:00 a.m. PST:

However, I do remember seeing on both the History and Sci-fi Channels, the "experts" saying something about bi-lateral symmetry … 2 arms, 2 legs, 1 head, 2 eyes, could/may be a universal constant(?!) for humanoids

There indeed is a school of thought among the astrobiologists (or scientists interested enough on the subject anyway) who figure that while Star Trek isn't a documentary on aliens, it might as well be. So if it's a sapient tool user, it's "essentially human".

Others are less convinced. Quelle surprise!

tnjrp, the fashion switches backwards and forwards on the topic. Though it reached it's ultimate ridiculousness during the 1930s in England when one Oxford professor of biology described the "most advanced intellectual life forms in the universe" would have to be bipedal, bimanual, have no hair on its body, particularly on it's head, and live such a long life span that it would need to supplement failing organs such as eyes and legs, with mechanical analogs like walking sticks and eyeglasses.
A Cambridge don pointed out that his colleague had basically said every intelligent life form would look exactly like . . . his bespectacled, limping colleague, and he put this down more to vanity than reasoning.

Seriously though in science you cannot make a generalisation without a lot of data; Presently, we cannot make estimates on how fast or how well any species will make it to abstract sentience like our own as we have only one real example – ourselves. It's like trying to work out if, in a universe devoid of all objects except a single human hand, whether that hand was a left or right one. As Jung said, the one important thing we will learn from contacting an alien life form as intelligent as ourselves will be what it truly means to be human as we will finally have a yardstick to measure ourselves by and make comparisons.

I know, we are getting off track. :) But I will say that a bilateral body form will probably outnumber radial forms among sentients, as it might give an animal direction and therefore the mental state to drive toward a goal. That does not mean just two arms, or two legs, or even those being one above the other though :)

Radial forms might develop some sort of multitasking brain that allows them to function on a level we just can't match. Depending on the arrangement of their sensory organs. they might even be able to focus on many things at once and could be incredibly productive.

When it all comes down to it, I imagine that evolution down the path of a sentient, tool-using advanced life form is a bit of a crap shoot. Early ancestors may just as well find another, less sophisticated way to tackle a problem and never make that jump to tool use. If food becomes difficult to obtain, the species might be adaptive enough to just find an alternate food source. Even if they do develop tools, is that going to lead to more advanced tools?

This has been a grand discussion so far. I think the most likely answer in the case of porjectile weapons is that if a species is capable of using them, they will develop them. If not, they may still go down the path of advancement until they can develop technologies to allow them to counter their physical deficiencies. So, even though they might not develop guns early on, if they needed them later and they had the technology available to them to make them work, they would.

EXAMPLE: Non-predatory species of snail evolves to sentience. They have developed manipulating limbs, but not anythign suitable for throwing, or even carrying or grasping large items. They have managed to develop small and advanced tech, but have never neeeded to hunt or defend themselves at range, so no guns.

Snail race later encounters a hostile species that uses projectile weapons and manages to survive long enough to "get" the concept of projectile weapons. They now turn their other technologies to this purpose. Weapon harnasses that mount on their shells with optics that allow them to site remotely. They do not need to carry or aim their weapons by hand, but they do have sensory organs and manipulating limbs enough to operate a weapon adapted to them.

Emu2020, quite right – we as humans developed a lot of senses and systems by technology that we do not possess physically, and many of them are possessed by other species naturally.

This all comes down to the abstract thought and manipulation thing of course, as long as you can do both, then there is the ability to use tools as compensation. ( R A Lafferty turned that idea on it's head though in "Eurema's Dam".)

Well, what I'm about to ask still involves creatures with bilateral anatomy but, I hope, may produce suggestions that differ from the humanoid model.

Ok. IF cetaceans (including dolphins) evolved on land and turned to the sea, what's to keep them from doing the opposite?

link

IF they did, and IF they maintained and expanded on their intelligence, what's to keep them from making tools on land and gradually expand on them?

The question then is, what would an evolved descendant of those land-dwelling dolphins look like and what sort of weaponry would they develop???

Would their weapons follow the usual humanoid pattern???

Dan

Dan,

I have done this model a bit already with my race, the Tonk.

The Tonk are evolved from a race of cetaceans that lived in a marginal, tidal, mangrove type environment. Their evolution to full time land dwellers was forced by the drying up of their wetland habitat over a slow period.

-Eli

Awesome!

But what if they come to land, "not because it's hard (no other option), but because it's there"?

Dan

Are you assuming that they became tool users in the sea?

If not, then how did they get the tech to explore into the hostile environment of land?

