Grrl Power #759 – It’s evolutionary my dear Washington Post
Fun fact, your brain burns about 20% of a resting human’s calorie needs. Roughly 300 a day – not a LOT like Dabbler is saying, she’s emphasizing her point for a soundbite oriented press. Her point is 300 calories ain’t nothing, especially when times are lean. The bad news is that while thinking really hard does burn a few extra calories, it’s not enough that you can think your way to a six pack.
It should be noted that having good depth perception doesn’t necessarily mean you’re any good at gauging distance, but I didn’t have room to make that point in the comic. FYI, in case it’s a little too small to see here, the green woman in panel five has 4 eyes. I sometimes forget to take the finished size of the page while I’m drawing it.
This page was hard to write because I’m trying to compress Dabbler’s fairly complex argument into two thirds of a page. I could have given her a little more room, but I couldn’t let go of the scissors gag once I thought of it. Which… describes 90% of my writing process for the comic to be honest.
I’m continuing her lecture on the next page, so I won’t be exhaustive here, but basically she’s saying, yes, three eyes would give you better depth perception than two, but it’s a minor upgrade. Ah, you say, but what if the eye was in the back of the head, giving a creature better environmental awareness? That would be nice, and there are probably aliens that have evolved that way, but you can’t just plop an eye in the back of a head for free. There needs to be a socket, and that either takes up space in the skull, impacting brain size, or has to protrude further from the body. So you either increase the mass of the lifeform, or shave that mass from elsewhere. Growing a body takes a lot of calories over a lifetime, and before all these species had spaceships and grocery stores, they had to survive long enough to get to that point. Don’t forget that at one point, there was some catastrophe, probably disease or a bad crop or whatever, and humanity was down to about 1,000 individuals at some point in our distant past. If that was caused by famine, what if we all had prehensile tails that required another 200 calories a day to break even?
Basically, she’s saying that every survival advantage a species evolves is great when food is abundant, but can spell doom when times are lean, so two eyes gives depth perception, two legs lets you run, two arms lets you climb and manipulate the world around you. Less is more.
Speaking of ergonomics. It would be a real pain in the butt if you were manufacturing for an alien populace. Right now, car makers have to make cars that drive on the right and the left sides of the roads, and they have to reasonably accommodate people from about 4’10” to 6’6″ I’m guessing. Plus or minus two to five inches there. But imagine having to accommodate klingons, who average about four inches taller than the average human. Well, the background ones do. The ones with a lot of dialog are curiously closer to human averages, heh. Okay, 4″ isn’t too bad. You could adjust the amount of padding in the seat. Klingons prefer less padding anyway. But what if you’re building your car for a protoss? Those dudes are like 9-10 feet tall. Now you basically have to build a whole new cab. Same thing for a faerie. They’re like 18″ tall. It’s conceivable that one of them might need an F-250, and adding stilts to the foot pedals isn’t going to offer those customers a luxury experience.
Usually the solution to this is modular ergonomics. If a faerie buys a big pickup truck, the dealership can replace the whole crew cab with a much smaller one with appropriately sized controls and seating. The advantage being it comes with a ton more storage space. That could be customized with bus-like seating, or simply enough cargo space to fit your whole tailgating party in. A grill, several coolers of beer… or ambrosia or whatever faeries knock back when rooting for sports teams. You wouldn’t even need the bed of the pickup truck for anything. That’s why most faeries go with economy cars.
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I would like to point out that a centaur has evolutionary conflicts in its body plan.
1) The primate section is based on a body that is a tree dweller that uses hands to gather and eat fruit and bugs and a short digestive tract to process them.
2) The equine section is based on a body that is a ground dweller that moves long distances to find resources and uses a mouth low to the ground to gather and eat tough grasses, and a long digestive track to break it down.
I don’t realistically see a centaur climbing up a tree to pick fruit, or bending the torso all the way to the ground to spend all day grazing with a tiny toothed mouth and have his arms dragging the ground.
P.S. Cupid’s wings aren’t NEARLY big enough to get him airborne.
Assuming the absence of body-height bushes growing a tough fruit that requires a long digestive track to break it down?
Centaur is always the stumper, see so many well made explanations for things like Mermaids and Lamia (tail is usually more muscle than anything), exaggerating the human part to be more aesthetic and not actually human, organ structures, and so on. But the Centaur body plan as a Centaur creates several biology problems with the organs and skeletal structure, become less a we swapped out a humanoid’s legs for a fish like tail or snake like tail, and more, we took off a horse’s head and stuck a human torso there. Drider’s are easier to explain.
Of course the “magic” explanation of centaurs are the offspring of a god and some horses so are less natural evolutions and more a bottle necked line descended from some freakish mutations. Things don’t always make sense to have the features they do, they just have to survive.
cupids today are based on baby grave decorations, the original Cupid/Eros had much better wings; but was also a god.
The Andalites from Animorphs solved that problem, by moving the mouth(s) to the bottom of the hooves.
there are other problems…and that solution only makes many much worse problems from a realistic physiology stand point, few creatures walk on their mouths for a reason.
one problem of the centaur is the air intake, tiny human mouth and nostrils on a massive horse body has serious breathing problems even if it has two sets of lungs, it has a hard time filling them to power the muscles of the horse body.
You could adapt the avian lung structure, and make the lungs in the human torso basically a counterflow gas exchange system — air flowing in toward the horse torso, blood flowing in the other direction; this is a much more efficient mechanism to move gases back and forth between the two. The ‘lungs’ in the chest then become, in essence, bellows driving the airflow. This would result in the chest not expanding/contracting as the centaur breathes. If you’re not limited to keeping a humanoid face, making the nostrils purely an intake and the mouth purely exhaust would make it possible for a centaur to keep talking continuously without having to stop to inhale.
