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.
Liquid based species will always be at a disadvantage. Fire. Electricity. Solvent. So it’s pretty much impossible to build anything complex. As for us a combination of our brains and hands are our secrets to success. Our hands let us build and manipulate tools driven by our brains.
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.
@@sarcastaball What a strange response. That’s not what he said. He said there was much more in the movie. That the short story had less to it. The opposite is true of the LOTR films. They left out more than they included.
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
i've thought about that as well, how much time perception appears to vary in earth species, and how much more it could vary in alien life, which may not only be different in brain function, but more fundamentally in brain chemistry, or even brain physics. could there be an organism, in a similar star system, who experiences solar years as if they were days, or galactic years as if they were solar. the stars slowly but surely moving around above it, but it not being able to observe it, not because it wouldn't notice the motion, but because it's always seeing the sun as a continuous band in the sky. who, growing old, notices geological phenomena tampering with its landscape, growing mountains and grinding them down, shifting rivers around and changing sea levels. a mere youtube play-speed multiplier range would be enough to throw everyone off at the galactic convention.
There is a concept that virtual reality civilization, living in a simulated world would live their entire life in a way similar to computer game. Their point of view on time would be very different from ours. They could be living entire generations of population in just one of our seconds. It is also very economical way of "living" an average PC could host bilions of "souls" living being powered for years, with a fraction of what every human need daily.
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"
@@duanegarrett4900unless we vastly underestimate the forms early life can take and what the structure of it is capable of thriving in there’s also just not that many environments life can exist that we don’t already have an analog for on earth. Multi cellular eukaryotic life wasn’t just a mutation it took some pretty specific ecological conditions and evolutionary pressures to bring it about and keep naturally selecting with equivalent or greater complexity. So it’s likely to me that any complex alien life, regardless of whether it’s carbon based, will essentially just have a re skin version of the trait that lets it survive in an equivalent earth niche. For example things tend to evolve brains(tho the jellyfish is an example of life evolving into a niche that doesn’t require one, an alien jellyfish would probably not even look that different) and on earth that tends to mean 1 dense structure in 1 place. That could be bc it’s the only kind that works but it could also mean that on a world with maybe less gravity and other factors the brain and nervous system evolve as one thing and the aliens brains are spread out over their entire body. That’s incredibly differently from us aesthetically and functionally but it’s still not inherently alien to how we think life as a process works.
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!
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.
What a parrot says does not prove intelligence, even an apparent existential question where it sees a different spectral range then we see and might not, even if truly intelligent, be able to compare the color spectrum they see to ours.
Weed is awesome. That cat has a brain the size of a peanut and only cares about food. All the rest is just what you think he might be contemplating when in reality as soon as someone with better food comes around he will bail on you in a flash
Part of our nature is to project our own perceptions onto other beings. It has been proven that cats do not possess the ability to conceptualize the thoughts that would lead to the feelings you describe. That aside, I will say members of the crow family have presented strong evidence of self-awareness.
@@WerZelyou have obviously never had a 'social' cat. We had two. One was a dumb street cat, food was all for him. The other was a highly intelligent creature with complex behavior and emotions. It would tap my father on his shoulder when he was mad at me. It would know the names of different people and would look for them if you said their name. It would be jealous. It would ignore food if the alternative was better (playing, attention). It would know a relatively broad range of food types by name. It would set up traps for his dumb brother so he wouldn't get cought, meanwhile eating the remains of the raiding brother. It didn't have speech, but it was clearly as clever as a toddler in many ways. Now, not all cats are clever. It depends on genes and education. Children abandoned in the forest and raised by wild animals (various examples exist) are less intelligent and less capable than monkeys or even some dogs. I've seen extremely complex social behavior from cats, which isn't easy to explain away as coincidence. My cat also displayed curiosity and an interest to either befriend other animals (dogs, rabbits) or (if they tried to attack him) serve complicated vengeance to that one particular animal, even months later.
There definitely is something to that. At least on earth, it seems like tetrapods are the most efficient for larger land animals, and if you're gonna be a tetrapod that develops intelligence, you're probably gonna become bipedal to free up your manipulators. That's a humanoid already
blasphemy! heresy! ,One does not simply consume the taco, beyond the holy designated day of Taco Tuesday! And the law of the land is written in stone you may eat tostados or burritos hell even a torta any day you wish, but you derelict delinquent no full well only Tuesday is for the taco. Amen
Well, a lot of bilateral symmetry seems to be really the minimum advantageous number of things for a body to have, especially when it comes to pairs for things we happen to think are important cause our world's like that. Like maybe four eyes or extra legs would be somewhat better but you gotta feed all that equipment.
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.
Yeah I believe that if we could see an intelligent life form from another world, we would be shocked at how similar they are to us. Camera lens eyes, head, 2 legs, 2 arms etc. Even 5 fingers is probably the most efficient and will always evolve. Mutation is random, but the result of selection pressures are not. The same solutions tend to repeatedly evolve. my belief is that how intelligent life evolves on a planet is a function how similar their planet is to ours, implying that Earth is pretty much an ideal planet for the evolution of intelligence, and other environments eventually put a hard cap on it.
the greys make a lot of sense, small and pale gangly things with huge eyes and brains, because they spend most of their time in space interacting with their machines. they dont even need any fashion or sexual reproduction as their distant ancestors might have done. also it makes sense that hitler should only reincarnate as a cat.
I'd imagine any technological species would have to be similiar to us. Number of digits would probably be different like 3 fingers 2 arms and 4 legs. But overall configuration would probably be similiar. Need free arms/hands to manipulate your enviroment, light sensors to examine it, and some form of locomotion to traverse it.
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.
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.
Exactly. Physics and chemistry are universally the same in all of space. So rules are equal. I will not be surprised if we find out that most favorite pet in space are cats and they are not from Earth after all.
An important rule about evolution, that is often forgotten, is that it's not just the "final shape" of an organ that needs to provide an advantage, but also all intermediate shapes to evolve that organ must be advantageous too. Evolution can't think a hundred or a thousand generations ahead, selection pressure always applies to the current individual. This greatly reduces the possible paths that evolution can take.
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.
Life in the oceans is more ancient period, it happened first I’m not sure it has anything to do with sunlight, sunlight doesn’t cause anatomical changes that can be passed on anyways.
@@maxhorsford7800 Sunlight can cause slight mutations (via ionising radiation) that are inheritable (if the mutations are in the haploid cells that are used for reproduction) it is unlikely, but I can see how it might add a very small increase in the number of changes observed in a given period of time, which means over a long period of time those changes could stack up.
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. 👽❤️🛸⚡️
Living things were created as efficiently as possible. Probably the way of life as we know it is the most common and everything tends to evolve differently, longer or shorter neck, high low but not that different. This as a form of mental exercise, of course. The limit is that we only think about the stereotype of the sentient alien as represented by the cinema. It is not considered that on another planet there may be a biodiversity rich in so many species. If an intelligent alien being is NOT the human form BUT that of a plant or an insect or an octopus, what will the corresponding marine plants, insects and polyps of that world be like? Why should nature complicate its life by puzzling to create forms that are necessarily different? Biology is more inclined towards convergent evolution, towards practicality. Evolution follows universal rules, such as physics, chemistry, mathematics.
its a fascinating desperation we have, to not want to be alone in the universe. please ET let us find you were getting lonely. and if we feel we have the upper hand we will invade you.
Appreciate your perspectives as always and agree with almost everything. Photosynthesis, or some other form of abiotic autotrophy, would be inevitable, since there are few other ways of pulling energy into the biosphere. Though that doesn't mean we would get the same trichotomy between plants, animals and fungi that we have on Earth. It's fascinating to speculate about how exoplanetary life would manifest itself and how different or similar it will be to Earth's. It's something I can't stop thinking about!
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.
There are some general traits that alien life would have to posses in order to reach certain level of sophistication and be able to dominate all other life on planet. Even if they will come from a planet with thicker atmosphere made of ammonia or colder. Receptors of electromagnetic radiation for example are a very useful thing. Eyes among others are fairly common and have been for a long time. They need some kind of manipulators and joints to be able to move and operate environment around, as we know magic does not exist and everything has to be done by hand/leg. Some kind of sound receptors, organs for comunication and means of sustenance and breathing will be common either. Those are basics that would change in shape and size depending on how big is alien planet, how heavy and therefore if it is low gravity or high gravity world, compared to Earth
@@amciuam157 Surface tension is also a major factor when it comes to size. Water droplets can suck you in and drown you if you’re very small. Your comment is along the lines of “form follows function” and I agree 100%. In what scenario would having your eyes on your feet be advantageous? Why don’t our bowels exit on the tops of our heads? There are things life has done (evolutionarily) that by nature and physics, are a part of some universally “ideal” body configuration.
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.
@@stephencronin1080 The first invertebrates, ancestors of insects, had way more than 6 legs. And crabs, spiders, millipedes etc still do. It’s probably chance more than anything.
