"intelligent alien life ideas. " Topic

High guys, don't know if this is a good place or if any of you know a good site with a forum to go to or not. My question is I wanted to get some feed back on some ideas for different forms of intelligent alien, space faring civilizations. I am not a scientist and wanted to find out if some of my ideas are possible or just to unlikely to be believable, even for sci-fi?
So any help or suggestions? Thanks.

Sure throw them out here. You might even get some intelligent responses.

This site is good for free advice and the opinions are worth every penny you pay for them.

Good Luck,

Fair enough, like I said I don't know and have not done a lot of study on what the "mechanics" of life as we know it are(out side of the obvious things we should learn in school) and how or why there might be different ones.
I was wondering first if it is possible that an ecosystem could be the opposite from earth from the stand point that "animals" breath carbon dioxide and plants breath oxygen?
Was also wondering what a intelligent life form that is a mixture of plant and animal might be like and what environmental evolution made it intelligent, tool using, living in communities, etc. Perhaps a creature that has cell walls like plant specialized but is mobile, like an animal.
I have read of several ideas about life that breaths methane and life based on silicone as well but don't know much about how a silicone vs carbon based life form would differ or if they would only differ on the elemental level? Well guess that's enough for now:) Any helpful thoughts welcome:) Thanks Travis.

My small palm has "walked" inside of its pot, in search of water, and is leaning considerably against the rim to get it.

I've read (somewhere, long ago) that near the volcanic trenches at the bottom of the Atlantic, there are critters that no one was expecting to find (no light, too much pressure, not enough oxygen, etc). Come to find out, some of them are copper based or get their energy from thermal and chemical process instead of photosynthesis. They are bacteria sized, so probably not intelligent, but it does change our ideas of what's possible.

As for what makes creatures intelligent, war and strife. Nothing spurs the creative juices like trying not to get killed.

I will toss out one idea, they are going to be symmetrical, in that they have general had the same number of eyes, ears, limbs, etc. on each side. Every creature that has dominated our client (above the microbe level) has been symmetrical. There has been a huge variety (I love the "Walking With…" shows), but whether is has been 2, 4, 8 legs, arms, or wings, the creatures have been symmetrical. There is no reason that should be standard on our planet, but it has remained consistent over time. While our planet may be an anomaly, there is a reason to think that symmetry may be favored for life forms, and that asymmetrical higher forms of life are not favored.

Very interesting ideas, I was thinking in a evolution sense that in order to become intelligent and form groups there would have to be an environmental "threat/competition" that would force them to evolve to get to the top of the food chain.
My idea for a plant/animal would need a large number of flexible "legs" with harden bark like coverings to move fast if needed and might use some form of "blood" as hydraulics to work them instead of muscle and tendons like animals we know:)The would have a central body also with a harden protection on top, have a Venus flytrap like mouth, sense they eat animals, in front. The would have an extendable "head" at the top of the main body. They wouldn't have eyes but the head would have hundreds of small strands that would be very sensitive to temperature, motion, smells and sounds, extra that they would use to communicate and hunt.

There were intelligent plant beings in an old 2300AD scenario, asymmetric and tree like they put down roots and went dormant in winter. The worker class were blind because the nobles controlled access to the hibernation fields that had the right minerals to form the photosensitive crystals that they used for vision, and there was a rebellion brewing over this detail. The player group then got shipwrecked into the middle of this setup.
Robert

There's a new theory I read about just in the last week, that plants can "hear"/feel vibrations, which apparently helps them to detect water, and apparently grow in that direction.

I think you should let your imagination go wild

As to atmosphere, oxygen is not exactly always your friend – in fact, we have had to evolve elaborate systems to protect our cells from oxidative stress

If you want to see a very different take on things real Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity about the voyages of Captain Barlennan, master of the good ship the Bree – who happens to be a very intelligent centipede