Pretty sure in the original Greek mythology, Centaurs were pretty heavily carnivorous.
But it has been a few decades since I last checked. I might be misremembering.
Not to mention humans are omnivorous and equines herbivores, totally incomplete digestive tracts. If you are going to give a quadruped herbivore arms then forget the human bit totally and start with a giraffe as a base. Although maybe swap out the ruminant digestive tract for something simpler.
Damn autocorrect. That should be incompatible.
The mention of faeries and F-250s made me think of the novel Truckers by Terry Pratchett, the first in a trilogy about Gnomes using human comveyances. Worth a read if you have the time.
I have a few stories set in worlds with different sized peoples, in one of them, the left (driver side) seat has been replaced with an elevated driving area with controls for the smaller driver while the right side has a human-sized steering wheel and such. All of his personal luggage is stored under his driving module while the wife and kid’s stuff is in the trunk.
But now I’m imagining a tribe of faeries working as long-haul truckers, their entire community built into the cabin.
A lot of my own followers are doctors and biologists, so I talked to them when I was writing my webnovel series. I wanted to make it so that a drider would have a realistic answer, or at least somewhat nonstupid answer, for its skeleton and digestion.
Basically its spiderian parts have endo and exoskeleton, and the humanoid is just endo. The human tract and spider tract are merged but the entire length, which is able to break down human diet foods and to consume things outside that range, it digests it externally.
Clarification: Externally from the spider body. A drider can eat and digest anything a spider or human can, but don’t have much preference whether they chew it up in their mouth and swallow or barf on it then eat it after.
Another way this can be dealt with is simply have them secrete digestive enzymes into what they are going to eat and then you just stick in a straw, or make a whole and drink the juice. Shuckle juice, come on, everyone loves Schuckles!
Shuckle agrees with you!
https://youtu.be/KzZqxkkUHLc?t=61
That’s a mistake a lot of people make- all Herbivores (or at least most- looking at YOU, Koala and Panda!) can digest meat proteins. Horses are actually opportunistic carnivores, and will eat small animals if they can get them sometimes. And there’s deer in Scotland that actively hunt birds for their salty blood.
It’s easy to digest proteins and fats, it’s hard to digest carbohydrates and cellulose. Obligate carnivores (cats) cannot eat plant matter for sustenance. It makes them sick, ’cause their digestive system can’t grok it. But an elephant, if it were so inclined, could eat a lion. It… probably wouldn’t be a great idea, due to parasites and digestive shock and stuff, but it wouldn’t really make the elephant throw up. (Can elephants throw up?)- so an omnivorous diet for a Centaur would be fine.
What I’d be more worried about is what precisely is in that upper torso? There’s not really much need for a whole secondary digestive system or heart or lungs or whatever. Is the upper torso just pure lung tissue? If that’s the case, are there lungs in the lower torso?
For those deer, it isn’t (or at least not mainly) “the salty blood” it’s the calcium in the birds’ bones because the deer need a lot of that element for re-building their antlers every year: That hunting takes place in areas, such as the Scottish highlands, where the underlying rocks and thus the local vegetation are low in it.
Reindeer, whose normal winter dietary staple of ‘reindeer moss’ is okay on calories but short on some other essentials such as proteins & fats, have been seen consuming lemmings, carrion, and even (for the biologically useful “fixed” Nitrogen content) ‘yellow snow’!
Taur is any 4 legged body. It could just as easily be a carnivore or omnivorous four legged body. Being 4 legged is hardly restricted to herbivores.
only when it is a four legged body with a humanoid torso sticking out where the head should be.
It is a popular fantasy, then general fiction use term; grossly mis-using the original Greek, mainly that Centaur is shortened from Kentauros, while Minotaur is used with Taur specifically meaning “bull”
we are looking at popular culture changes to a term.
I remember reading a comic where they made the argument that centaurs (and any other creautres that were -taurs) are actually more like mammalian versions of insects in how they are structured :)
“The primate section is based on a body that is a tree dweller that uses hands to gather and eat fruit and bugs and a short digestive tract to process them.”
Ehh, sort of?
Obviously, many primates live in trees, but Centaurs aren’t any primate, they are specifically humans.
And humans do not live in trees, we are built for long distance running in plains, where there are few if any trees. We are not very well adapted to climbing trees, we gave that up when we got rid of the hand-feet most other primate have in exchange for the standard human running foot . And that strategy is perfectly compatible with a horse parts.
Now, obviously, the odds of any unrelated species looking at all like a human or like a horse in any respect is practically nill, but that’s a separate point.
I would just like to point out the disturbing imagery of centaurs having two rib cages
So which part doesn’t? The human torso part? Or the equine part?
I had never considered that before – but apparently plenty of other people have imagined it in great detail.
Also, if you think that’s disturbing, check out visualizations of the reverse centaur.
A six-limbed being (that uses the two forward-most limbs for holding things and the others for walking) wouldn’t necessarily need to be a “classical centaur” (human head, human upper torso and arms, equine upper torso and legs, and equine lower torso and legs). Just as most vertebrates on Earth have up to four limbs because their common ancestor had four swim fins, the descendants of a six-finned creature could have up to six limbs. Just as with the descendants of the four-finned creature (whales have hip bones but no hind legs, and snakes have no legs), not all would have the maximum number of limbs. So, some of the six-finned creature’s descendants would have six legs, some would have two arms and four legs, some would have just four legs, etc.
