this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
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Risa
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Star Trek memes and shitposts
Come on'n get your jamaharon on! There are no real rules—just don't break the weather control network.
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I didn't care for it either. It was like they wanted to explain why every alien race looked like humans in costumes, but I was perfectly fine with suspension of disbelief.
It's also not even remotely how DNA or evolution work.
We have no idea how evolution works. Anyone claiming otherwise is a liar.
"You can't fuck if you're dead" what's to understand
That's the mechanism, but how environments grow wings or blowholes or 8 vs 6 legs is entirely magic still.
Environmental pressures and conditions make specific traits more advantageous for species inhabiting a particular environmental niche. That's why everything turns into crabs
"Everything Turns Into Crabs" would be an amazing title for a book about evolution. Someone tell Richard Dawkins.
Random chance produces advantageous trait. Advantageous trait gets propagated because it's a competitive benefit for the individuals carrying it.
I think humanoid is a perfectly logical end-state for any terrestrial species that develops technology:
Gotta get energy somehow, consumption is more energy dense than autotrophy, so need a mouth. Gotta find the stuff to put in mouth, so need sense organs, closer to mouth is better. Light is generally the best medium for sensing, so eyes eventually. Two eyes are way better than one for depth perception, but three is inefficient energy investment with seriously diminishing returns.
Gotta move around in a gravity well to get to your food, so you need some kind of limbs. In the beginning, before developing the sophisticated nervous system necessary for dynamic locomotion, four is the minimum so you can remain stable on three limbs while you move the fourth.
Gotta start banging rocks together if you want tech, so you need hands of some kind, and two free limbs. By this point, your nervous system should be sophisticated enough to allow dynamic locomotion, but you still need at least two "legs" to move relative to each other to move on the ground in a gravity well.
I would expect most technological species with similar heritage to humans to look roughly humanoid. There are plenty of other forms, but I feel like they'd be selected against.
Well any species would be a product of their environment but I think the logic that bipedals with arm like appendages would dominate the world isnt far fetched.
And as you say they would likely not have unneccessary stuff like 3rd eye or 2 sets of arms since evolution is basically the system of good enough anything above that is a waste
So something might start out with 3 eyes but would eventually lose it as standing up and bejng able turn around is good enough to survive and propagate