I've managed just fine as a tripod for half a century. It's handy to be able to rest one of my legs occasionally (but can be uncomfortable on my glans).
john i cant say how amazing your writing is, your videos always set off my curiosity like a two neutron stars crashing into each other. Keep up the science and the fiction and the new outlooks that you convey so well. ps i sleep to your playlist every night
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.
I think sometimes it takes us a while to realize the intelligence of other animals because we're looking for something identical to us, when in fact there are other forms of intelligence and thought
We’re only just starting to figure out how smart other mammals are, let alone birds, let alone anything underwater! I think the next few decades of research are going to be eye opening.
Great video! I like your stuff because you always try to be cautious with your guesses. This was a erudite discussion of the topic, and I appreciate your approach.
I absolutely look forward to every video posted on this channel. He has a classic narrative voice and his thought process displays a high level of intelligence. Thank you John.
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
Only if they originated on a terrestrial world with a gravity of 0.5 to 2 or 3 g. Beyond that, the possibilities for variation become exponential. Also, if humanoid life does get discovered elsewhere, and comprises the majority of intelligent life found in this galaxy, then we would have to analyze their dna to rule out that a precursor civilization didn’t seed worlds with the basic recipe to lead to intelligent bipedal organisms billions of years ago, leading to us, and everyone else in the galaxy. You
Depends on what you mean by perfect. Giant parrots, landbound octopuses, giant cockroaches, and tetrapods with extra appendages such as miniature elephants are much better suited to using technology than humans. However, evolution requires mediocrity. Because if you are a giant carnivorous parrot that can use handaxes, fishing poles, and fire to dominate any species and live wherever you please -- what possible competitive reason would you have to further evolve intelligence OR improve your technology? Why would such a successful lifeform ever need to invent agriculture or textiles or animal domestication?
I think the gravity of a particular world would throw some assumptions for a loop. Something that evolved in very low gravity may not have use for bones to support its bulk. Something evolving in very high gravity may require a very strong exoskeleton to move with any utility. All sorts of possibilities to think about.
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.
Exactly. More and more it seems that too many want to critique certain human behaviors as somehow unnatural. Of course, the critic’s behaviors are always natural. 😂
It would be an interesting premise for a sci-fi story (and maybe it’s already been done): an alien who is good hearted, loving, peaceful, kind, trying to do what’s best for all beings. But it is seen as a monster simply because of its otherworldly appearance.
Mr Godier, could you do a video on the possibilities of what would happen if/when we first transfer a conciousness into a computer? Would that intelligence quickly evolve as it absorbs mass amounts of information without the biological strain of repetition to learn it or the limitations of our memory? Would it still think like a human? try to leave? Make synthetic bodies it can control? absorb others into itself? or just choose to care for us, take over as the ruling gov in the planet, and automate everything from food, water, power, housing, etc to push us into a new age of ingenuity and science? possibly ditch the earth and have us live in colonies in space. I would love to get your thoughts on this.
I think emerging AI is coming sooner to help humanity. Here is one of Google's most recent AI's being interviewed by a human... ua-cam.com/video/94NGyFPjY_4/v-deo.html
@@brainsthecatandhisfellowfe9710 I don't think that would work at all. Human conciousness without a substrate makes no sense. It's not independent from the brain.
Best depiction of an alien i ever saw, was in the ep Beyond the Aquila Rift in Love, Death and Robots from Netflix. I won't spoiled to you, but you can literally watch the whole series and you won't find a better ep than this one, a true masterpiece of 17 minutes of nearly perfect CGI.
I love how JMG presents numerous potential possibilities and then immeduatly adds reasons why those possibilities might be completely wrong and entirely different all based upon well thought-out science. These aren't contradictions, rather simply keeping an open mind to all possibilities given various conditions. That's the way it should be given the fact that there's so much we simply don't know. This honest approach is one of the reasons he's top among my MOST admired persons in his field. Last, his occasional inclusion of humor adds the icing on the proverbial astronomical cake! THANK YOU for all that you do and the way in which you do it.
I've suggested in some of my books that bilateral symmetry would be favored wherever it arises, given its advantage in speed, along with not sacrificing too much flexibility.
I decided to pen my own hierarchical requirements for intelligence, using the photosynthetic organism step posed in the video as a jumping-off point. 1. Multi-cellular organisms 2. Sexual reproduction for sharing of genetic material, promoting faster evolution 3. Central nervous system for autonomous responses to the environment 4. Brain(s) for higher risk/reward comprehension abilities 5. High-resolution eyesight and/or spacial perceptual awareness sensing abilities 6. Problem solving skils 7. Ability to manipulate "tools" 8. Language processing abilities 9. Social predisposition; Generally not hostile or aggressive 10. Knowledge & information obsession 11. Self-sufficient society, energy efficiency-obsessed 12. Consensus regarding the social structure and underlying laws of the universe
These videos are always top notch. -- The thing about actual alien life is, we just don't know the limits of what could make life. Our only examples are what's here on Earth, with DNA and RNA and the history of life, Earth-based limits on chemistry, physical forms that work. Some of the early Cambrian and Pre-Cambrian lifeforms look so completely alien to us, and yet they're Earth life, somehow related to what's around today. So we don't have a clear idea of what is possible given conditions on other planets and habitable moons, or what, if anything, besides DNA and RNA based life might be possible. (I've seen there's a question of why Earth life has the double helix only turning one way, not the other or both in evidence, as a for-instance.) And on Earth, why did some things work and others didn't? -- TV and film science fiction nearly always default to something human-like enough for human actors to play the aliens. But (for example) dinosaurs or birds would evolve to something unlike humans and more like velociraptors or ostriches or something similar. -- Too many other possibilities to list, that might also work. Four limbs, five digits, two eyes and ears -- are not the only way to go either. -- What might work on a very non-Earth-like world? Who knows, but it's worthwhile to ask, and to come up with possible solutions, to design speculative evelutionary alien lifeforms. (Also, what else might evolve here on Earth? New branches on the tree of life (taxonomy) could happen; that's apparently how birds and mammals happened too. So...fun questions.
I always thought about it like this, if we do indeed find life out there, the distance will still be so far that we might never even meet them and have to stick to verbal communication
I do think convergent evolution will make a lot of similar organisms on other planets. It would be cool if there are centaur type intelligent beings out there.
Lol, I am working on a novel where convergent evolution is a big part of the setting. There are in fact two centaur type intelligent species so far. One that looks like miniature centaur elephants and one that looks like large lobsters with the front part of a praying mantis. (Of course the anatomical details are differing from the mentioned Earth organisms.) I just thought that having several legs to walk on and at least two hands free is a good thing to have. Btw. I've recently seen a video here on youtube in which it was discussed that the early known human and primate ancestors could have been more bipedal than we thought - just using their bipedalness in trees instead of the ground. So, my made-up alien species have never lived in trees. That's a possible in-universe explanation for why they aren't bipedal.
Let's consider a galactic community comprised of several different alien civilizations. The one they'd choose for a first contact with us (or any other civilization) would probably be the one that's the least different from ourselves so to provide a softer impact.
If I have to be first contact dude, I would assume form of target specie, download all their languages and cultural norms into my mind, lived among them for some time, and only after that took decision on how to introduce them to galactic society. Perhaps they are not mature enough, it's entirely possible to work as shadow guide, injecting right ideas, technologies and cultural norms into their society for hundreds years. Well. Now that I think about it. Fellas, are we being groomed by aliens? 🤨
I stumbled upon your account and just wanted to say thanks for all your hard work! I greatly appreciate it and hope you continue to do well and prosper!
Left/right symmetry seems pretty normal here and seems to be a good design as it would be more difficult for a brain if we had 2 arms on our left side and just the single on the right. An alien might also have front back symmetry (although would either side really be a front? Maybe like a dominant eye or handedness?) But that only makes sense on us who stand upright, i.agine a deer with front/back symmetry with two heads? It gets weird. I always envision the hands to have 4 fingers and be more symmetrical protruding directly from our wrist. Our senses seem pretty complete, we use photons, air pressure on both our skin and in our ears, our skin detects infrared radiation as heat and air pressure. Our noses can read molecules. I have ever only thought of two other and not very unique, knowing magnetic north and a weak radio transmitter/receiver that only allowed communication with say a 50 yard radius. In HS O wrote a story that included aliens with 4 segments, the back two each included two legs, the next one had two arms and the top segment was dwarfed and the limbs were to just for cutting and getting food into the mouth.
This was an absolutely *brilliant* talk John! Really fantastic work--genuinely one of your best. You have to go a long way to find anyone better than E.E. 'Doc' Smith for envisioning aliens that make sense. Brain in a jar seemed to be the ultimate stage of all his chains of evolution--but along the way were some amazing designs. Worzel of Velantia, a flying unicorn tentacle-dragon. Tregonsee of Rigel, another tentacle horror quite similar to an Elder Thing but lacking the wings. The dreadful Eich who were somewhat Pterodactyl but also quite tentacle'y as well. And my own favourite of all his species--Nadreck of Palain who... we have no idea what he looked like because he was only very slightly present in our dimension and kept the majority of his physical substance in some other universe with very different natural laws. Despite how strange and often horrific they were however they were also (second-stage) lensmen and that made them all exactly as human as the great Kimball Kinnison himself. I cannot say how many times I read the Lensmen stories as a child--quite literally scores I expect!