Without any hint of scale, you are making an assumption based upon limited data. The smaller the flyer, the smaller the wings required to fly.
Abbadon shopping on a galactic Quick-E-Mart… thats actually pretty original
Can’t be Abbadon, he still has both his arms attached.
I like the nod to the Starship Troopers bug. :)
Abaddon is Choas Undivided’s Champion, this particular Choas Marine mentioned Slaanesh specifically
ps i know it’s Chaos, it’s a reference to Emps TTS where they swap it to Choas to stop all the “heresy” banhammering, specifically in the Podcast
I see you too are a man of culture! Emperors TTS Device is one of my fav Youtube fan series XD
I’ll need to ask Mother Tiamat, about that, they are some trademark issues. You do not want Mother Tiamat angry with you.
Ergonomics is one of the things I find myself in world building mental exercises focusing on, along with biology and what kind of technology various species would develop.
I’d add that a terrestrial species (a sapient species with not only the need/desire to explore and be inventive and free dexterous limbs) has some advantages over a marine species and even over aerial ones when it comes to the race to get to space; mainly in the need or capability to develop of tools, vehicles, and complex technology.
Let’s take the basic idea: cart, wagon, wheel.
a way to transport your food, goods, family, whatever, over any given distance. A terrestrial species has a need to transport these as much as possible as fast as possible, so ends up not just with a cart but also wheels, and changing dirt paths into roads for extra safety, and constantly improving on this, as well as making boats to stay out of the water when transporting themselves and these goods; and eventually flying machines to maximize distance.
Now a marine species has hurdles such as available material, the 3-D environment, and the fact they have no need for roads or wheels and their environment hinders powered motor developments. Add the first factor of materials and you end up with the buoyancy problem, too buoyant and their cart becomes a struggle, not buoyant enough and they are dragging it. When I came up with the early Fish Men backstory the added issues of Earth’s marine predators making these a major hazard for them early on to be transporting anything like that, that slows them down and exposes them, and the limits on making weapons in a marine environment. So simple machines will be slow going to make without a need and complex ones rather difficult given the environment.
Aerial species have other issues, one being (WHY) invent ground based vehicles when you can physically skip over all the terrain limitations naturally, get enough aerial life forms together to help carry stuff or figure out ways to get items up in the air, basically a species that ends up inventing balloons and kites before it ever thinks to work with axels or moving parts, but not as held back as marine as making gliders, flying machines to lighten the load even if not as vehicles.
I will add it is nice to see the brain to body ratio and conflict of calories between them being considered for biological creatures.
Here’s a tough one for a non-amphibious marine species developing spaceflight-capable technology: How do they develop the integrated circuit?
Even if you give them human-or-greater intelligence, the necessary dexterity, and a cohesive, long-lived culture to develop technology, and the actual need and desire for technology, unless it’s basically a deionized freshwater environment dealing with electricity is a major pain, since air is a great insulator and water with any amount of salts in it is an extremely good conductor. Sure, it’s possible, but even getting starte on that tech development tree would be exceptionally difficult.
One of the reasons I feel Earth may have developed sapient life before, and some animals may qualify as sapient now; but due to physiology, lifespan, or else environment could never have reached a complex tool, agricultural, let alone industrial level; and any sign they ever existed erased by the passage of time.
a bunch of wood and stone huts aren’t going to be all visible as ever having been there 30 million years later. Heck there are octopi who make little towns *two such towns identified at any rate*.
Heck if humans had never industrialized the amount of change done to the planet could have within a few million years been nearly completely erased simply by time and natural disasters. Heck even today if we fast forward 200 million years the only signs of human presence would be enriched minerals, a substance found only in one layer of strata (plastic), and lots of holes deep in the Earth (subway tunnels, tunnels in mountain sides, mine shafts; have the longest lasting potential, but not anything in them). A thought experiment I saw once postulated that if an ideologically limited *we are the only intelligence ever* species shows up 200 million years after humanity’s extinction they’d likely write off the enriched minerals as some upheavel cataclysm that occurred, same with the “mysterious substance, maybe a meteor hit?…they don’t know*, and the tunnels could be old lava channels or some unknown giant soft tissue worms existed in the distant past.
But yeah, as far as limited to simpler tech, if a smart marine species popped up and then died off at some point in Earth’s history they were unlikely to develop much of anything people today could recognize as signs of intelligent life or last at all. It is a massive hurdle to overcome.
I read something from somewhere that at least used to be respectable (I swear it was National Geographic but not swear so hard that my confidence is over 18%) that one of the subspecies of humans was some species that evolved to be exceptionally intelligent- but once they got to that point, they realized that the smarter you are, the less you mate, and without an unintelligent populace for species maintenance, extinction is close at hand.
They mostly went extinct, though I think some other article mentioned various previous human species who we have small traces of DNA in common with, and they were one of them.
Boskop’s Ape possibly, there is arguments in the anthropological community if this was a separate species or just a localized genetic disorder resulting in a very large head (same thing with findings of giant skeletons and three fingered skeletons in some parts of the world);
Some in the UFO community though believe this big headed sub-species of humanity are what the “Greys” really are and not aliens or time travelers, but rather a small population that advanced so quickly that it lives separated from the rest of the world in craft that hide in the bottom of the sea and other deep bodies of water.
>cough< Don't get ahead of me guys. :)
:D Just be happy that you have an intelligent fanbase!
