---In [email protected], <s3raphita@...> wrote :
If aliens do exist they probably look like HUMANS: Life on other planets may
have evolved in a similar way to Earth, biologist claims.
http://tinyurl.com/q3gg2ek http://tinyurl.com/q3gg2ek
Had to remove your choice of picture, sorry.
But it's an interesting subject. I doubt he really means they'll look like us
in a bipedal Star Trek alien kind of way but certain things, like eyes and
ears, are a given if there is light and an atmosphere, nature will work it out
because the things that don't evolve them die a lot quicker. But there are so
many different ways of doing everything from skeletons to external armour, from
leg joints in mammals to none in squids, that it's impossible from looking at
creatures of the distant past to guess what would be here now.
If we were to wind evolution back to the beginning and start it again we
wouldn't end up with humans, something smart perhaps but even then we are the
only animals to have developed abstract creativity, even chimps can't do that,
so maybe sentience like ours is more rare than we like to think? It's the habit
we have of thinking we are some sort of pinnacle that makes us think there must
be superior beings like us elsewhere.
I always thought this planet would be a super one to visit if humans hadn't
evolved to start wrecking it. I can't see a reason why we would have to have
developed the way we did and as it's just us, maybe the particular set of
circumstances that helped us on our way (and that we still don't have a
consensus on) is so rare that it's really just us in this galaxy.
It would certainly explain the deathly silence we hear all around us...
