How close do you think different unrelated aliens in the same setting should look like one another?

>but it's a mathematical anomaly, so you could say you're question is similar to "would people find it odd if a bunch of monkeys wrote War and Peace by banging incoherently on a thousand typewriters?"

no its not you dumb faggot. we have tons of examples in real life of convergent evolution. we have zero examples of a bunch of monkeys writing war and peace. sorry i embarrassed you though. you should just stop replying though and stop pretending you know what youre talking about

I said not that uncommon, which is to say it's not an astronomical impossibility. It's happened at least a handful of times with currently extant species, so you could only imagine home many times it might have happened in the entire life history of the Earth. Not even mentioning literally hundreds of thousands of potentially life bearing worlds.

It's not at all like monkeys creating war and peace. It's more like monkeys creating a doctor Seuss book.

Yeah, it's also not astronomically uncommon.
I'm just saying for every hot alien babe you'll find, you are going to also probably find three writhing tentacle beasts that are trying to sell you dick enhancing products.

>It's more like monkeys creating a doctor Seuss book.

considering monkeys have never created a doctor seuss book either, no its not and that a terrible example

>I'm going to post a bunch of pictures of things distantly related that look superficially similar and have similar bone structure in order to prove aliens will look like humans!

Are you twelve? Jesus Christ this is getting pathetic. Get your head out of your ass and come back here when you're old enough to post. Until then I'm not going to even address your point until you stop, reread my post, and actually think about it instead of making up your own strawman and pretending I said it.

He's talking about superficial similarities.

>marsupial wolf
Oh, hey, that's neat—
>extinct

i did read your post and i specifically pointed out what was objectively wrong about it. you should actually read my posts instead of getting embarrassed that i blew your shitty half assed post out of the water

i literally am just talking about looking similar to one another. i also never said aliens will look like humans, but yes that is related to the point im making

Turns out it took a while for people to realize that there are a finite number of animals.

A lot still haven't realized that. Or that there's a finite amount of atmosphere.
Which wouldn't be a problem if we weren't stupid enough to elect them to office.

>come into conversation
>two people making correct points while insulting each other
hm

The entire point of this thread is creatures not related in any way looking remarkably similar to each other.

Tell me a way for two species to be unrelated in any way while evolving on the same planet. Please, show me a living creature on this earth that does not use standard DNA and evolved start to finish separate from all other life on earth. I'll wait.

Welcome to Veeky Forums!

>Tell me a way for two species to be unrelated in any way while evolving on the same planet.

Well, they could evolve on two different but extremely similar planets.

Welcome to Veeky Forums!

To actually respond to OP's topic

I use convergent evolution all the time in sci-fi, but it is less Star Trek rubber foreheads and more general body shape
For me it comes down to humans being the only known intelligent species IRL so for my games I use humans as a base for what an intelligent space faring alien would look like, upright bipeds, forward facing eyes, a set of manipulator appendages that sort of thing

Still room for a lot of variation and the occasional outlier

That's kind of baloney and you know it. A mollusc eye and a mammal eye are as unrelated as you can get and evolved totally separately but both are recognizably an eye.

Unless you're trying to posit that the blueprint for an eye is somehow hard coded into the most basic single celled organism just because they have DNA.

you found me out! we dont actually have proof of aliens! damn and i thought it would be my little secret

trying the ol "i was only pretending to be retarded" approach eh? good for you

anyway the point is actually that if two organisms face the same problem in similar environments, they could end up looking very similar

Well, we have a certain amount of evidence that birds are pretty damn intelligent. Same with dolphins.

Maybe intelligent creatures with those sorts of body types never advance though because they don't have the ability to use tools.

The forward-facing eyes with bi-/tri-/or more-nocular vision really should be standard for any species that evolved to hunt, and science pretty much agrees that animals that hunt and eat meat are more likely to grow the large brains needed for sapience.
Not that intelligent plant-eaters couldn't evolve, they'd just need an environment where they could get all the resources needed for a large brain without much competition at all.

I feel like they very well could, but haven't yet.
That's why I want to, if I ever get to do as I wish freely, attempt to uplift various near intelligent species. You can probably do it within a few generations with the right pressures.

I'd think they'd both need to be able to get the resources and also be pressured by competition to evolve problem solving intelligence.

Exactly why intelligent herbivores are unlikely.
I forgot to mention that to evolve, they would take significantly longer than intelligent carni-/omnivores and if any existed on their planet, the herbivores would be driven to extinction long before they could develop even the most basic tools.

That's where the outliers come in
Those species that happened to evolve under conditions that allowed a different body type

I just like to say that a general humanoid shape is the most conducive to the development of Sentient Life but not the only one

So 90% of the aliens will be humanoid with a few token oddballs tossed in just to say "Look! We're not as bad as THOSE faggots with their rubber foreheads!"