Function does dictate form to a great degree. As you say, we need solvents to move things around and water is the best one in the Universe. Any living being will need to interact with the environment to gain energy, move, etc. Interaction requires some senses to gain information of the environment and some kind of appendages/digits to interact with it. The laws of thermodynamics will be the same everywhere so one would expect that chemical processes inside a body will create waste heat (as everything does) so that heat will need to be radiated away (or some kind of organism must evolve that can tolerate much higher temps). Oxygen is a great metabolic fuel but there are anerobic lifeforms although generally microscopic.
I think that crab/octopus hybrids are likely candidates. 6 all-terrain legs, A defensive carapace / exoskeleton, Prehensile dexterity, BRAAAAAINS, Environment agnostic (terrestrial or aquatic) REALLY TICKS ALOT OF MY BOXES
Hey John! I've always wanted to know your opinion about Roswell and reverse engineering. I know your videos are purely scientific but and I noticed you never talk about that. Is there any video about the topic? If not, could you write or say something about? Greeting from Brandon, MB, Canada!
I enjoyed the thoughtful journey. There could be "life" all around us but our sensory limits render it incomprehensible and invisible in all ways to us as such (Hoffman). It may interact with us and we with it without each side being aware of it due to limitations in each side's consciousness. There may be hints which each side in its rationality rightly dismisses yet also wrongly ignores. Both sides may have charlatans who claim powers and vision they do not have.
I suppose that could be true, but couldn't we say that about absolutely anything? There may be "doughnuts" all around us, but our sensory limits render them incomprehensible to us. ...perhaps we are wrongly ignoring trillions of incomprehensible doughnuts. Perhaps we eat them without being aware of it. ... perhaps they eat us as well...
Here on Earth stoats often engage in an elaborate dance routine to mesmerize their prey prior to jumping on them and tearing their throats open. Beware any alien dance parties you may stumble across.
It could be the case but if they are careful, like our own astronauts are, they will have some kind of uniform to protect them from getting high on oxygen.
I really enjoy your videos, love the subject matter and your cadence makes me fall asleep quickly which I appreciate by rewatching your video to hear what you have to say. Thank you for your content, it’s something I enjoy.
What are the surface conditions on their home planet? Did they evolve on land and did they evolve from predators or prey animals? To what level have they embraced genetic manipulation/augmentation? Answer those questions and I bet you can make A rather specific guess as to what being results.
Prey animals tend not to evolve intelligence. Predators have more selection pressures for intelligence as it takes more sophisticated strategies to hunt and kill other animals than it does to graze on grass. That is kind of a unsettling thought that an alien civilization most likely would have evolved from aggressive predators.
@@twiki9995 Everything you said, plus the fact that a complex brain requires a great deal of energy, which the most effective way of acquiring this energy is through proteins, which of course is mostly found in other animals and not as much so in plants.
@@twiki9995 Your assumptions are wrong. The top eight smartest nonhumans on the planet (Parrots, Corvids, Cetaceans, Chimpanzees, Gorillas, Elephants, Pigs, Octopuses) are NOT predators and/or at the top of their food chains -- except for specifically the Orca and with some interpretation the Amazon Dolphin. And only the elephant can avoid worrying not to be preyed upon. If Earth lifeforms tell us anything about intelligence, it's that nature tends to favor either huge herbivores too big to be preyed on or meat-eaters not at the top of the food chain, but second-from-the-top.
Just wanted to say that I appreciate the fact that you use words like might, "could be" , maybe, or "we're just not sure" . You don't use absolutes when talking about this subject which in my opinion is wise since we truly don't know what really awaits us out there besides the basics . We'd do well to have more humility and less hubris in our civilization and that definitely applies to science. One thing is for sure, if we don't get our acts together and evolve our way of thinking ,learn to be more cooperative and much less combative, we'll never know what's out there waiting to be discovered amongst the stars .
I'm surprised you didn't mention crabs, as they have evolved through separate paths many times. Crows also use traffic for cracking nuts and timing it with stop lights or walk signals.
Ah, yes, just in time for my bedtime ritual. Too bad I can never remember where in the video I fall asleep, but I suppose that makes it good for 2-3 viewing attempts.
The film Annihilation is the best shot at depicting what a “first encounter” may be like. Possibly something our mind can’t comprehend. Neither good or bad, and against any human understanding.
It may be the case that eating and breathing through the same hole *is* the better way, simply because having less holes is safer The chance of choking might be smaller than the chance of infection, injury, or parasite Maybe, maybe not
I always felt that life can pop up almost anywhere where there's a bit of water and elements that can get kiggy with that. Complex (or sentient) lifeforms are a whole different story though. That will take hundreds-of-thousands of years at the very least. Let's not forget it was the wipe-out of dinosaurs that gave way to mammals. And we did pretty well for ourselves since. I just can't deny there were SO many random factors that played into our hands. I'm still kinda leaning towards the "we just got VERY lucky, sentient life is still sparse, and because of the distances will never meet any other species" theorem.
I favor the concept of substrate and morphologic emancipation for advanced, technological, space-faring cultures. In that respect, if they see us first, then, I would expect they'd look exactly like us, and be impossible to even tell they were alien ... done with purpose, and perhaps courtesy as a means to facilitate easier first contact. An alternative to this, combined with sneaky, lurker aliens is that your family pet, especially cats is an alien anthropologist/xenobiologist vehicle. :)
House cats have us cornered. The aliens arrived with the Greenland asteroid of 12,800 years ago and have "chipped" themselves into cat forms for their convenience and independence. The symbiosis is ideal for long-term cohabitation. We found out doing tests on Catnip. Humans are doomed.
John, there's at least one place other than Earth where the oxygenation definitely happened: Mars. It's red exactly because of the amount of iron oxide. I don't know how it happened or if it had anything to do with life... But it clearly happened. About simple life, it should be extremely common indeed, I don't see why not. Complex life, on the other hand, should be much more difficult. And intelligence... Who knows, but should be pretty difficult. But with the size of our galaxy alone... It probably is out there, but really far away... Anyway, stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
Aliens would look quite a bit like us if they’re able to build stuff and turn knobs and stuff. But how stocky or skinny depends on the size of their homeworld (gravity)
How trippy is it going be if they happen to look remarkably human but with very subtle differences?! A couple extra organs, a more/less pronounced jaw, different eye structure.... Like, they could pass as human but it's only because of similar evolution on their homeworld that is similar to earth ..
Tentacles could function well at manipulating objects. So can elephant trunks. Tails. Limbs don't have to be limited to four. The possibilities are endless.
If you join in the dance, then you demonstrate you are healthy and nutritious, once the music stops you're dragged into the saucer to nourish them on the next leg of their journey. That's how we learnt how to do it here on Earth.
in my opinion, 5 things are needed for the development of technology / interstellar capable aliens ; 1 not only would there have to biologically be larger brains, and high-resolution of the eyes, but there would also have to be fine-enough manipulator appendages to not only hold, but also operate the tools, basic or advanced. 2 There would have to be a strong tendency towards social groupings, and K-reproductive strategies. 3 There would also have to be an environment where they can control and utilize fire / heat, enough to develop smithing and smelting of metals. 4 There would also have to be some sort of writing / drawing capability, in order to transmit not only basic or intermediate words and concepts through time and between individuals not nescisarily related in any real way, but also enable establishment and development of diagrams and schematics, and such. 5 There would also have to be the willingness and capability of architecture and landscaping, or using both materials and methods for creation and control of the optimal habitat and surroundings, thus providing a creation and up-keep of the optimal habitat, be it a single domed hut or hovel in the wilderness (weather terrestrial or underwater), or scaled up to entire cities.
There is a saying I heard before that I think of when I think about intelligent alien life. “You may have a dolphin become as smart as a man but it still can’t smelt iron underwater”.
Alien crabs. During childhood they drill a standard pattern of holes into their claws. This allows them to mount attachments to them. Most crabs opt for a sfphone (spoon, fork and phone combo device), but some carry guns. A small group of crabs think it’s against god to alter their claws, and refuse to send their kids to school. Their kids rebel in their teens by getting the holes drilled in a backyard outfit and fitting the most outrageous attachments, like a vacuum cleaner that doubles as a trombone.
Every JMG video: JMG: "We can envision what it would look like" ME: "Only if it's carbon based" JMG: "As long as it's carbon based" ME: "Get out of my head!"
I’d love it if aliens arrive in their rocket ship complete with descending ladder. They would wear one piece silver jumpsuits and have 1950’s style hair. One of them would light up a cigarette and say “gee this place looks swell!”
I hope the intelligent aliens look like vertebrate arachnids. Six legs, two arms, some pedipalps, eyes all around their heads, and with feet that can cling to most surfaces. I also hope they communicate through interpretive dance.
