What Would an Alien Species Look Like?

An exploration of convergent evolution and what that means for astrobiology, specifically in regards to what alien species may look like.

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Intermission in D by Miguel Johnson

[wetbobspongepants]

The fact that Jellyfish have survived for 650 million years despite not having brains gives hope to many people.

[johnnygraz]

I live with seven parrots, and the most surprising thing about their intelligence is how similar it is to ours. Their cortex analog, the pallium, evolved separately from ours, but they still have the same constraints imposed by the physical world and the necessities of living in social groups. Some of their abilities like vision, coordination, or spatial awareness would be superpowers in humans, but they're still very understandable.

[davidstuckey]

I still think the best summary was that by a French biologist in the 19th century, when he said, "That life exists on words of other stars is a near certainty. What it looks like is far less sure . . . But it will most likely be made up of familiar features in unfamiliar combinations"

[simonmultiverse]

The film "Arrival" had the most amazing creatures (heptapods) sort of swimmy creatures with seven tentacles which sprayed ink in a complicated circular arrangement. They also had a totally different understanding of time, in that they seemed to know the past and the future without making a distinction between them. Also gravity flipped 90 degrees when you got half way up (along?) their spaceship. Fascinating film - I didn't totally understand it at the time but that seemed to be a trivial complaint, compared to the awesome concepts which were being shown.

[mattcy]

The issue of finding alien life is we probably don't live at the "same speed." They can have deep intelligence at the pace of a tree growing. Or their speed of thought can be lightning fast. I like the idea of a super massive organism that grows and thinks so slowly it looks inanimate. But over the course of time it can have substantial intelligence

[docwhiskey]

2 arms, 2 legs, eyes in the front, hands and feet with digits, has it's advantages. Like being conducive to eating tacos, which I'm currently doing.

[Hoshimaru]

An interesting thing I once heard: the only animal ever to ask an existential question other than a human was an African Grey Parrot. Supposedly without any specific prompting it turned to its owner one day and said “What color am I?”
Of course it’s not unthinkable that other animals could contemplate their own existence. Parrots are simply uniquely suited to communicate complex concepts in a human language that we cannot easily misinterpret.
I’m positive my cat has opinions on my behavior that have nothing to do with him. When I watch tv he watches intently. I know for example that he’s expressed a unique interest in I Love Lucy and Taxi. He gets embarrassed when I do something foolish. He watches intently when I build models sometimes, and has shown the capacity for consideration of my property by avoiding my work materials or not stepping on my paper models. He readily voices his opinion on closed doors (he doesn’t like them and got mad at mom one night when she didn’t believe me that that was the issue).
This is an animal with preferences and mannerisms that have nothing to do with his needs. And I may not understand the exact words, but like the alien with the ray gun, the message is abundantly clear.

[jdpower]

My favorite depiction of aliens in fiction has to be the Typhon from Prey. They are not necessarily scientifically plausible, but their sheer incomprehensibility and terror make them seem so realistic. They aren’t made of the same kind of matter that we are, and they defy everything we know about biological life. The Typhon subvert the human tendency of personifying things that are nothing like us at all.

[vShoTzZ]

I used to think Star Trek had far too many humanoid like aliens, but when I think about it, the humanoid type body is perfect when it comes to a species advancing technologically

[jarlborg]

Love the idea of convergent evolution leading to similar body shapes throughout the galaxy. Maybe those two eyed, bipedal aliens beloved of sci-fi are not that far off the mark.

[carbsncaffeine]

Again, best channel on youtube hands down. John, thank you for your work. You're the best at making this content.

[jonathanhucke]

Loving all of this! One idea I've been having for why we don't see more ancient-looking species on land so much as we do in the oceans is because of the radiation shielding from what the ocean provides from the sun. While the radiation from the sun causes land-dwellers to have loads of non-beneficial changes, those same changes seem to also cause rare, but beneficial changes to the species as well. Whereas deeper dwelling ocean species get genetic stabilization.

[Jack-jbnw]

Hey JMG. Great video. I really appreciate the variety in the visuals on this video. Some of the older slide decks were getting repetitive. I know most people probably just listen but I like to watch the screen and I noticed the effort in this one!

[mjjumps]

You’ve really been touching the Alien topic a lot recently JMG. I think that’s awesome. Your perspective is always intriguing and scientific. I hope more scientists follow your lead. 👽❤️🛸⚡️

[kestrelwalls]

While I imagine there's a wide variety of body plans out there in the universe, I do think that quadrupeds, like fish, may be a recurring design. A tripod is an inherently stable structure, and being a quadruped allows you to pick up one leg to move it while keeping three legs on the ground to provide stable support. This is also the simplest design that does so.

[parmaxolotl]

10:38 “the smartest things in the ocean tend to have land ancestors”
Actually, we’re beginning to learn a lot of sea creatures are smarter than previously thought. Tuskfish can use rocks as tools, groupers and morays can communicate with each other and hunt together, mantas can recognize themselves in a mirror, morays can apparently recognize specific people and learn to trust them, and we all know how smart cephalopods are. It’s taken us so long to realize this because we can obviously do experiments on land creatures easier, also we have a bit of a bias towards mammals and birds.

[logiconabstractions]

Great discussion there.

" Evolution can be seen as a case of chance engineering". That comment is spot-on, and as such, evolution is somewhat predictable, or at least bound by rules that can be understood.

[chrisdraughn]

It’s far too difficult to speculate with what they’d look like without knowing what their home planet is like and their star is like. Even if we are contemplating life on a particular planet there are still too many unknown variables involved.

[boobah]

I'm reminded of John Scalzi's _Old Man's War_ books, where one of the aliens featured in the second book is noted specifically as liking the same environments as humans and having roughly the same capabilities, but as he describes it the alien turns out to have a bunch of features that are more efficient than what evolved in humans.

Case in point, these aliens have a compound eye that forms a strip across their forehead, and ditch all the complex support structures necessary for independently rotating eyes that require focusing, which lets them have a smaller (and cheaper!) head.

[GiordanoBruno]

I'm very glad you said that humanity's powered flight could be considered a form of evolved flight.

I have this strong feeling that most people do not consider human activity to be a part of the natural process.
We are a product of evolution as much as any animal, we exist in the same whirling cascade of randomness, causes and effects as all life does.

Everything we have done is an expression of nature just as much as any tree, rock or animal is.

We evolved intelligence as a means of survival due to evolutionary pressures, we didn't suddenly take a magical leap out of the natural world when this happened!

A Boeing jet plane is a crystallisation of that evolved intelligence, it exists as a direct result of natural forces acting on biology.

Technology is natural.
Natural is not necessarily good.