Some authors get snotty when readers guess (correctly) what is going to happen
You are going on the assumption that electricity is the only form of power that could achieve these advancements. With electricity being a limitation, that just means that the first form of power won’t be electricity. Perhaps that water-dwelling sapients developed a form of chemical energy or radiation-based energy. Maybe we rely so heavily on electricity BECAUSE it works so well in the environment we live in.
The Barnacles got lucky, they found a chemically reactive acid that didn’t dilute in salt water.
Water is a pain in the butt hurdle for power sources chemical and active power and otherwise. Manual is pretty much your go to underwater unless you can get out of water and experiment there. Which if you have an amphibious species or one that out of scientific curiosity can get out of the water long enough *maybe with a water tank and suit on* to experiment with compounds and how they behave different out of water as opposed to in it and make some discovery they can isolate and use for their own kind underwater once they figure out how.
Of the fundamental forces EM is the one that is easiest to manipulate. Strong/Weak and Gravity not so much.
Easiest in air. Who knows what one might observe if they were limited to underwater resources…?
What sort of tech and ergonomics might an equine species develop, specifically the my little pony equine creatures? This is something that myself and several other mlp fans have wondered about, given how various tools and structures are the same as in our world even though it doesn’t make sense for horses to want to use such designs, like hammers, door knobs, and pencils, given their lack of fingers. How might the presence of the Unicorns’ magic impact this given that pegasi and earth ponies don’t have this?
Reading the part below the comic, I am reminded of this old thought experiment, based on the idea all of humanity was going to be transformed into 5 inches tall or so winged pixie like creatures by some celestial power but it handed out pamphlets to get you prepared, what to expect with your new body, dangers, changes in diet, how to adjust your home before hand for optimal results.
Your Guide to your new life as a pixie
https://www.deviantart.com/rhuen1/art/Your-Guide-to-your-new-life-as-a-Pixie-572323970
ok, now explain boobs.
Some of the earlier comments went into that. I’ll just hit the basic talking points.
1. Boobs were used as a marker for health and ability to successfully birth and raise children, subbing in for butts when we became bipedal.
2. Boobs deal in milk production, with larger ones capable of producing more and thus feeding babies.
3. We are still subconsciously thinking of these things even though we’ve reached a stage in our evolution where it’s not strictly required.
Well essentially boobs are people who never bother to read previous comments, and thus end up posting questions that have already been addressed.
and the great lesbian..sometimes bi, pan, and can turn into a hermaphrodite goddess said, let there be tits.
Although we do have that one alien who mentioned humans specifically and showing off their “nursing sacks” so chances are the humanoids we’ve seen have either been of human descent or a panspermia tampered with species…or non-canon cameos of other artist’s characters and creatures in the background; on Earth its because every supernatural creature was made from humans one way or the other. chances are demons are also modified humans.
Human boobs, from an evolutionary standpoint, have been a topic for many decades. Without getting bogged down in all the various postulations one needs to remember three fundamental aspects of evolution.
1. It does not have purpose.
2. It does not operate in isolation.
3. It does not favor the efficient but rather the practical.
There are examples of each of these all over the map. So, how do you get human boobs via evolution?
Again, you need to consider three things regarding the pressures that help to reinforce any change that variation affords a trait; longer neck, stronger smell, smaller feet, bigger boobs, etc.
a. What genetic level improvement to persisting those genes does the change impart? Without that, the change would not become established.
b. What advantage does it impart to the individual that improves their chances of survival, procreation, or augments existing improvements? Remember, consideration 2 above.
c. What external forces, environment, population dynamic is there to help maintain or reinforce the change? If that factor is in the distant past, why does the change persist? Are, we actually seeing a vestigial aspect, where there is no pressure to maintain a trait but also no pressure to lose the trait.
Also realize that evolution does not just work on the physical, but also mental levels.
So, with that out of the way let us look at BOOBS –
Functionally, mammals have glands that produce milk to nourish their offspring. Now consider what early forces would have reinforced this physical adaptation. Recall where early simple mammals where in the natural pecking order and what they had to deal with. (still looking at you Platypus, get it together man)
Quickly you get to animals that produce milk from distinct glands for their internally born young.
The size, placement, count, development, etc. of these glands all are affected by evolution.
Fast forward to very primitive hominids as consider the state of their boobs. Boobs develop in conjunction with sexual maturity but remain subdued except during periods of estrus (fertility cycle) and obviously milk production.
The reasons for this should be apparent:
– signal sexual and physical maturity
– signal sexual receptivity
– functionally support offspring (persistence of genes)
– reinforce social structure, bonding, nurturing behaviors, etc.
To cut to the core of it –
Human female boobs are doing several things at one time.
A. They develop to demonstrate sexual maturity to the males and the group.
B. They stay enlarged which parallels the continual receptivity of the human female, unlike the annual cycles of other primates.
C. Persistent engorgement acts as a cementing force on males and the group as a whole helping maintain interest and support of the male, generating ambiguity in the fertility status of all females, and increasing the overall cohesion of the local group.
D. Overall breast size supports a longer infancy of humans which is a byproduct of our socialization, maturation, and increased need to “learn” in our youth.
Nitpic
One large eye is not necessarily better. You could vary the focal length rapidly and still get depth preception out of it. (think dolly zoom!).
Birds also do something similar, since despite having two eyes, spacing means much of the field of view doesn’t overlap (for the non-predator ones), their brains basically do the calculus on how fast an object appears to be moving relative to its neighbors to determine relative distance.