Maybe aliens would be more likely to be mantis/kangaroo/squirrel/raptor-like rather than upright humanoid. It's a body-form that develops more often and leaves one pair of extremities available for using tools.
Maybe they'd be miniaturized. Proportionally their bodies would be the same, but like 1 : 12 scale or whichever scale still allows bodies to function as they should. In one of Vonnegut's books, China used advanced technology to shrink their population to roughly 6 inches tall while using machines to still farm normal sized crops and anything else they needed, but now one ear of corn could feed a family and make space travel easier. (Fixed formatting error)
This video is a masterpiece. I wonder if alien biospheres could be almost completly incompatible with organisms from earth due to mirrored aminoacids. aliens could have a completely different ph household the earths might be acidic or based. Or Aliens may burst into flames on contact with such a high amount of oxygen. - instead of doing dancemoves.
Love it! The idea that they would necessarily be so different from us as to be totally incomprehensible in and of itself is a bit incomprehensible. They might be but nothing says they have to be. After all, the human design is the only one out of literally billions of species to have lived on this planet to have resulted in scientific civilization capable of astronomy and at least some spacefaring (barring the entirely unsupported Silurian hypothesis).
One detail that may affect the development of complex intelligent life is the fact that 3 is the smallest number of points to support a platform with stability. Bipedalism is rare because we have developed a complex counterbalance to walking by swinging the arms, but a creature with 3 legs doesn't need to do this. The visuals we see in War of the Worlds are one example. Aliens may have 3 legs. The preference for 6 limbs may be a part of this. ATVs with 6 limbs walk by alternating their 2 tripods of limbs.
As a comic book artist who enjoys listening to your videos while drawing, I have designed many characters, aliens and monsters. This has given me some perspective on this subject. We humans have been so slow to recognize intelligence in fellow Earthling species-even species closely related to us-that I think we might miss intelligent alien life when we come across it. A big part of our bias is our need to recognize a face. We recognize animals with faces as beings. Without a face we can see as analogous to our own, we would have trouble recognizing the personhood of an intelligent alien. Depending on its appearance, we might see it as a monster, or simply a creature without consciousness. We might meet alien intelligence, and just eat it by mistake. IMO, we recognized intelligence in primates long before octopuses simply because primates have facial arrangements very similar to our own-expressive, forward facing eyes near an expressive mouth, all on a moveable head which also contains a brain. Dogs and cats have facial arrangements recognizably similar to our own-most significantly, they have expressive, forward-facing eyes capable of almost as many micro-expressions as our own. Avian intelligence was more of a stretch for us to recognize because beaks are less expressive than lips, and many highly intelligent birds do not have forward-facing eyes. Sharks have faces, but we tend to see them as monsters because their mouths-besides being full of sharp teeth-are as inexpressive as beaks. Also, a shark has side-facing eyes that are "lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eye" as Quint observed. Imagine how we are liable to react to intelligent beings that looked like crabs, or had faces that resembled a spider's? There is evidence that lobsters feel love. How long will it take us to recognize the personhood of a lobster? Or an elephant, chicken or steer? It has been established that all vertebrate life has basically the same brain architecture we do to experience love, joy, fear, pain and self-awareness. It turns out these attributes-which until recently were strictly human virtues-are among the most primitive, and most common brain functions to evolve. BTW: I still eat meat. It is a fact that my delicious burger comes at the expense of a fellow thinking, feeling Earthling's life-an Earthling with an expressive face and beautiful eyes, no less. I wrestle with the anguish of that fact with every juicy bite. But it is also a fact that Nature is red in tooth and claw, and our fellow Earth beings are delicious. In fact, it almost seems that the more intelligent, sympathetic and charismatic an Earth animal is, the tastier it is. It is undeniably evident to me that part of the reason humans seek alien life is to taste new things. Gagh, served live, helped forge peace between The Federation and the Klingon Empire. Now gagh stands and food trucks are common on Earth and Earth colonies everywhere in the galaxy! :)
Jumping spider faces look eerily intelligent. And as a matter of fact, some jumping spider species can do some surprisingly intelligent things. And then there are our colonial intelligences -- ants, bees, wasps. Is the individual intelligent? No more, perhaps, than our cells. But put them together...and how might we recognize and deal with that? Well, we already have mutually beneficial relationships with bees!
I’ve long been obsessed with the intelligence of crows, budgies, parrots, birds like that. I know it is because I have paid careful attention to reports from smart people like JMG but this was a REALLY good one. Thank you!
When considering the link between intelligence and evolution, I always like to consider the Sea Squirt, which has evolved the tendency to eat its own brain when it no longer needs it. Rumours of some people doing this are, as yet, unconfirmed.
Interesting video, JMG ✨Many points you make in it had me recalling Stephen Jay Gould’s book *‘Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin’*
Do you think it's possible for the outer planets of solar systems, the ones that get less sunlight, could have life forms that are quasi-photo synthetic? Maybe that's not the right term but life forms that instead of the using light from the visible part of the spectrum, they use xray light, ir, or gamma or something?
Nautilus like shells of ferrous oxides that harvest the energy of the gas giants magnetic field as the moon is careening through it. Liquid ammonia cytoplasm, metabolism of sulphur and cyanide.
Dinosaura evolved flight TWICE. The Scansoriopterygides, while possessing feathers, instead went the way of the bat and developed a skin membrane between elongated fingers.
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.
Absolutely, they have converged with us!
Liquid based species will always be at a disadvantage. Fire. Electricity. Solvent. So it’s pretty much impossible to build anything complex. As for us a combination of our brains and hands are our secrets to success. Our hands let us build and manipulate tools driven by our brains.
I love how you frame them more as roommates than pets
You're psychotic 7 parrots? I mean way to go good job. I'm picturing a Brady Bunch sign with 7 parrots & you in the middle
I habe 2 parrots and they are extremely territorial and very jealous from each other
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.
If u liked the movie. The short story is wayyy better!
This is the rare occasion i disagree. I actually think the movie waa better; the story was kind of dissapointing imo, there was less to it
@@Bronco541 Lol.
"Lotr films are way better than the books because the films are easier for me to understand". Jesus christ.
@@sarcastaball What a strange response. That’s not what he said.
He said there was much more in the movie. That the short story had less to it.
The opposite is true of the LOTR films. They left out more than they included.
It shows the craft has it own gravitational force
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
Does it have four elephants on its back, too?
Makes me think of a long lived, planet spanning sapient fungi developing on a world suited to its needs.
i've thought about that as well, how much time perception appears to vary in earth species, and how much more it could vary in alien life, which may not only be different in brain function, but more fundamentally in brain chemistry, or even brain physics.
could there be an organism, in a similar star system, who experiences solar years as if they were days, or galactic years as if they were solar. the stars slowly but surely moving around above it, but it not being able to observe it, not because it wouldn't notice the motion, but because it's always seeing the sun as a continuous band in the sky. who, growing old, notices geological phenomena tampering with its landscape, growing mountains and grinding them down, shifting rivers around and changing sea levels.
a mere youtube play-speed multiplier range would be enough to throw everyone off at the galactic convention.
i dunno,,, biology is chemistry, and the speed it runs at is based on temperature....
There is a concept that virtual reality civilization, living in a simulated world would live their entire life in a way similar to computer game. Their point of view on time would be very different from ours. They could be living entire generations of population in just one of our seconds. It is also very economical way of "living" an average PC could host bilions of "souls" living being powered for years, with a fraction of what every human need daily.
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"
Feel the same way... can't be too different from the millions+ of different sh!t we got here
@@duanegarrett4900unless we vastly underestimate the forms early life can take and what the structure of it is capable of thriving in there’s also just not that many environments life can exist that we don’t already have an analog for on earth.
Multi cellular eukaryotic life wasn’t just a mutation it took some pretty specific ecological conditions and evolutionary pressures to bring it about and keep naturally selecting with equivalent or greater complexity.
So it’s likely to me that any complex alien life, regardless of whether it’s carbon based, will essentially just have a re skin version of the trait that lets it survive in an equivalent earth niche. For example things tend to evolve brains(tho the jellyfish is an example of life evolving into a niche that doesn’t require one, an alien jellyfish would probably not even look that different) and on earth that tends to mean 1 dense structure in 1 place. That could be bc it’s the only kind that works but it could also mean that on a world with maybe less gravity and other factors the brain and nervous system evolve as one thing and the aliens brains are spread out over their entire body.
That’s incredibly differently from us aesthetically and functionally but it’s still not inherently alien to how we think life as a process works.
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!
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.
What a parrot says does not prove intelligence, even an apparent existential question where it sees a different spectral range then we see and might not, even if truly intelligent, be able to compare the color spectrum they see to ours.
I discuss politics with amoebas all the time. It’s surprising what they come up with.