Sure, if they evolve on the same planet, but every planet we have found with anything close to the potential to support life as we know it is radically different in just about every way. The odds of Earth's every atmospheric and astronomic state being replicated to a close enough degree that life similar to our own could evolve is so astonishingly small it has never happened after scanning around a million star systems.

Things look similar on Earth when they are faced similar problems by their environment and other life forms. Another world will have an entirely different set of evolutionary pressures, different quantities of elements in different states, different chemical reactions, even a different star. The life will not evolve to solve the problems of earth, it will evolve to solve the problems of its own world and its own environment.

I don't know how you can actually be so stupid as to make a thread on this topic and not even begin to fathom this, but I gave you my goddamn answer and you spat it back in my face then switched subjects as if nobody would notice. Get your head out of your ass, grow up, and at least pretend to be a decent human. Maybe do some research on just how rare and contrived Earth's environment is while you're at it. Any number of hundreds of environmental statistics moving one percent in either direction would make life as we know it impossible. I don't give a shit about your pictures of aquatic animals, none of them evolved to breath sulfur or survive gravity a dozen times Earth's.

If anyone else wants to discuss the actual topic of the thread, I'll check back now and then, but you have proven you are not worth anyone's time.

I say like 20% human looking, 80% developed on planets that we said "life is impossible there"

Interesting thread. You know scientists say the reason that we dont have talking monkeys is because they lack the brain power.
If monkeys were bred selecting for intelligence in a few generations you would have talking monkeys.

it's gotta be social intelligence, though.
They won't talk if you make some kind of hermit monkeys.

>Shark and Porpoise still kicking
>Ichthyosaur ded
What went wrong with reptiles?

Monkeys lack the proper vocal cords for that.
Even chimps' vocal cords are nowhere near developed enough for speech as we know it. Which is why we teach them sign language.

They are social they purely need more brain power. They can already learn language and do problem solving and math. Just abit of a push and their brain can do spoken language.

Humanoid in terms of general shape not just humans with head ridges or green skin
Head
Arms
Legs
Mouth
Eyes

The amount and placement may vary but the general configuration is the same, the idea that life or at least intelligent life evolved under similar conditions the design of the body would be similar, but you would have a species that evolved on a world with lower gravity or with fewer natural predators or a caustic atmosphere or higher radiation that would cause radical body types to occur

Thats actually a myth which is what I was saying. When I mean monkey im of course talking about apes.
Apes don't lack the vocal cords for speech just the brain power.

they need a lot more than brainpower for spoken language, yo.

Depending on the environment a climate change of even a little bit would end most of them. Most reptiles have high Attack but very low Special Defense.

sorry tryhard. go sulk in the corner and think about what youve done. next time just save your ego and keep your mouth shut. youre the only one whos really not understanding the topic

it can sort of be summed up with this. how many different ways can you really design a body to swim fast in water?

if an organism evolves in a different planet but in water...why would it always have some radical and convoluted design different from the majority of earth body types? the proprieties of water will be the same on both planets, they will both have the same problems to solves

this also goes for tool use, flying, etc

go think on this and come back to the conversation later. you can pretend youre a different user when you do if you want

This is generally a good policy, especially for making aliens you want players to interact with. "Humanoid" can be a bit of a toxic term in these discussions since so many people have vastly different ideas of what exactly it means, but a planet similar enough that a human would maybe only need an unpressurized suit or rebreather would likely evolve aliens with a body type similar enough that we could at least claim to know what the parts do, such as head, limbs, graspers, ect.

Nah, look at the hyoid bone. Humans having it where it does means we get to do a lot of tricks with our vocal cords. Other animals don't have this feature, because it means humans can choke to death while eating.

>Implying the penguin independently evolved anything
>Implying the Penguin didn't just steal evolutionary advances made by the others

Don't give him any more attention than I already gave him. He's just shitposting.

Plesiosaurs replaced them, then they died out at the KT extinction. I'd chalk it up to dietary differences. In general, fish don't need to eat nearly as much, and some, including many sharks, can and do go for weeks without eating. So in the devastated oceans post-impact the sharks could hold out for food much longer, and were also not inhaling particulates at the surface.

Disproved.

That was my general idea
I wanted humans to be able to interact with the majority of sentient species without any need for specialized equipment
In my setting only 3 of 7 sentients need a device to help them interact with humans and only 1 of those 3 needs a full body suit

I like a much higher rate of weird alien shit, so being able to share an environment with minimal protection is much more valuable and rare in my settings.

Yea, at that point it's honestly a matter of intended tone with regards to what you want the percentage to be.

To each their own I suppose
I don't tend to go for "hard" Sci-Fi so most of the things in my setting are only have the minimum of explanation necessary for it to make sense in the context of the setting

Apes can learn words. Whether this constitutes "language" is debatable, but in any case they are wholly incapable of using grammar, which so far as we know is biologically restricted to the human species.