Think, like if you look out the window of a car, the streetlights right next to you on the road whip by, but a row of trees in the distance appears to pass more slowly.
The major downside to one giant eyeball is redundancy. We’ve got two of the buggers, so if we lose one, we’re still good to go. A cyclops loses its only eye and its blind.
Also, they’d have slightly worse overall vision, since an eyeball is big and squishy with little supporting structure, it deforms under the force of gravity (astronauts in microgravity see better!), the larger eye would deform more than a smaller one.
She was referring to one eye being better than none at all. Then that two is better than one and so on.
Varying focal length is only possible once the lens has evolved – current school of thought is that directional sensing and image reception developed before the eye had a variable focus lens. If so, binocular vision would be the only way to get depth perception.
While everyone is nit picked the topics her, Dave made a art mistake. panel 1 and 3 dabbler has no body, just a floating head and a hand.
I thought he did that on purpose.
I’ve seen it numerous times in anime when they are ‘splaining things.
Though I’ve usually seen it with a solid background.
He gets an artistic license pass on that since he included a boob window later on.
I think it’s mandatory that Dabbler have a boob window. Part of her contract.
Why bother with the time and effort of drawing a body that’s gonna be entirely behind a word wall?
Those are referred to as ‘talking heads’ (as opposed to Talking Heads :p ), and has been used a few times already in this comic
Is that the land ram from damnation alley?
Wrong name, butt yes (or potentially, the Ark II)
Yes, but it’s called the LandMaster. Land Ram was Battlestar Galactica. :) The LAndMaster is superior in that it’s articulated, and had those nifty triple wheels that could deal with taller obstacles, and provided water propulsion fo the amphibious function as well.
Dave’s comment section describes modifying cars for various life forms. I am pretty sure that the giraffe retrofit model would have a mandatory sunroof. :-)
Heh, check out books by Richard M. Scarry, he drew pictures of vehicles designed for different sized and shaped animals :)
When I was young, I read a ton of Richard M. Scarry books. One of my favorites children’s authors.
And to your point, some of those animals picked humorously inappropriate vehicles (the water buffalo in the Mini Cooper sort of vehicle still sticks in my mind…).
Bah. Typo.
Sorry, DaveB.
Counterargument: Cephalopods, corvids, dolphins and elephants are among the most intelligent critters on the planet, and none of them follow a humanoid body plan.
Dolphins are not.
For years it was believed that they were, based on brain mass.
Then, along came medical imaging which can actually watch neurons firing.
As it turned out, the brains of water mammals are encased in insulating tissue to protect them from icy temperatures.
Dolphins only turned out to have a neuron network equivalent to a herd dog.
At least they are still smarter than gorillas.
Good. Hate the bastards anyway. Still, the rest of my point stands.
Counterargument to what? I didn’t see anyone saying they aren’t smart. They aren’t developing tools any time soon, though.
Some already do. Corvids are well known for fashioning tools as well as using human tools to their ends (like dropping nuts on crosswalks for cars to break and then waiting for the walk signal to flash to pick up the bounty.) Humans currently fill the niche of complex tool user, but in a world without humans, one can easily imagine creatures much like any of those potentially filling this or a similar niche.
Most animals don’t use tools, but a few do, usually the most intelligent types of animals (aside from humans and other primates). Octopuses, Crows (specifically New Caledonian crows), Otters, Dolphins, and Elephants are some of the only non-primate animals that use tools, albeit mostly very simple ones. Humans are the only complex tool users on the planet (although I read that there was a chimpanzee settlement off the Ivory Coast where the researchers discovered primative stone hammers and spears WITHOUT human help). And humans have been able to teach other primates and rodents to use human-fashioned semi-complex tools with human help.
True intelligence would (maybe should?) be when they can use one tool to create another, not simply used for a single purpose (like using a rock to open a shell)
The argument presented in this comic is pretty much total baloney from a real world perspective, although I’m sure that’s obvious. This planet alone is chock full of creatures with very, very different forms than humans, and exactly none of the arguments presented offer any reason to think those other paths are any less likely to produce sapience than the human one. A completely different planet would always have different evolutionary pressures than Earth does, and the odds of *any* eyes evolving on a planet where the star emits a different spectrum of light than ours are pretty slim, let alone two or five or whetever – and all stars emit different spectra of light than ours.
The efficient number of limbs is directly influenced by the amount of weight they need to support. A larger or smaller planet, or a planet with a much denser or less dense atmosphere, or whatever other knob you want to turn, will always dramatically change what life performs successfully, and there’s zero reason to think that the two-legged kind, or even the any-legged kind, would have any kind of consistent advantage. Titan has an atmosphere that’s 45% more dense than Earth’s, and that’s enough that, if it were habitable, flight would be very easy to achieve. On a world like that, birds wouldn’t have to sacrifice bone strength and head size in order to fly, and their inherent evolutionary advantages would be very strong. How would two-legged creatures fare there? I’m going to guess: poorly.
I think it means in terms of sapient life like humans and whatever the other guys species are have a very adaptable form since the humanoid base can apply to a long set of circumstances where most non humanoids require a specific niche to thrive. We may not thrive in any one niche as well as a specialized species but we can survive a greater number of them
There’s also the issue of Tool Use. While a cetacean might be sentient or even sapient, and might be part of a larger cetacean society, they’re not gonna be building a rocket ship and visiting Tau Ceti Alpha. Kinda puts a damper on interplanetary relations.