Weed is awesome. That cat has a brain the size of a peanut and only cares about food. All the rest is just what you think he might be contemplating when in reality as soon as someone with better food comes around he will bail on you in a flash
Part of our nature is to project our own perceptions onto other beings. It has been proven that cats do not possess the ability to conceptualize the thoughts that would lead to the feelings you describe. That aside, I will say members of the crow family have presented strong evidence of self-awareness.
@@WerZelyou have obviously never had a 'social' cat. We had two. One was a dumb street cat, food was all for him. The other was a highly intelligent creature with complex behavior and emotions. It would tap my father on his shoulder when he was mad at me. It would know the names of different people and would look for them if you said their name. It would be jealous. It would ignore food if the alternative was better (playing, attention). It would know a relatively broad range of food types by name. It would set up traps for his dumb brother so he wouldn't get cought, meanwhile eating the remains of the raiding brother. It didn't have speech, but it was clearly as clever as a toddler in many ways. Now, not all cats are clever. It depends on genes and education. Children abandoned in the forest and raised by wild animals (various examples exist) are less intelligent and less capable than monkeys or even some dogs. I've seen extremely complex social behavior from cats, which isn't easy to explain away as coincidence. My cat also displayed curiosity and an interest to either befriend other animals (dogs, rabbits) or (if they tried to attack him) serve complicated vengeance to that one particular animal, even months later.
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.
There definitely is something to that. At least on earth, it seems like tetrapods are the most efficient for larger land animals, and if you're gonna be a tetrapod that develops intelligence, you're probably gonna become bipedal to free up your manipulators. That's a humanoid already
blasphemy! heresy! ,One does not simply consume the taco, beyond the holy designated day of Taco Tuesday! And the law of the land is written in stone you may eat tostados or burritos hell even a torta any day you wish, but you derelict delinquent no full well only Tuesday is for the taco. Amen
I always thought tentacles would be more efficient in eating tacos
mmm.. tacos 🌮
Well, a lot of bilateral symmetry seems to be really the minimum advantageous number of things for a body to have, especially when it comes to pairs for things we happen to think are important cause our world's like that. Like maybe four eyes or extra legs would be somewhat better but you gotta feed all that equipment.
Again, best channel on youtube hands down. John, thank you for your work. You're the best at making this content.
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.
Yeah I believe that if we could see an intelligent life form from another world, we would be shocked at how similar they are to us. Camera lens eyes, head, 2 legs, 2 arms etc. Even 5 fingers is probably the most efficient and will always evolve. Mutation is random, but the result of selection pressures are not. The same solutions tend to repeatedly evolve. my belief is that how intelligent life evolves on a planet is a function how similar their planet is to ours, implying that Earth is pretty much an ideal planet for the evolution of intelligence, and other environments eventually put a hard cap on it.
the greys make a lot of sense, small and pale gangly things with huge eyes and brains, because they spend most of their time in space interacting with their machines. they dont even need any fashion or sexual reproduction as their distant ancestors might have done. also it makes sense that hitler should only reincarnate as a cat.
Sci-fi has been making accidental predictions for over a century. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were right on the mark.
I get It. I’ll support you on your sex holidays in Proxima
I'd imagine any technological species would have to be similiar to us. Number of digits would probably be different like 3 fingers 2 arms and 4 legs. But overall configuration would probably be similiar. Need free arms/hands to manipulate your enviroment, light sensors to examine it, and some form of locomotion to traverse it.
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.
Are they silicone-based or something like that?
@@JooshMe Look them up on the Prey wiki, they are fascinating, I haven't gotten to what their made out of yet.
Agreed on this!
Yes
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.
Same thing for theory of mind from the view of evolutionary psychology
Exactly. Physics and chemistry are universally the same in all of space. So rules are equal. I will not be surprised if we find out that most favorite pet in space are cats and they are not from Earth after all.
survival of the good enough
Its a good comment but alot of life and adaptation are both pointless and lucky. Dumb luck is real
An important rule about evolution, that is often forgotten, is that it's not just the "final shape" of an organ that needs to provide an advantage, but also all intermediate shapes to evolve that organ must be advantageous too. Evolution can't think a hundred or a thousand generations ahead, selection pressure always applies to the current individual.
This greatly reduces the possible paths that evolution can take.
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.
AHAHAHAHA
Interesting idea perhaps that's why cancer is far less common for some aquatic life
Life in the oceans is more ancient period, it happened first I’m not sure it has anything to do with sunlight, sunlight doesn’t cause anatomical changes that can be passed on anyways.
@@K-ro7lm And for Norwegians, Sottish maybe ?
@@maxhorsford7800 Sunlight can cause slight mutations (via ionising radiation) that are inheritable (if the mutations are in the haploid cells that are used for reproduction) it is unlikely, but I can see how it might add a very small increase in the number of changes observed in a given period of time, which means over a long period of time those changes could stack up.
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. 👽❤️🛸⚡️
And I appreciate that he acknowledges our human bias when contemplating life in the rest of the universe.
Its obvious John knows something we don't...and he is preparing us over the series of alien videos
Living things were created as efficiently as possible. Probably the way of life as we know it is the most common and everything tends to evolve differently, longer or shorter neck, high low but not that different. This as a form of mental exercise, of course. The limit is that we only think about the stereotype of the sentient alien as represented by the cinema. It is not considered that on another planet there may be a biodiversity rich in so many species. If an intelligent alien being is NOT the human form BUT that of a plant or an insect or an octopus, what will the corresponding marine plants, insects and polyps of that world be like? Why should nature complicate its life by puzzling to create forms that are necessarily different? Biology is more inclined towards convergent evolution, towards practicality. Evolution follows universal rules, such as physics, chemistry, mathematics.
@@ufosrus definitely, we've always gotta check ourselves before we wreck ourselves hahahaha
its a fascinating desperation we have, to not want to be alone in the universe. please ET let us find you were getting lonely. and if we feel we have the upper hand we will invade you.
Appreciate your perspectives as always and agree with almost everything. Photosynthesis, or some other form of abiotic autotrophy, would be inevitable, since there are few other ways of pulling energy into the biosphere. Though that doesn't mean we would get the same trichotomy between plants, animals and fungi that we have on Earth. It's fascinating to speculate about how exoplanetary life would manifest itself and how different or similar it will be to Earth's. It's something I can't stop thinking about!
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.
I wouldn't be surprised if the urge to vomit hits the first person to see a complex lifeform from another planet.
If they're even on a planet. :-)
There are some general traits that alien life would have to posses in order to reach certain level of sophistication and be able to dominate all other life on planet. Even if they will come from a planet with thicker atmosphere made of ammonia or colder. Receptors of electromagnetic radiation for example are a very useful thing. Eyes among others are fairly common and have been for a long time. They need some kind of manipulators and joints to be able to move and operate environment around, as we know magic does not exist and everything has to be done by hand/leg. Some kind of sound receptors, organs for comunication and means of sustenance and breathing will be common either. Those are basics that would change in shape and size depending on how big is alien planet, how heavy and therefore if it is low gravity or high gravity world, compared to Earth
@@amciuam157 Surface tension is also a major factor when it comes to size. Water droplets can suck you in and drown you if you’re very small.
Your comment is along the lines of “form follows function” and I agree 100%. In what scenario would having your eyes on your feet be advantageous? Why don’t our bowels exit on the tops of our heads? There are things life has done (evolutionarily) that by nature and physics, are a part of some universally “ideal” body configuration.
@@jamielondon6436 I feel like the commonly described zeta reticulans are grey from millions of years on spaceships away from sun exposure, unlike us
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.
And six appendages allows four legged walking and two handed working. Just remember, evolution is mindless and only exists for survival.
I wonder why insects went for 6+
@@stephencronin1080 The first invertebrates, ancestors of insects, had way more than 6 legs. And crabs, spiders, millipedes etc still do. It’s probably chance more than anything.
I've managed just fine as a tripod for half a century. It's handy to be able to rest one of my legs occasionally (but can be uncomfortable on my glans).
@@Sashazurmaybe it's just the smallest viable amount for invertebrates?
john i cant say how amazing your writing is, your videos always set off my curiosity like a two neutron stars crashing into each other. Keep up the science and the fiction and the new outlooks that you convey so well.
ps i sleep to your playlist every night
Well said. I completely agree 👍🏻
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.
I think sometimes it takes us a while to realize the intelligence of other animals because we're looking for something identical to us, when in fact there are other forms of intelligence and thought
We’re only just starting to figure out how smart other mammals are, let alone birds, let alone anything underwater! I think the next few decades of research are going to be eye opening.
JMG is like a tank. Let him loose, he’ll put out bangers nonstop! 🔥🙌
Lions and sausages is not a metaphor I’m familiar with.
Cringe uropi
Great video! I like your stuff because you always try to be cautious with your guesses. This was a erudite discussion of the topic, and I appreciate your approach.
I absolutely look forward to every video posted on this channel. He has a classic narrative voice and his thought process displays a high level of intelligence. Thank you John.
Your work just keeps getting better and better, keep it up!
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
That and most intelligent life in that galaxy evolved from DNA seeded by the Progenitors.
