Most Useful humanoid features

[Spacescifi]

Humanoid aliens are common in scifi, but not all of their features are very useful. Like once I was going to make a race that 5had adhesive hands and feet, but turns out, it's slow going. Reaally slooow. Because lifting our own body weight is hard. We heavy. In orbit it would be awesome though.

 

 

Rainbow thermal vision would be quite useful as a second pair of eyes, perhaps on eyestalks like a snail to keep them cool. Maybe even toss a bucket of water over the head to cool them so one can see through them for a while. Snail eyes are awesome because they can retract into stubs when not in use.

 

Other stuff like wings and extra arms seem rather superfluous. No advantages gained I can see.

Smell is another good one, if humanoids had dog smell ability they could know the last location a person was just by sniffing the ground. And so much more.

What about you? Any other useful humanoid features scifi aliens could have?

 

 

Edited October 10, 2019 by Spacescifi

[cubinator]

Thumbs

Walking legs

Brains

Decent eyesight

Those are the things I see as most useful human features. And remember, the walking legs happened in the African plains - if an alien adapted in a different environment, their locomotion could be quite different even if they have similar intelligence and are culturally similar.

[magnemoe]

7 minutes ago, cubinator said:

Thumbs

Walking legs

Brains

Decent eyesight

Those are the things I see as most useful human features. And remember, the walking legs happened in the African plains - if an alien adapted in a different environment, their locomotion could be quite different even if they have similar intelligence and are culturally similar.

this. 
An extra set of arms might be nice but kind of hard to place them. Guess most designs with 6 limbs would be 4 legs and 2 arms as its easier to evolve. An prehensile tail would be weaker but still useful and easy to get. 
Wings might work in an dense atmosphere. On earth flight require to much min-maxing  with 5 bar its way easier. 
You still need hands to enter the stone age so you need an 6 limb template here. 

Add that 6 limbs is not very humanoid anymore An dinosaur body plan is already stretching that definition a lot. 

IR vision is unlikely as you are warm blooded, you don't want eyes on stilts as you need to be long lived and they are very vulnerable. 

But yes having an tree living species become intelligent is pretty plausible. Their main issue is size of living area, humans lived everywhere all the way back into the stone age. 
If you can only live in rain forests it limits your resources and your numbers. 

[cubinator]

I was thinking if our hypothetical aliens developed on a very mountainous planet, or at least a large region lacking in level ground, they might develop wings or gliding parts as this would be more effective than climbing. Perhaps giant trees and forests much larger than those on Earth could accomplish this too.

[kerbiloid]

5 hours ago, cubinator said:

I was thinking if our hypothetical aliens developed on a very mountainous planet, or at least a large region lacking in level ground, they might develop wings or gliding parts as this would be more effective than climbing.

A sticky saliva to make swallows' nests and use them  to level the slope.

Edited October 11, 2019 by kerbiloid

[farmerben]

13 hours ago, magnemoe said:

this. 
An extra set of arms might be nice but kind of hard to place them. Guess most designs with 6 limbs would be 4 legs and 2 arms as its easier to evolve. An prehensile tail would be weaker but still useful and easy to get. 

 

I thought the opposite.  Human hips are very complicated and changing the way they develop could be disastrous for other essential organs.  The shoulder blade is just tied to the outer ribcage with lots of tendons and muscles.   And then the clavicle seems like one of the easiest bones to re engineer.  So 4 arms and 2 legs might be a lot easier.

Prehensile tails and snouts could be handy.,,  However, spacesuit design is more difficult.  They say that for any near future skin tight suit, men will need a special codpiece.  

 

Thumbed feet is my first choice.

Unlike other animals we use tools, and we can set that tool down when not using it.  So if we have tools for flying, climbing, and seeing we don't need to carry them in our bodies all the time.  Thumbed feet give you more and better capability to use tools.  

Edited October 11, 2019 by farmerben

[magnemoe]

28 minutes ago, farmerben said:

I thought the opposite.  Human hips are very complicated and changing the way they develop could be disastrous for other essential organs.  The shoulder blade is just tied to the outer ribcage with lots of tendons and muscles.   And then the clavicle seems like one of the easiest bones to re engineer.  So 4 arms and 2 legs might be a lot easier.

Prehensile tails and snouts could be handy.,,  However, spacesuit design is more difficult.  They say that for any near future skin tight suit, men will need a special codpiece.  

 

Thumbed feet is my first choice.

Unlike other animals we use tools, and we can set that tool down when not using it.  So if we have tools for flying, climbing, and seeing we don't need to carry them in our bodies all the time.  Thumbed feet give you more and better capability to use tools.  

Hips are complex for us as you have to modify  them from 4 legged to walking upright. The shoulder blades has an easier job than before outside of allowing a lots of rotation. with 6 limbs you pretty much has to start up as an 6 legged creature. Assume lots of creatures would then use the front ones as arms to gather food or as weapons as you don't really need 6 legs unless you are very long or very heavy. 
You are not longer humanoid in design as I see it  

Thumbed feet make running harder unless you are careful. Yes you could take an human foot and pull the bottom of the gap between the big toe and the next inward and give the big toe more option of rotation. Would not impact running but making the feet much better to climb or hold on to stuff. 

[kerbiloid]

Lactosa digestion ability.

And gluten.

Edited October 11, 2019 by kerbiloid

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Lactosa digestion ability.

And gluten.

