Dirk Schulze-Makuch - What Do Aliens Look Like?

We should not expect aliens to look anything like us. Creatures that resemble octopuses or birds or even robots are legitimate possibilities.

Key Takeaways

• Life is incredibly diverse, spanning from microscopic organisms to skyscraper-sized trees. Alien life would be just as diverse.
• There is little reason to believe that aliens would take on human-like forms. Perhaps an octopus- or bird-like creature is more likely.
• Because all lifeforms want to live as long as possible, the most advanced aliens might be fully mechanized robots.

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
What do aliens look like? Bigthink, what do aliens look like?
Inundated as we are with science fictionmovies, where aliens come in all different
shapes and sizes, one wonders whatform a real extraterrestrial would take. You
need only look at the diversity oflife on our own planet, from bacteria

(00:25):
to humans to oak trees to geta glimpse of what might be possible.
The variety is amazing, even thoughall known life forms have pretty much the
same biochemistry and all are based onDNA. Sci fi directors might look further
for inspiration to extinct species like trilobytesor the giant shark megalodon, but the

(00:46):
real pool of possibilities is surely manytimes greater. What would intelligent aliens look
like? Of course, we aremost interested in how intelligent aliens would look
ones we might meaningfully indicate with onour own planet. That would include apes,
dolphins and whales, birds like crowsand parrots, invertebrates like squids and

(01:07):
octopuses and elephants. If we throwin the smartest of dinosaurs, we can
add trudents, small to medium sized, theopods with long grasping fingers, a
tooth filled snout and a relatively bigbrain. Looking at our list, no
particular body plant seems to be favored, but all are symmetrical in their anatomy.

(01:30):
The evolutionary reason, according to arecent study, is that symmetry requires
less information for DNA to encode andallows more flexibility to develop future traits that
may be advantageous. Even if alienswere to use another genetic carrier besides DNA,
the same principle should hold. Allthese intelligent species have one other obvious

(01:52):
thing in common. They are allanimals. We don't know of any intelligent
plants or fungi the simple reason thatstationary things don't have to be smart.
Only organisms that move away from dangeror hunt food need to have some sort
of intelligence. The lion has tobe smarter than the antelope to outweed it

(02:13):
and anticipate its next move. Thewolf has to be even smarter because it
has to communicate with its fellow wolvesduring the hunt. Think octopus, not
elephant. When we picture intelligent aliens, we usually envision a large brain,
with the brain typically located in thehead. That's how intelligent aliens are portrayed

(02:36):
in nearly all science fiction movies.Elephants and whales fit the mold, but
consider the octopus, which has quitea different body plan, with neurons distributed
throughout its body, including the tentacles, and only a small brain in its
head. Notably, the octopus isthe oldest species on our list are most
distant relative in evolutionary terms. Analien, of course, would have no

(03:01):
relation to us at all, sowe probably should think more in terms of
an octopus than an elephant when imagininghow extraterrestrials would appear. We should also
consider the principle of convergent evolution onour own planet, different species often come
up with similar adaptive traits. Goodexamples of this are sensory organs such as

(03:23):
eyes, ears, and noses.There is strong evolutionary pressure to have light
sensing organs, especially if the speciesis part of a predator prey relationship.
These can take different forms, fromthe compound eye of a fly to the
stereovision of humans, to the eyespots of certain micro organisms, but the

(03:43):
principle is the same only in thedeep ocean or inside caves where no light
penetrates. Do some organisms lack eyes, so would aliens have sensory organs?
It would depend on the environment.Who needs ears if there is no medium
to transmit sound waves, and extraterrestrialswould only need eyes in places where the

(04:06):
light of a star is likely topenetrate. What about appendages? Flippers are
good in water. On land,arms and legs are more useful. Flying
seems even better. Most insects andbirds can fly, as can some mammals
like bats and even a few fish. Here, though, big brains pose

(04:30):
a problem as their weight makes flyingmore difficult. Evolutions solve this problem to
some degree. For birds, theneurons in the bird's brain are packed closer
than in our brain, and weunderestimate their intelligence if we base our assessment
only on the brain to body massratio. The same goes for trudents.
By the way, intelligence is acomplex thing to judge. While crows are

(04:56):
very smart, they are not builderslike us, likely because there dexterity is
limited to their beaks and feet.Dexterous appendages definitely would be an advantage for
extraterrestrials, either hands with fingers orclaws, tentacles or perhaps even trunks.
When I was asked in a recentdocumentary on German TV, how I would
envision an intelligent alien. I suggestedthat they might look like a crow with

(05:19):
little hands on the edges of theirwings, may be a bit more sophisticated
than the claws that bats have onthe end of their wings. In theory,
that would allow the creatures to buildthings and become technologically advanced robots.
What aliens would look like. Thediscussion in the same documentary also included the

(05:41):
possibility of aliens engineering their own bodies, which is starting to happen with our
own species. We humans already incorporatetechnical aids into our body, like contact
lenses, pacemakers, and all kindsof prosthetics. Aliens may well use mechanical
bodies with uploadable brains, or mightbe completely mechanical think Commander data from Star

(06:02):
Trek. Given the natural tendency ofall life forms to want to survive as
long as possible, I think itwould be a common trait of extraterrestrials to
shed their limited organic bodies as muchand as soon as they could. So
if you ask me how aliens arelikely to look, I would say that
in the end, the most advancedof them would be fully mechanized