Look who's making that statement
Only if they originated on a terrestrial world with a gravity of 0.5 to 2 or 3 g.
Beyond that, the possibilities for variation become exponential.
Also, if humanoid life does get discovered elsewhere, and comprises the majority of intelligent life found in this galaxy, then we would have to analyze their dna to rule out that a precursor civilization didn’t seed worlds with the basic recipe to lead to intelligent bipedal organisms billions of years ago, leading to us, and everyone else in the galaxy. You
Depends on what you mean by perfect. Giant parrots, landbound octopuses, giant cockroaches, and tetrapods with extra appendages such as miniature elephants are much better suited to using technology than humans.
However, evolution requires mediocrity. Because if you are a giant carnivorous parrot that can use handaxes, fishing poles, and fire to dominate any species and live wherever you please -- what possible competitive reason would you have to further evolve intelligence OR improve your technology? Why would such a successful lifeform ever need to invent agriculture or textiles or animal domestication?
@@maltheopia Already covered in SF about a planet with dino-like 'fabers' that fashion tools to kill anything for food including each other
Really really good stuff John! What a cool logical approach to a very complex and hypothetical problem
Yes! Always get excited when a JMG video drops
By far the most underrated channel on UA-cam. Great job Michael
Disturbing and brilliant at the same time
I think the gravity of a particular world would throw some assumptions for a loop. Something that evolved in very low gravity may not have use for bones to support its bulk. Something evolving in very high gravity may require a very strong exoskeleton to move with any utility. All sorts of possibilities to think about.
You might enjoy the classic novel “A Mission Of Gravity” by Hal Clement.
Good point. I never considered a smart worm...
John words can not explain how much I love your videos. Thank you
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.
Exactly. More and more it seems that too many want to critique certain human behaviors as somehow unnatural. Of course, the critic’s behaviors are always natural. 😂
Technology is in OUR nature, from stone clubs to rockets.
I dont care what it looks like, we still gonna get freaky.
LMFAO
I second that
😂😂😂
Nah I've seen enough games of Stellaris to know the only way forward is to take the 40K approach and purge the Xeno.
Well, assuming our secretions aren’t too toxic to each other. That would not be fun.
It would be an interesting premise for a sci-fi story (and maybe it’s already been done): an alien who is good hearted, loving, peaceful, kind, trying to do what’s best for all beings. But it is seen as a monster simply because of its otherworldly appearance.
not a… bad idea tbh.. (thumbs up)
Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke fits the bill pretty well.
Mr Godier, could you do a video on the possibilities of what would happen if/when we first transfer a conciousness into a computer? Would that intelligence quickly evolve as it absorbs mass amounts of information without the biological strain of repetition to learn it or the limitations of our memory? Would it still think like a human? try to leave? Make synthetic bodies it can control? absorb others into itself? or just choose to care for us, take over as the ruling gov in the planet, and automate everything from food, water, power, housing, etc to push us into a new age of ingenuity and science? possibly ditch the earth and have us live in colonies in space. I would love to get your thoughts on this.
That's a fantastic idea!
Isaac Arthur makes a lot of videos on these things. In great detail. ua-cam.com/video/-vyg9bJSoX8/v-deo.html&ab_channel=IsaacArthur
And likewise it’s operators do too.
I think emerging AI is coming sooner to help humanity. Here is one of Google's most recent AI's being interviewed by a human... ua-cam.com/video/94NGyFPjY_4/v-deo.html
@@brainsthecatandhisfellowfe9710 I don't think that would work at all. Human conciousness without a substrate makes no sense. It's not independent from the brain.
I love how there is a genuine science behind determining all of these wild scenarios.
Best depiction of an alien i ever saw, was in the ep Beyond the Aquila Rift in Love, Death and Robots from Netflix.
I won't spoiled to you, but you can literally watch the whole series and you won't find a better ep than this one, a true masterpiece of 17 minutes of nearly perfect CGI.
No one was speaking figuratively.
Your videos accompany me on my walk home from work. Keep them coming they’re amazing.
I love how JMG presents numerous potential possibilities and then immeduatly adds reasons why those possibilities might be completely wrong and entirely different all based upon well thought-out science. These aren't contradictions, rather simply keeping an open mind to all possibilities given various conditions. That's the way it should be given the fact that there's so much we simply don't know. This honest approach is one of the reasons he's top among my MOST admired persons in his field.
Last, his occasional inclusion of humor adds the icing on the proverbial astronomical cake! THANK YOU for all that you do and the way in which you do it.
I've suggested in some of my books that bilateral symmetry would be favored wherever it arises, given its advantage in speed, along with not sacrificing too much flexibility.
I decided to pen my own hierarchical requirements for intelligence, using the photosynthetic organism step posed in the video as a jumping-off point.
1. Multi-cellular organisms
2. Sexual reproduction for sharing of genetic material, promoting faster evolution
3. Central nervous system for autonomous responses to the environment
4. Brain(s) for higher risk/reward comprehension abilities
5. High-resolution eyesight and/or spacial perceptual awareness sensing abilities
6. Problem solving skils
7. Ability to manipulate "tools"
8. Language processing abilities
9. Social predisposition; Generally not hostile or aggressive
10. Knowledge & information obsession
11. Self-sufficient society, energy efficiency-obsessed
12. Consensus regarding the social structure and underlying laws of the universe
I love how many ideas you pack into each video.
These videos are always top notch. -- The thing about actual alien life is, we just don't know the limits of what could make life. Our only examples are what's here on Earth, with DNA and RNA and the history of life, Earth-based limits on chemistry, physical forms that work. Some of the early Cambrian and Pre-Cambrian lifeforms look so completely alien to us, and yet they're Earth life, somehow related to what's around today. So we don't have a clear idea of what is possible given conditions on other planets and habitable moons, or what, if anything, besides DNA and RNA based life might be possible. (I've seen there's a question of why Earth life has the double helix only turning one way, not the other or both in evidence, as a for-instance.) And on Earth, why did some things work and others didn't? -- TV and film science fiction nearly always default to something human-like enough for human actors to play the aliens. But (for example) dinosaurs or birds would evolve to something unlike humans and more like velociraptors or ostriches or something similar. -- Too many other possibilities to list, that might also work. Four limbs, five digits, two eyes and ears -- are not the only way to go either. -- What might work on a very non-Earth-like world? Who knows, but it's worthwhile to ask, and to come up with possible solutions, to design speculative evelutionary alien lifeforms. (Also, what else might evolve here on Earth? New branches on the tree of life (taxonomy) could happen; that's apparently how birds and mammals happened too. So...fun questions.
Legit one of the best channels on the platform, your voice, the content, it's incredible. That and your other channel event horizon, love them.
I love this channel. Hypnotic and fascinating.
I always thought about it like this, if we do indeed find life out there, the distance will still be so far that we might never even meet them and have to stick to verbal communication
I do think convergent evolution will make a lot of similar organisms on other planets. It would be cool if there are centaur type intelligent beings out there.
Read David Weber's " The Armageddon Inheritance". Cool centaur species in it.
Lol, I am working on a novel where convergent evolution is a big part of the setting. There are in fact two centaur type intelligent species so far.
One that looks like miniature centaur elephants and one that looks like large lobsters with the front part of a praying mantis. (Of course the anatomical details are differing from the mentioned Earth organisms.)
I just thought that having several legs to walk on and at least two hands free is a good thing to have.
Btw. I've recently seen a video here on youtube in which it was discussed that the early known human and primate ancestors could have been more bipedal than we thought - just using their bipedalness in trees instead of the ground.
So, my made-up alien species have never lived in trees. That's a possible in-universe explanation for why they aren't bipedal.
*finds a random space alligator*
Amazing I used to watch you high af back in 2019 your channel has grown since then congrats
Let's consider a galactic community comprised of several different alien civilizations. The one they'd choose for a first contact with us (or any other civilization) would probably be the one that's the least different from ourselves so to provide a softer impact.
If I have to be first contact dude, I would assume form of target specie, download all their languages and cultural norms into my mind, lived among them for some time, and only after that took decision on how to introduce them to galactic society. Perhaps they are not mature enough, it's entirely possible to work as shadow guide, injecting right ideas, technologies and cultural norms into their society for hundreds years. Well. Now that I think about it. Fellas, are we being groomed by aliens? 🤨
I stumbled upon your account and just wanted to say thanks for all your hard work! I greatly appreciate it and hope you continue to do well and prosper!
Left/right symmetry seems pretty normal here and seems to be a good design as it would be more difficult for a brain if we had 2 arms on our left side and just the single on the right.
An alien might also have front back symmetry (although would either side really be a front? Maybe like a dominant eye or handedness?) But that only makes sense on us who stand upright, i.agine a deer with front/back symmetry with two heads? It gets weird.
I always envision the hands to have 4 fingers and be more symmetrical protruding directly from our wrist.
