Why all aliens must look like us

Even though I have written about silicon-based life, when I think about so-called aliens, life-forms from another planet, I really mean the classic little green men. The only aliens we encountered in Rome's Revolution were the Stareaters. We came across a few more in The Ark Lords which were the 'falling blankets' and swishies. Of course we found in Rome's Evolution that the 'falling blankets' were part of an intelligent eco-system but they weren't ambulatory, sentient beings in traditional sense.

So let's restrict our definition of aliens to creatures about our size, roughly, who are autonomous (hive-minds allowed: yes, the Overmind) and intelligent and who have developed technology. In other words, potential rivals. It is my contention that they all will look like us, a la Star Trek.

Why? Because of convergent evolution. If you are going to develop technology, you need hand analogs. Which means a portion of you has to be upright and another set of limbs or tractors or tentacles would be reserved for moving, i.e. legs. So how many legs do you need? Four seems reasonable. Like a Centaur.



But four is actually too many. You don't need them. All you need is a powerful gluteus maximus (butt) to stand up straight and two legs suffice. Why have to eat and support four legs metabolically if they are not necessary?

So already, we're halfway there. We have a bipedal, upright alien with arms and presumably fingers (maybe even an opposable thumb). But what about the head? Well, dealing with the world is all about sensing things. Why put your sense organs on your feet? Wouldn't you want them as high up as possible? So you extend the torso and place the sensing devices on top of a stalk, which we would call a neck. You need to detect sensory data from a variety of energy sources. Electromagnetic (eyes), sound waves (ears), chemical molecules (nose, mouth) and so on. You need to collect the data. You may as well put the collection and decision making organ (the brain) as close to the sensory apparatus as possible to reduce reaction time and increase survival.

So there you have it. An upright, bipedal organism with a head, eyes, ears, nose and mouth on top, arms and fingers and standing on two legs. How much closer do you want? You'll see that the K'val, the plant people of The Milk Run, have evolved using a similar plan.