This post implies that the are good candidates and we're not voting for them.

There aren't good candidates. We always have to choose between a couple drooling retards, and the occasional reasonable adult who gets chucked out by the parties before election day so you can't choose them.

Oh, shit, really? When?

thats why we are going to build a wall around it and make the ayliums pay for it

also trump is unironically great and has been nothing but fantastic once taking office

I prefer a huge variety of body shapes and sizes in my setting, but I do occasionally mention how versatile body suits are that enable easy interaction.

Speaking of bodysuits, what if everyone had to wear them while interacting with species from other worlds because nobodies body can handle diseases from other worlds? Everyone's worried about getting SpaceSmallpox

Things that can transmit cross-species are somewhat rare on earth. It should be even unlikely for it to be a problem with actual aliens.

I made it a human centric quirk that spreads out to other species, but it does make sense for 2 main reasons:

1. Air Composition
Different species might need different levels of Oxygen, hydrogen, and other elements that might be difficult/impossible for other species to deal with. A decent suit might be the most economical and easiest way of dealing with that. So much so that most space stations and elevators tend to broadcast information about their atmosphere so travellers can prepare.

2. Space Hollywood
The glass on space ships and stations is super tough, beyond tough, ultra tough. But that doesn't stop action movies showing it being shattered with a simple pistol and sucking everyone out I to space. All those wordy indie films mention how 'thin' it is often in a monologue. So everyone has kind of gotten it into them that such a thing is likely to happen, no matter how unlikely it is, and are always prepared for it. This habit spreads to visiting Aliumz.

>The glass on space ships

we have transparent metals in real life

i always think of any transparent stuff i see on spaceships as metal

Yeah, it came up in the Star Citizen thread, talked about how strong and resistant it was in comparison to normal glass. We joked about using it during a riot and laughing at people trying to break it.

HOWEVER, do you think that will stop Future!Michael Bay from showing it bursting in spectacular fashion?

Well, for some things that require a particlar receptor to work, cross-infection shouldn't be a problem.
For other things that don't care, and just want to set up shop in something with a heartbeat and multiply, that risk might exist.
Of course, without some aliens to test on, this is hypothetical.

>would people find it odd if a bunch of monkeys wrote War and Peace by banging incoherently on a thousand typewriters?

There's the thing...

Ecological niches and the evolutionary pressures create an influence on this, it's not simple random directionlessness. If one form is most efficient for something, that form is replicated because it is simply efficient. So many aquatic animals adopt a tapered torpedo-shape because that gets you through water the most efficiently, for example.

The monkeys in your example would not be subject to random chance, but each monkey that typed closest to the subject matter (however that is defined) would be given an evolutionary advantage, and a better chance to reproduce. Each subsequent monkey generation would be defined by its members developing a higher likelihood of typing something more War and Peace than random keys because of that selective pressure (assuming, for this example, that "War and Peace typing" is a trait that can be passed on). Eventually, you'd have monkeys typing out nominal copies of War and Peace, close enough to the definitions of the selective factor to pretty much have it down.

>tasmanian wolf

It's a Tasmanian Tiger u fucko

Any life evolving on a planet similar to earth, will eventually end up looking somewhat familiar, with minor differences here and there

Obviously is life can somehow evolve in a radically different world (debatable) then it could theoretically look quite different

Elephants and Whales bro.

Also 'sapience' is a meme. All animals with a central nervous system are sapient and all animals are sentient. Probably many without as well.

I have a setting with literally exactly-like-humans-but-with-pointy-ears-and-weird-skin-colour aliens mixed with Elder Things-tier ayyliens and more-or-less humanoid aliens in between.

Fight me.

It's make believe.
You might have silicium based aliens if you wish so, but nothing prevents life from appearing on a planet very similar to this one.
Statistically, the probabilities for both cases are the same. Rolling a 20 on your die doesn't change the outcome of the next roll.

Oh, Manchu. Shiny.

>How close do you think different unrelated aliens in the same setting should look like one another?

They shouldn't.

>humans, elves, and dwarves look extremely similar. would it be acceptable for other aliens to have such a relationship with one another?

Any setting where humans, elves, and dwarves exist and look similar to each other but DON'T claim to have shared ancestry, is shit-tier.

Providing the aliens have evolved together, it's fine to make them look the same.

>I suppose this is related to convergent evolution, if one alien looks like X, it is reasonable that another alien also looks like X

Convergent evolution is another thing entirely. It's fine to have convergent evolution from the same world/environment/life-source, but convergent evolution between worlds always looks weak.

Think of life on worlds like trees. Each world is a different tree. Each major life group is a branch, each family is a twig, and each species is a leaf.

My setting has aliens that only share similarities if they're from the same solar system, since the way life exists isn't about evolution necessarily. But races from the same world will always share more similarities than races from different worlds.