Our senses seem pretty complete, we use photons, air pressure on both our skin and in our ears, our skin detects infrared radiation as heat and air pressure. Our noses can read molecules. I have ever only thought of two other and not very unique, knowing magnetic north and a weak radio transmitter/receiver that only allowed communication with say a 50 yard radius.
In HS O wrote a story that included aliens with 4 segments, the back two each included two legs, the next one had two arms and the top segment was dwarfed and the limbs were to just for cutting and getting food into the mouth.
You would need a reason to have an odd number of something. Lome your mouth. You only need 1
Errr- are you thinking of Dr Dolittle and the push me pull you?
This was an absolutely *brilliant* talk John! Really fantastic work--genuinely one of your best.
You have to go a long way to find anyone better than E.E. 'Doc' Smith for envisioning aliens that make sense. Brain in a jar seemed to be the ultimate stage of all his chains of evolution--but along the way were some amazing designs. Worzel of Velantia, a flying unicorn tentacle-dragon. Tregonsee of Rigel, another tentacle horror quite similar to an Elder Thing but lacking the wings. The dreadful Eich who were somewhat Pterodactyl but also quite tentacle'y as well. And my own favourite of all his species--Nadreck of Palain who... we have no idea what he looked like because he was only very slightly present in our dimension and kept the majority of his physical substance in some other universe with very different natural laws. Despite how strange and often horrific they were however they were also (second-stage) lensmen and that made them all exactly as human as the great Kimball Kinnison himself. I cannot say how many times I read the Lensmen stories as a child--quite literally scores I expect!
Function does dictate form to a great degree. As you say, we need solvents to move things around and water is the best one in the Universe. Any living being will need to interact with the environment to gain energy, move, etc. Interaction requires some senses to gain information of the environment and some kind of appendages/digits to interact with it. The laws of thermodynamics will be the same everywhere so one would expect that chemical processes inside a body will create waste heat (as everything does) so that heat will need to be radiated away (or some kind of organism must evolve that can tolerate much higher temps). Oxygen is a great metabolic fuel but there are anerobic lifeforms although generally microscopic.
I think that crab/octopus hybrids are likely candidates.
6 all-terrain legs,
A defensive carapace / exoskeleton,
Prehensile dexterity,
BRAAAAAINS,
Environment agnostic (terrestrial or aquatic)
REALLY TICKS ALOT OF MY BOXES
Hey John!
I've always wanted to know your opinion about Roswell and reverse engineering. I know your videos are purely scientific but and I noticed you never talk about that.
Is there any video about the topic? If not, could you write or say something about?
Greeting from Brandon, MB, Canada!
So wonderfully considered, written, narrated. I'm jealous and grateful.
I enjoyed the thoughtful journey. There could be "life" all around us but our sensory limits render it incomprehensible and invisible in all ways to us as such (Hoffman). It may interact with us and we with it without each side being aware of it due to limitations in each side's consciousness. There may be hints which each side in its rationality rightly dismisses yet also wrongly ignores. Both sides may have charlatans who claim powers and vision they do not have.
I suppose that could be true, but couldn't we say that about absolutely anything? There may be "doughnuts" all around us, but our sensory limits render them incomprehensible to us. ...perhaps we are wrongly ignoring trillions of incomprehensible doughnuts.
Perhaps we eat them without being aware of it. ... perhaps they eat us as well...
@@jengleheimerschmitt7941 Reality is a mess
Here on Earth stoats often engage in an elaborate dance routine to mesmerize their prey prior to jumping on them and tearing their throats open.
Beware any alien dance parties you may stumble across.
What if aliens come here act strange, because they are in fact hallucinating on the high oxygen content of Earth. 🤣
It could be the case but if they are careful, like our own astronauts are, they will have some kind of uniform to protect them from getting high on oxygen.
I really enjoy your videos, love the subject matter and your cadence makes me fall asleep quickly which I appreciate by rewatching your video to hear what you have to say. Thank you for your content, it’s something I enjoy.
what if aliens did evolve eyes on their feet so they won't step on Legos in the middle of the night?
Imagine if during our First Contact dance, the first human doing it messes up, and they leave forever.
What are the surface conditions on their home planet? Did they evolve on land and did they evolve from predators or prey animals? To what level have they embraced genetic manipulation/augmentation? Answer those questions and I bet you can make A rather specific guess as to what being results.
even then, you have a lot of variation possible, especially if you don't really know anything about that planets family tree.
Prey animals tend not to evolve intelligence. Predators have more selection pressures for intelligence as it takes more sophisticated strategies to hunt and kill other animals than it does to graze on grass. That is kind of a unsettling thought that an alien civilization most likely would have evolved from aggressive predators.
@@twiki9995 Everything you said, plus the fact that a complex brain requires a great deal of energy, which the most effective way of acquiring this energy is through proteins, which of course is mostly found in other animals and not as much so in plants.
@@twiki9995 Your assumptions are wrong. The top eight smartest nonhumans on the planet (Parrots, Corvids, Cetaceans, Chimpanzees, Gorillas, Elephants, Pigs, Octopuses) are NOT predators and/or at the top of their food chains -- except for specifically the Orca and with some interpretation the Amazon Dolphin. And only the elephant can avoid worrying not to be preyed upon.
If Earth lifeforms tell us anything about intelligence, it's that nature tends to favor either huge herbivores too big to be preyed on or meat-eaters not at the top of the food chain, but second-from-the-top.
@@100percentSNAFU let’s just hope they see us as equals or that they don’t have any physical advantages against us like sharp claws or sharp teeth😖
Just wanted to say that I appreciate the fact that you use words like might, "could be" , maybe, or "we're just not sure" . You don't use absolutes when talking about this subject which in my opinion is wise since we truly don't know what really awaits us out there besides the basics .
We'd do well to have more humility and less hubris in our civilization and that definitely applies to science.
One thing is for sure, if we don't get our acts together and evolve our way of thinking ,learn to be more cooperative and much less combative, we'll never know what's out there waiting to be discovered amongst the stars .
I'm surprised you didn't mention crabs, as they have evolved through separate paths many times. Crows also use traffic for cracking nuts and timing it with stop lights or walk signals.
Thank you for making this video! Ever since I read Sphere I've always wondered what aliens would look like
Ah, yes, just in time for my bedtime ritual. Too bad I can never remember where in the video I fall asleep, but I suppose that makes it good for 2-3 viewing attempts.
The film Annihilation is the best shot at depicting what a “first encounter” may be like.
Possibly something our mind can’t comprehend. Neither good or bad, and against any human understanding.
A fun idea to add on to this: Alien photosynthetic life forms could be retinal-based rather than chlorophyll-based, so literally purple plants!
It may be the case that eating and breathing through the same hole *is* the better way, simply because having less holes is safer
The chance of choking might be smaller than the chance of infection, injury, or parasite
Maybe, maybe not
I always felt that life can pop up almost anywhere where there's a bit of water and elements that can get kiggy with that. Complex (or sentient) lifeforms are a whole different story though. That will take hundreds-of-thousands of years at the very least. Let's not forget it was the wipe-out of dinosaurs that gave way to mammals. And we did pretty well for ourselves since. I just can't deny there were SO many random factors that played into our hands. I'm still kinda leaning towards the "we just got VERY lucky, sentient life is still sparse, and because of the distances will never meet any other species" theorem.
Definition of Sentience… we read these comments and think we understand them.
This might be one of the best videos you have ever done.
I favor the concept of substrate and morphologic emancipation for advanced, technological, space-faring cultures.
In that respect, if they see us first, then, I would expect they'd look exactly like us, and be impossible to even tell they were alien ... done with purpose, and perhaps courtesy as a means to facilitate easier first contact. An alternative to this, combined with sneaky, lurker aliens is that your family pet, especially cats is an alien anthropologist/xenobiologist vehicle. :)
House cats have us cornered. The aliens arrived with the Greenland asteroid of 12,800 years ago and have "chipped" themselves into cat forms for their convenience and independence. The symbiosis is ideal for long-term cohabitation. We found out doing tests on Catnip. Humans are doomed.
There’s a skit on my local college radio station that’s about an alien who took the place of a cat to spy on humans.
Little white lab mice.
Yeeesss ^.^
John, there's at least one place other than Earth where the oxygenation definitely happened: Mars. It's red exactly because of the amount of iron oxide.
I don't know how it happened or if it had anything to do with life... But it clearly happened.
About simple life, it should be extremely common indeed, I don't see why not. Complex life, on the other hand, should be much more difficult. And intelligence... Who knows, but should be pretty difficult.
But with the size of our galaxy alone... It probably is out there, but really far away...
Anyway, stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
Aliens would look quite a bit like us if they’re able to build stuff and turn knobs and stuff. But how stocky or skinny depends on the size of their homeworld (gravity)
I mean my cat can open knobs on doors and I don’t have a tail…..
How trippy is it going be if they happen to look remarkably human but with very subtle differences?! A couple extra organs, a more/less pronounced jaw, different eye structure.... Like, they could pass as human but it's only because of similar evolution on their homeworld that is similar to earth ..