I actually really like how Schlock Mercenary did it- Humanity, once they got the technology, began communicating with other intelligent Terrans, giving them the means to communicate back and participate in our politics- eventually figuring out ways to allow them to fully participate in galactic culture along with humanity. And while “Uplifting” might have some odd ethical concerns, it’s also a lot less ethically concerning than a lot of other stuff you could do with that tech.
On the other hand, Octopuses, crows and elephants are quite capable with their own manipulators without following a humanoid body plan.
Also dolphins.
instead they follow the equally baffling fish body plan, fin limbs and a dorsal fin…the dorsal fin, what randomness of mutation returned the dorsal fin to both a reptilian marine animal and mammalian marine animals. It is stranger to me than one of many four limbed animals standing up and using its hands to grab stuff…hell we have tons of animals with similar traits (bears, raccoons, some lizards, frogs, ect…) just need that push to stand up straight and use the grasping front appendages more often to select for the most dexterious to breed on and you have your “humanoid” basics).
but a dorsal fin? so random like hey..Icthyosaur…here’s the dorsal fin back…dolphins and some whales? here ya go too. Its not ALL marine reptiles and mammals got them either.
Back on this I would argue an Elephant’s trunk isn’t as useful for complex actions given it is just one “appendage”, has to be breathed and smelled through, and only has the one finger like muscle on it. Also elephants fall into a “no pressure to use tools” category. Why build a spear or a club when you have daggers coming out of your face and a massive body? The only real threat they ever faced has come from one species and they are too far behind the tool game to make something that could fight back so anything they could make now they are physically better than, like this comic says, if you are strong enough to throw a car, chances are you hit harder than it does.
octopuses and corvids have a life span and social structure limitations on developing complex societies and tools. Learning to use and take advantage of what is already there sure, understand, develop, and pass down that knowledge to new generations or share with others of their own kind, not so much.
Octopuses struggle with the fact they’re not social nor do they raise young past hatching, so knowledge dies with them. Imagine if humans were solitary, like most big cats, only coming together to mate, yet having the equivalent intelligence we do now. Doesn’t matter how smart we are, we wouldn’t get far. Corvids already develop tools and use them in some stunningly complex ways.
*stops hesitating and says it*
Okay, so we know from 9/11 that women that acquired PTSD from the tower attack had their embryonic fluid altered chemically from said PTSD, and their kids have it, too.
We know Coco could speak human language fluently (sign language) since she lacked the physical capacity for human speech.
If we taught far more gorillas sign language, or large groups of other animals at least one language and some tool use, would subsequent generations become increasingly adept at them? Yes I’m talking about genetic memory.
The example you gave is more is an example of epigenetics than ‘genetic memory’. The stress hormones released by PTSD affected the embryo’s development, leading to a greater risk of PTSD. Read the actual science, not the overhyped version in pop science
https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/90/7/4115/2837310
I mean, when you think of it, some artistic license is necessary.
The question being posed is, essentially, “Why do aliens look humanoid”; if aliens exist in real life, it can generally be assumed that they do not. However, humanoid aliens DO exist in the comic, so there needs to be some semblance of explanation as to why. No explanation given will perfectly pass for real life and all we can do is, as writers, get an explanation that covers as many bases as possible with as few flaws as possible for the explanation.
When all else fails?
This is a world which, quite explicitly, features: magic, supernatural creatures, and superheroes. Who’s to say that those are limited to existence on just Earth? Magic can explain a lot; supernatural can explain a lot; other aliens having superpowers can explain a lot.
Add them all up and this explanation, while perhaps not as perfect as it could be, still is pretty decent as far as explanations go–plus, the exposition as DaveB said in the comments will continue next page so maybe some of the flaws in Dabbler’s explanation this comic get remedied in future comics.
I don’t think it’s a particularly baloney idea at all. In fact, based on our current knowledge, the hominid bipedal form seems to be incredibly useful, far moreso than other forms, considering our supremacy on the planet, despite being physically inferior in many ways to other animals with different physical forms.
I think the fact that the person making this argument about how “the human body plan is the most efficient” actually has 4 arms… is a pretty blatant wink from the author that this is not supposed to be accurate.
Well… technically 3 arms. She’s not as good a swordswoman as she wishes she was. :)
I also think there was a tail at some point. But that is a tale for another day.
” How would two-legged creatures fare there?”
All birds are two legged creatures, so quite well.
Not really. We don’t have a second data point to compare against.
However, let me ask you this…. in a foot race against any of those near-humans, who would win? Usually the human.
In a dexterity competition against any of those near-humans, who would win? Usually the human.
If you listed the top ten things that give us versatility and cultural advantages toward sapient development, and then measured each other species against them, I believe you will find that the humans have traded off extremes of certain things for high minimums of others, and extremely high averages of still others.
If biology has taught us anything, it’s that species optimize to their niche. There are two different species of fish that have developed magnetic radar. They both live in murky water, have rigid bodies and a single fin, and use magnetic detection to locate their prey. One has a fin on top, the other on bottom, and genetically, the species are completely unrelated.
It is entirely possible that any creature that developed tool-using sapience would converge on roughly human musculature due to the needs of the niche. We’d need a couple more examples of actual species that made it before we could say what part of “human” is species-specific, and what part is niche-specific.
Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Throne of Khorne!
Death to the followers of Slaneesh!
Little threat, to me s I am a Polymorph, Mother Tiamat, could take care of him and his entire cohort.
Thank you, I always appreciate logical scientific explanations of why “humanoids” in Science Fiction look so similar.
I have tried explaining it before, but I am really bad at explaining things so I usually just link to things. I suspect that this page will get a lot of traffic from people trying to explain parallel evolutionary theory.