-Eli

I remember one of my favorite authors, Arthur C. Clark saying something like, "Aliens will be as stange to us as elephants at the bottom of the ocean." And Steven Hawkins saying something to the effect of, "We should avoid alien contact if possible, as they are most likely looking to take our resources, enslave or kill the population, etc. "

Legion 4, no, Hawking never said that; His comments were more along the lines of the concern of alien species being so advanced as to not recognise us as intelligent and treat us the way we treat other animals. It's been misquoted by the same people who tell you Einstein said "All scientific advance should be stopped because it makes children cry ".

However, to address this rationally, there may well be some merit in a cautious approach to alien contact: After all, a sufficiently advanced civilization my be destructive to our culture in ways that may not seem possible to either side at first glance. in fact, with a truly powerfully advanced species, an *individual* sentient creature might be more than capable of damaging us by accident or intent in a way that would make WW2 look like a traffic accident, and not do so out of hostility. For example, unless you have full-blown AIDS, you body automatically kills and consumes more bacteria than there are war losses to this date in history, yet arguably the complexity of the bacteria ( A creature whose DNA is so arranged that any starting point on its loop will generate a working protein – like having a novel that, opened at any page and read all the way round to that point, tells a new, complete and different story *every time*) is greater or as great as you.

This of course doesn't take into consideration one thing – the possibility of the universality of empathy. The same way certain peoples have tolerance and respect for even the smallest living creatures on Earth, so too alien sentients of advanced types, having outgrown disease or competition in nature, may make our vegetarians and Buddhists look like sadistic children; It is just as valid to assume this as any other emotional response from an alien sentient.

And I may as well get DH'ed – it's been a while. I note with interest the people who believe aliens would be out to ruthlessly steal resources from another species's home world are citizens of a nation often accused of the very same action themselves. Then again,"War Of The Worlds" was written by a member of the all-conquering, technically advanced British Empire :)

Aside completed – back to physiology, neurology and biology :)

Covert Walrus 27 Jan 2011 2:17 a.m. PST:

tnjrp, the fashion switches backwards and forwards on the topic. Though it reached it's ultimate ridiculousness during the 1930s in England when one Oxford professor of biology described the "most advanced intellectual life forms in the universe" would have to be bipedal, bimanual, have no hair on its body, particularly on it's head, and live such a long life span that it would need to supplement failing organs such as eyes and legs, with mechanical analogs like walking sticks and eyeglasses.

Reputedly it was Stephen J. Gould who lampooned Conrad Waddington's perhaps somewhat unfortunate description of the intelligent alien along the lines of "according to Waddington, any intelligent alien would closely resemble Waddington".

Seriously though in science you cannot make a generalisation without a lot of data; Presently, we cannot make estimates on how fast or how well any species will make it to abstract sentience like our own as we have only one real example – ourselves

Indeed extrapolating from a single data point is problematic at best. However certainly our study of other life on Earth will give us some pointers as to what can be expected of hypothetical alien life, and by extensions, hypothetical alien sapient life.

But I will say that a bilateral body form will probably outnumber radial forms among sentients, as it might give an animal direction and therefore the mental state to drive toward a goal

Symmetry fairly obviously gives benefits especially if the lifeform is motile. I personally am not quite convinced yet that other symmetries would automatically reduce goal-seeking behaviour.

[Legion 4, no, Hawking never said that; His comments were more along the lines of the concern of alien species being so advanced as to not recognise us as intelligent and treat us the way we treat other animals. It's been misquoted by the same people who tell you Einstein said "All scientific advance should be stopped because it makes children cry ".]

Well I knew it was something like that … And I'm sure I didn't state his intent well. Yes, I agree, I don't think Einstein would say anything like that misquote … But Hawkin's statement is cautionary, however, I'd like to think First Contact would be peaceful … IIRC, back in the 60s, the US Gov't set up a "think tank" with top scientists, etc. to study the situation of First Contact … Among the concepts they came up with something like what they called "The Conquistador Effect". What could happen when an extremely advanced species meets up with a primative race. Well let's hope that wouldn't happen ! I'd like to think that meeting an alien race would be good thing for all involved …

Eli, if you are looking for input I have a lifelong history of research and collection of Arthropoda, especially Crustacea.

Drop me an email, I would love to bounce ideas off the old antennules :)

I may just!

However, I do remember seeing on both the History and Sci-fi Channels, the "experts" saying something about bi-lateral symmetry … 2 arms, 2 legs, 1 head, 2 eyes, could/may be a universal constant(?!) for humanoids ?!

I've often considered this to be the case.

As few limbs as possible minimises complexity and decreases the chance of being seriously injured. A spider can lose a limb with no problems but for a larger creature that's death to hypovolaemic shock and/or infection.