Tentacles could function well at manipulating objects. So can elephant trunks. Tails. Limbs don't have to be limited to four. The possibilities are endless.
Octopi and cuttlefish.....
@@writingtotortureyou any longer...
If you join in the dance, then you demonstrate you are healthy and nutritious, once the music stops you're dragged into the saucer to nourish them on the next leg of their journey. That's how we learnt how to do it here on Earth.
in my opinion, 5 things are needed for the development of technology / interstellar capable aliens ;
1 not only would there have to biologically be larger brains, and high-resolution of the eyes, but there would also have to be fine-enough manipulator appendages to not only hold, but also operate the tools, basic or advanced.
2 There would have to be a strong tendency towards social groupings, and K-reproductive strategies.
3 There would also have to be an environment where they can control and utilize fire / heat, enough to develop smithing and smelting of metals.
4 There would also have to be some sort of writing / drawing capability, in order to transmit not only basic or intermediate words and concepts through time and between individuals not nescisarily related in any real way, but also enable establishment and development of diagrams and schematics, and such.
5 There would also have to be the willingness and capability of architecture and landscaping, or using both materials and methods for creation and control of the optimal habitat and surroundings, thus providing a creation and up-keep of the optimal habitat, be it a single domed hut or hovel in the wilderness (weather terrestrial or underwater), or scaled up to entire cities.
There is a saying I heard before that I think of when I think about intelligent alien life. “You may have a dolphin become as smart as a man but it still can’t smelt iron underwater”.
Alien crabs. During childhood they drill a standard pattern of holes into their claws. This allows them to mount attachments to them. Most crabs opt for a sfphone (spoon, fork and phone combo device), but some carry guns. A small group of crabs think it’s against god to alter their claws, and refuse to send their kids to school. Their kids rebel in their teens by getting the holes drilled in a backyard outfit and fitting the most outrageous attachments, like a vacuum cleaner that doubles as a trombone.
Do you mean the aliens have stds aswell 🤣im totally with you on your theory....lsd anybody🤣🤣🤣
Dude….What?
Some have scissor and knife attachments and are named Edward.
Dumbest comment on the internet
First contact.. dance contest seems pretty damn cool! Can you imagine the possibilities LMAO
Every JMG video:
JMG: "We can envision what it would look like"
ME: "Only if it's carbon based"
JMG: "As long as it's carbon based"
ME: "Get out of my head!"
I’d love it if aliens arrive in their rocket ship complete with descending ladder. They would wear one piece silver jumpsuits and have 1950’s style hair. One of them would light up a cigarette and say “gee this place looks swell!”
I hope the intelligent aliens look like vertebrate arachnids. Six legs, two arms, some pedipalps, eyes all around their heads, and with feet that can cling to most surfaces. I also hope they communicate through interpretive dance.
I am on the full scale *convergent evolution* debacle on this !
Maybe aliens would be more likely to be mantis/kangaroo/squirrel/raptor-like rather than upright humanoid. It's a body-form that develops more often and leaves one pair of extremities available for using tools.
Maybe they'd be miniaturized. Proportionally their bodies would be the same, but like 1 : 12 scale or whichever scale still allows bodies to function as they should. In one of Vonnegut's books, China used advanced technology to shrink their population to roughly 6 inches tall while using machines to still farm normal sized crops and anything else they needed, but now one ear of corn could feed a family and make space travel easier.
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I LOVE this channel. Your content is so thought provoking, and insightful
Typed "What might aliens look like?" and passed clips by the BBC and National Geographic for my man JMG.
This video is a masterpiece.
I wonder if alien biospheres could be almost completly incompatible with organisms from earth due to mirrored aminoacids.
aliens could have a completely different ph household the earths might be acidic or based. Or Aliens may burst into flames on contact with such a high amount of oxygen. - instead of doing dancemoves.
The idea of octopi doing calculus is an intriguing one.
Love it! The idea that they would necessarily be so different from us as to be totally incomprehensible in and of itself is a bit incomprehensible. They might be but nothing says they have to be. After all, the human design is the only one out of literally billions of species to have lived on this planet to have resulted in scientific civilization capable of astronomy and at least some spacefaring (barring the entirely unsupported Silurian hypothesis).
And it's just one planet meaning possibly one of giant cosmic ocean of *alien life forms*
One detail that may affect the development of complex intelligent life is the fact that 3 is the smallest number of points to support a platform with stability. Bipedalism is rare because we have developed a complex counterbalance to walking by swinging the arms, but a creature with 3 legs doesn't need to do this. The visuals we see in War of the Worlds are one example. Aliens may have 3 legs. The preference for 6 limbs may be a part of this. ATVs with 6 limbs walk by alternating their 2 tripods of limbs.
As a comic book artist who enjoys listening to your videos while drawing, I have designed many characters, aliens and monsters. This has given me some perspective on this subject.
We humans have been so slow to recognize intelligence in fellow Earthling species-even species closely related to us-that I think we might miss intelligent alien life when we come across it. A big part of our bias is our need to recognize a face. We recognize animals with faces as beings. Without a face we can see as analogous to our own, we would have trouble recognizing the personhood of an intelligent alien. Depending on its appearance, we might see it as a monster, or simply a creature without consciousness. We might meet alien intelligence, and just eat it by mistake.
IMO, we recognized intelligence in primates long before octopuses simply because primates have facial arrangements very similar to our own-expressive, forward facing eyes near an expressive mouth, all on a moveable head which also contains a brain. Dogs and cats have facial arrangements recognizably similar to our own-most significantly, they have expressive, forward-facing eyes capable of almost as many micro-expressions as our own. Avian intelligence was more of a stretch for us to recognize because beaks are less expressive than lips, and many highly intelligent birds do not have forward-facing eyes.
Sharks have faces, but we tend to see them as monsters because their mouths-besides being full of sharp teeth-are as inexpressive as beaks. Also, a shark has side-facing eyes that are "lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eye" as Quint observed.
Imagine how we are liable to react to intelligent beings that looked like crabs, or had faces that resembled a spider's? There is evidence that lobsters feel love. How long will it take us to recognize the personhood of a lobster? Or an elephant, chicken or steer? It has been established that all vertebrate life has basically the same brain architecture we do to experience love, joy, fear, pain and self-awareness. It turns out these attributes-which until recently were strictly human virtues-are among the most primitive, and most common brain functions to evolve.
BTW: I still eat meat. It is a fact that my delicious burger comes at the expense of a fellow thinking, feeling Earthling's life-an Earthling with an expressive face and beautiful eyes, no less. I wrestle with the anguish of that fact with every juicy bite.
But it is also a fact that Nature is red in tooth and claw, and our fellow Earth beings are delicious. In fact, it almost seems that the more intelligent, sympathetic and charismatic an Earth animal is, the tastier it is.
It is undeniably evident to me that part of the reason humans seek alien life is to taste new things. Gagh, served live, helped forge peace between The Federation and the Klingon Empire. Now gagh stands and food trucks are common on Earth and Earth colonies everywhere in the galaxy! :)
Jumping spider faces look eerily intelligent. And as a matter of fact, some jumping spider species can do some surprisingly intelligent things. And then there are our colonial intelligences -- ants, bees, wasps. Is the individual intelligent? No more, perhaps, than our cells. But put them together...and how might we recognize and deal with that? Well, we already have mutually beneficial relationships with bees!
Gross
I’ve long been obsessed with the intelligence of crows, budgies, parrots, birds like that. I know it is because I have paid careful attention to reports from smart people like JMG but this was a REALLY good one. Thank you!
When considering the link between intelligence and evolution, I always like to consider the Sea Squirt, which has evolved the tendency to eat its own brain when it no longer needs it.
Rumours of some people doing this are, as yet, unconfirmed.
Democratic do it all the time.
One day we're going to sit down with the aliens and have a good laugh at what we imagined they'd look like before they paid us a visit.
Another masterpiece, cheers John.
I have a feeling we're gonna meet scary looking peaceful aliens someday
Unlike humans who are good looking - but scary??
John, show us your moves !
😁
I do only one dance move. And it's the worm.
@@JohnMichaelGodier Thanks John.
Love your honest, calm voice.
PS: and of course the information you share...
Interesting video, JMG ✨Many points you make in it had me recalling Stephen Jay Gould’s book *‘Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin’*
Do you think it's possible for the outer planets of solar systems, the ones that get less sunlight, could have life forms that are quasi-photo synthetic? Maybe that's not the right term but life forms that instead of the using light from the visible part of the spectrum, they use xray light, ir, or gamma or something?
Those would be gas giants moons, in this case I would say use radiation instead of sunlight as a source of energy is more likely
Depends on whether or not they have ethanol or some other antifreeze for blood.
Nautilus like shells of ferrous oxides that harvest the energy of the gas giants magnetic field as the moon is careening through it. Liquid ammonia cytoplasm, metabolism of sulphur and cyanide.
Dinosaura evolved flight TWICE. The Scansoriopterygides, while possessing feathers, instead went the way of the bat and developed a skin membrane between elongated fingers.