This may explain why so many sci-fi aliens are humanoid, but it still doesn’t explain why so many of them speak English.
See previous answer, sexy fun times and vacation hours.
As for non-comic related… It’s why UFOs always hit Roswell, Japan gets harem and giant monsters to off set the harem variety pack… And if something survives for a year it will have Rule 34… Not even non-sentient products or objects can stop it.
The Doctor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svi-fBXZzqI
If you watch the movie in Japan they speak Japanese.
MST3K mantra time.
-Although that said it was a tad disappointing after both Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain Marvel mentioned translators that the Avenger movies just ignored that.
I like how Farscape did it.
– Three different episodes had to do with it!
— episode 1 had John hear the aliens native languages normally. Zan was screechy and super fast-paced, though she’s exceptionally laid back
— the Ancient’s simulated Earth had Dhargo sound super aggressive and unintelligent, but he was trying to calm people down
— Actually being on Earth, someone said that even giving the translator injection to the politicians didn’t make a difference. Just because someone can understand your words individually, it doesn’t mean they are listening or want to understand your message.
Just remember that Dabs is a certified genius. Totally hot stuff on so many levels.
Now all I can picture is a tiny fairy 18″ inches tall driving a ford truck wearing a palid shirt and a torn pair of jeans with a stalk of whet in the corner of their mouth and oversized aviator sunglasses. Just a super redneck fairy driving a ford truck talking about the crops this year
*wags tail*
Dabbler gets points for saying “panspermia” without giggling. I can’t even do it and I’m not a sex demon.
This is strip is far more world-building than storytelling.
If that guy worships Chaos Undivided, why is only Slaanesh’s recommendation being considered?
Mother Tiamat, is the Chaos Dragon, A goddess!
The vehicle in panel 5 is from the movie “Damnation Alley.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landmaster
Yes, as mentioned early on page one :P
Or it’s Ark II from… the TV series “Ark II” (that came out a year earlier :P )
Nah, the Ark didn’t have the triple-roller wheels.
I think it’s a funny cameo because the Landmaster (that’s what the vehicle was called) is also a great example of ubiquitous redundancy.
Btw I’d just like to mention I just happen to like to debate stuff :)
Same here, as long as it doesn’t devolve into personal attacks :)
depending on my current mood, I will debate, research, collect and share information, or toss dynamite into a firepit.
*Comes to a new page late in the day and thinks “now why would Pander toss that out there after the last strip’s political flamewars? Surely we can do something less divisive today, like interstellar commerce and and FTL theories, or maybe how to make a comfortable barcclaw phaser…”
[…reads page 1 of today’s comments…]
“… oh. Oh my. Maybe I’ll just come back Thursday…”*
I don’t even intend to recheck that page, whatever last comments were that was then, this is now. I posted something like 2am before this strip came up, and stopped caring the moment this new topic for discussion was presented. I exist in the now, ephemeral matters are of little concern *not being applicable for productive use after all reduces them to a passing conversation, no matter how passionate the topic is, if the people you are talking to are not in any position to take any sort of action then it becomes a nulled topic once something less heated is made available*.
I’ve been involved in pre-discovery for the last several days and it’s not particularly mentally stimulating :). So…. longer posts from me when that happens :).
…Does anyone else find it ironic that the Four Armed Alien with horns, hooves for feet, and giant ears is giving this lecture?
no, not really, falls well into my definition for humanoid; which is based on a visual silhouette parameter.
However this and other similar topics on here does raise a quandary.
Define Humanoid?
Does it have to have two legs? Does it have to have only two arms? Only one head? (even taken default for species as the base and not individual deformities, birth defects, and the like into account).
How close to “human” does it have to be, to be considered “humanoid”. Where is that uncalley valley for general shape located, and how far over till one starts to think “taurian, ophidian, mer-, ect…”…but then again…does someone consider these humanoid if they have the torso of a humanoid species as part of their structure?
Wuse is probably referencing the “redundant parts providing marginal utility gain for their biological cost” bit of the talk rather than saying that dabbler is non-humanoid.
Humanoid is a pretty lose concept and something can be partly humanoid or have human characteristics. Mr. Potato head is humanoid. Also ovoid. Also demonoid I guess because that’s a thing that sounds like a word demons would have to describe things that look like themselves.
Mh. I just reread that and think I should go pass out now. Night.
That would include furries!
I mean, sure? I guess? Furries certainly dress as humanoids, but given the unknowable nature of the fur suit they might be giant alien sea-horses. Actually, if a giant alien sea-horse dressed as a man would it be a furry? I mean, I get the feeling that a giant alien sea-horse would consider people pretty furry. But if you’re like, a small alien squid dressed as a giant crayfish you’re right out.
Anthropomorphic animals, sorry. Are still called furries in many webcomics.
Humanoid = can be portrayed by a human actor with basic prosthetics and makeup.
Essentially, bilaterally symmetrical (or near to it). Arms and legs are jointed, generally vertical posture, eyes and mouth(s) at or near the top one or more heads.
A Peerson’s puppeteer would be near the limit of humanoid due to the lack of arms and third leg. Naga or merperson or centaur would be humanoid as the top half is human. Thranx would not be just the other side humanoid* due to the combination of hexapedal gait, exoskeleton, and mainly horizontal posture.
* Not that there is anything wrong with that.
love the chaos terminator of slaanesh :)
Just putting this out here, but does anyone else think that creature in the second to last panel looks like Pazuzu?