Certain other more subtle prerequisites seem to be required for sentience as well; a slower metabolism to avoid starving the brain, more body fat; again to feed the brain, access to high-calorie food. Cetaceans happen to have this as part of their environment; higher primates live in forests where they can eat fruit and occasionally meat; humans evolved fishing and hunting. The former is probably what got us started down our evolutionary path; swimming in cold waters required fat deposits.

Sentient aliens would no doubt have some similar virtuous circle of food gathering and storage plus toolmaking which would allow them to benefit from an agricultural civilisation. Excess brainpower is an evolutionary liability; cetaceans seem to have developed some sort of advanced communication and navigation as a result. Otherwise they'd be no smarter than ocean-going cows.

The matter of functional, interesting, and complex alien life forms is one of the grails to be sure.

At some point we have to accept the potential for microbial and possibly a bit more but as for hard science without the advent of "magic grade" science that defies what we know or can reasonably imagine, the chances of complex life is a bet that no one in Vegas would pay out for.

That said, we move forward or remain alone as far as gaming and entertainment.

How far you stretch that measure of believability is the real seasoning in the stew.

I am currently leaning towards:

1. it is just us…but there is evidence of a Forerunner Civilization, but they are long long gone…millions upon millions of years ago…supposed they have stepped beyond the mortal veil…more likely than not, we are the remains of the genetic imprint, kept here within their experimental project, Earth.

2. it is just us…but there are pockets of extremophile flora/fauna spread out in remote points of the solar system, which is the extent of our space travel…we can get around quite nicely and easily within this range, with plenty of space stations, colonies, mining, etc..

3. it is just us…but there are non-sentient lifeforms in our solar system…few and far between but with our colonies establishing footholds we find there are certain elements that have taken a liking to us and our environment…much like terran molds, roaches, and rats.

The potential for walking talking aliens is remote but fun…I will always defend the right to have these types for entertainment value…always.

Yeah … and Klingon females don't bathe much and Orion Slave Girls are !!!!

Need another eye to aim? Extrude one.

Gracias,

Glenn

3 eyes … Would require a larger brain … IIRC from what I saw on History or Sci-fi Channel …

In a complex animal with equal eye balance/consideration of function that is for the most part true but there are animals today here on Earth with three or more eyes:

spiders, scorpions, etc.

tuatara is a good one picture a three eyed living dinosaur

horseshoe crabs

and more.

The idea of the larger brain is considering another hemisphere in higher mammals/man, but clearly so example by other animals that simple eyes do not require bigger brains :)

I think the really fun part of a cyclopean or triclopean "man", meaning a human without a singular mutation to stand out as a defect of one or three eyes but the actual symmetry thrown aside in regards to the brain…we think with the various hemispheres and quadrants sharing certain loads of function…the interesting element for me are thoughts of a singular brain to go with the single eye or the three eye triform brain. The psychology of the organic physics…compared to a mundane binocular and hemisphere brain that we are familiar with.

Could we even relate? It seems hard enough when we are the same, within reason…now take in account an inability to comprehend why you think or act in a certain way.

That sort of process, I find fascinating.

Tuatara and other animals may have a parietal ("third") eye, but they still have two of everything else, right?

link

I mean, just because they have three eyes, it doesn't keep them from having their limbs and many organs in pairs.

Dan

Correct, the number of eyes do not match in this case.

It is a simple eye, on top of the head. I do believe the current thought is that it is a shadow alarm, warning against predatory birds.

It's still an optical sensor, a third optical sensor, on a bilateral creature. And right along that bilateral line too.

Dan

Yep. I dug up some more research on them, and the third eye is being tasked with Circadian rhythm theory…seasonal cycle and mating isses.

(clipped from wiki)

"The eyes can focus independently, and are specialized with a duplex retina that contains two types of visual cells for both day and night vision, and a tapetum lucidum which reflects on to the retina to enhance vision in the dark. There is also a third eyelid on each eye, the nictitating membrane.

The tuatara has a third eye on the top of its head called the parietal eye. It has its own lens, cornea, retina with rod-like structures, and degenerated nerve connection to the brain, suggesting it evolved from a real eye. The parietal eye is only visible in hatchlings, which have a translucent patch at the top center of the skull. After four to six months it becomes covered with opaque scales and pigment.[14] Its purpose is unknown, but it may be useful in absorbing ultraviolet rays to manufacture vitamin D,[8] as well as to determine light/dark cycles, and help with thermoregulation.[14] Of all extant tetrapods, the parietal eye is most pronounced in the tuatara. The parietal eye is part of the pineal complex, another part of which is the pineal gland, which in tuatara secretes melatonin at night.[14] It has been shown that some salamanders use their pineal body to perceive polarized light, and thus determine the position of the sun, even under cloud cover, aiding navigation"

So it gets even more interesting…bone structure with qualities of fish bones, split function eyes, third (blind), and been around for a seriously long time…cool little guy.