(as in the actual Pazuzu not the Exorcist movie version).
Close enough
In her weird way she seems to be putting people at ease. with humor and sarcasm. I mean the part about human’s having the best body form for efficiency is a compliment
One thoght about manufacturing, stores and inventory.
When one is enough advanced, it is probably better with such a diverse population to have it made to order or at the spot, at the least for some part of it.
Think amazon with super 3d printer/assembler machine locally, perhaps just an hour away from werever they are trying to sell.
If they even have stores, (amazon like stores may be a thing out there), perhaps most things is “home” deliverd.
Warhammer 40k spotted!
Excellent.
OK, now I am picturing a faerie sixteen-wheeler, with a cab that does not take the ‘extra room’ option (i.e. that does not keep it a human sized cab, albeit that the rest of the truck and cargo is human scale). Instead it is just a bird-box like arrangement, with a big pole, to keep the faerie at the same eye-height that a human cab would be at.
This truck then turns up, outside the Archon HQ building, just behind the press conference, with its (full-size) horns blasting away. The tattooed faerie, leaning out of the cab window:
“Gratz order for Sydney Scoville, Jr. Where do you want the refrigerator shipping container unloaded?”
We had a whole “discussion” inspired by this on another forum about why the first thing aquatic creatures need to do to get past a primitive sort of stone age — is stop being aquatic.
No one was able to provide an actual way for an underwater species to develop any sort of metal refinement or metalworking. No fire, no electricity, nothing.
All the could offer was a lot of vague “could haves” that fell apart at the slightest prodding.
My first thought reading this was ‘what about hydrothermal vents’, but not only would those be very limited to find, looking into it a bit further it appears most metals have a melting point far higher than any of these vents could ever hope to get so that doesn’t work either.
We went down to roughly 10,000, not 1,000. There just wouldn’t have been enough genetic diversity with 1,000 individuals, as some would have been too closely related to breed properly.
We would have turned into the Hapsburgs.
I can imagine the banjo tunes spreading all over the world.
Technically, they have better genetic diversity than the Hapsburgs.
Second cousins are perfectly acceptable matches, as long as identical twins are not the…. grandparents, I believe, for second.
I feel the need to point out that two eyes is a liability for long range combat NOT an asset. Depth perception is only useful out to about 20 feet. Firearms instructors will often tell you to close one eye to improve your aim. And gun manufacturers know this: Ever see a rifle with a scope designed for more than one eye? Nope. More eyes would be a huge asset for things like Basketball. In fact a race with a large single eye would have massive advantages in long ranged combat.
The advantage two-eyes have over one-eye, is that two-eyes can close one eye and not be blind
All of my firearms instructors have taught that you should learn to shoot with both eyes open, for better peripheral vision.
Also, my cinematography instructor, though that was to prevent eye strain from having to keep one eye open and one shut for long periods of time.
Vaguely remember hearing or reading that somewhere, it’s one reason why snipers have a spotter: not to spot the target so much as to spot anyone coming up while the sniper is focused on the target
“Firearms instructors will often tell you to close one eye to improve your aim.”
I use both eyes at the same time, and yet still qualified as Expert, according to the DoD.
Someone mentioned evolution and giant boids, meet… Hercules Unexpected (yes, that is its official name), a parrot that was half as tall as a hyu-mon female and quite possibly carnivorous
Evolution doesn’t really tend to do “maximum efficiency” though… somewhat because animals find themselves in different ecological circumstances and what qualifies as “best” varies from one to the next, and one lifestyle to the next… not to mention varying with one’s competition’s own adaptations…
… BUT more particularly, because it favours anything that is marginally better than what it already has… but WITHOUT the ability to meaningfully back-track… nor the foresight to know it may be heading towards a dead-end, so to speak. A lot of life dies out because it went in a direction and the direction wasn’t a great one… and a lot of life has not died out yet because the direction has been okay so far, and it has been piling what advantages it could get on top of the changes it already committed to.
The four eyes thing for instance.
Imagine that for a few million years a race had some pressing biological need based on odd circumstances for having four eyes… or exhibited sexual selection for them, since that sort of thing happens a lot.
Then circumstances change. Environment gets all twisted up. Or sexual selection shifts the goalposts towards some feature that is linked with an actual advantageous feature. Four eyes might stay about, might not. Depends if their net positive influence is worth the upkeep or not, probably… OR if other adaptations that happened later became contingent on their existence.
It is MESSY … That is the point here. The path of greatest overall efficiency generally isn’t an option when you’re going into things blind, so to speak.
Yep. Or to paraphrase Kyle, the host of “Because Science” on YouTube…
“Evolution doesn’t care about perfection. It cares about [i]what works[/i].”
For example, whales. When they dive, it stores the gases [i]in its bones[/i]. Not the ideal solution, because it weakens the bone structure, but it works.
Fairies driving an F-250 would be a lot like a human being solely driving that great damn digger. Your attention can only go so far around you. A fae would have to look back nearly half a comparable mile just to back up.
Is… is that a Chaos Space Marine I see?
And Slaanesh!? Oh fuck.
The Chaos Gods running around in ANY setting spells bad things.
Chaos Space Marine!? He has no affiliation, with Mother Tiamat.
Dabbler is visibly missing her body in the first 2 panels
It’s a feature, not a bug.
Well, Dabbler is acting as a talking head, so she is illustrated thusly.
I love both character references in panel 2.
What scissors gag? I mean, I see that the place is probably called Scissors World, or at least that area of the shop is called that, but I don’t see a joke there.