Most can digest lactose among people who has held cows a long time. That is an evolved trait who is less than 10.000 year old. 
Vitamin C, we can not produce it our self but most animals can. Our bodies forgot so as primates lived in forests with lots of fruit around for millions of years. 
Both should be easy to patch down the line. 

[k00b]

19 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Other stuff like wings and extra arms seem rather superfluous. No advantages gained I can see.

spiders patiently wait in webs for their food come to them instead of walking around, talking about how great they are / debating "politics" etc... can build their owns "homes" derived from self / octupus are masters of the sea.

depends on what you want from life doesn't it ?.

[mikegarrison]

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

Most can digest lactose among people who has held cows a long time. That is an evolved trait who is less than 10.000 year old. 

... as adults. All babies can.

[kerbiloid]

(Dunks a glutin-rich bun in a milk as adult)

[Rakaydos]

Sweat, and the associated Persistence Hunter secondary traits. (Ability to focus on longer tasks, memory, visual tracking)

Bipedalisim with locking knees (energy efficient overland travel and dedicated manipulation appendages)

Simultaneous development of Basic Language and Cooking. (Control of fire allows more efficient digestion of Carbs, allowing the growth of a bigger braincase, allowing language, allowing knowledge of control of fire and cooking to be passed along as inherited traits)

Edited October 11, 2019 by Rakaydos

[Spacescifi]

On 10/10/2019 at 5:29 PM, magnemoe said:

IR vision is unlikely as you are warm blooded, you don't want eyes on stilts as you need to be long lived and they are very vulnerable. 
 

I utilize them as an extra set of eyes atop the head, not the main ones. And with the right chemicals flowing through the eyestalks, they could retain a cool temperature quite well, for a while anyway.

That is why I brought up dumping cool water on the head to cool the eyestalks for seeing.

And they are not so vulnerable, since if you watch the video it shows a snail retracting the eye into a stump. Such eyes are also far more flexible than ours, as it deformed itself to retract.

Edited October 12, 2019 by Spacescifi

[Scotius]

No. For evolution "Less is better". If you have a really complicated organ, you better get a lots of buck for the bang. If you don't, if it's superfluous to something cheaper that your body already uses... then you're paying increased price in energy and nutrients for very little return. It's a disadvantage that lowers your chance of survival and having more children.

Is a secondary pair of stalked eyes able to see in near IR so critical to survival, that you absolutely have to pay the price of having them? If you have to moisturize them regularly, then you better be prepared to live only in temperate regions with abundant water. And to have an enlarged head with plenty of additional space for retracting the stalks. And muscles doing the job. And stronger neck structure to accomodate increased weight of the head. And so on, and so on.

[Spacescifi]

21 minutes ago, Scotius said:

No. For evolution "Less is better". If you have a really complicated organ, you better get a lots of buck for the bang. If you don't, if it's superfluous to something cheaper that your body already uses... then you're paying increased price in energy and nutrients for very little return. It's a disadvantage that lowers your chance of survival and having more children.

Is a secondary pair of stalked eyes able to see in near IR so critical to survival, that you absolutely have to pay the price of having them? If you have to moisturize them regularly, then you better be prepared to live only in temperate regions with abundant water. And to have an enlarged head with plenty of additional space for retracting the stalks. And muscles doing the job. And stronger neck structure to accomodate increased weight of the head. And so on, and so on.

As it is scifi, and I have already made the eye stalks semi-plausible enough for my satisfaction, I am really not concerned about whether it conforms to accepted popular ideas.

The rainbow thermal vision would always work, but would be impractically blurry to use unless you poured cool water on it. From there the thernal vision would be clear for 15 min before it began to blur if it was a hot day. In cool weather it could last longer.

And I am not changing their head or neck size anymore than a normal human. It's a stylistic choice.

Fiction allows for that. I also think the ability would be great fun use and write about.

The nutrients part is actually the simplest fix.Just have the planet provide foods that meet their energy needs efficiently (much like Earth does for us).

Edited October 12, 2019 by Spacescifi

[Scotius]

Then honestly, i don't see the point in even starting discussion on this. You could as well write: "Guys, i'm going to give my aliens leathery wings and peacock tail. Which color scheme do you prefer for tail feathers - greenish gray, or grayish green?"

And if it's pure fiction - why constrain yourself with humanoid body shape? Unless it's for *cough* bedroom scenes. Why not imagine really alien organisms - like airborne tentacled molluscs floating on organic gasbags filled with hydrogen, and communicating by language made of color and texture patterns on their skin?

And yeah - it's not truly alien. It's just a flying, intelligent octopus from outer SPAAAAACE!!! Still better than rubber forehead aliens

[Spacescifi]

13 minutes ago, Scotius said:

Then honestly, i don't see the point in even starting discussion on this. You could as well write: "Guys, i'm going to give my aliens leathery wings and peacock tail. Which color scheme do you prefer for tail feathers - greenish gray, or grayish green?"

And if it's pure fiction - why constrain yourself with humanoid body shape? Unless it's for *cough* bedroom scenes. Why not imagine really alien organisms - like airborne tentacled molluscs floating on organic gasbags filled with hydrogen, and communicating by language made of color and texture patterns on their skin?

And yeah - it's not truly alien. It's just a flying, intelligent octopus from outer SPAAAAACE!!! Still better than rubber forehead aliens

 

The discussion was primarily to see what other biological upgrades we could apply to humanoids (because otherwise you have a plain human).

The humanoid shape is arguably more efficient than four legs, especially for building stuff as a team.

Gas bag aliens would have a tough time developing fire and metals among many other things, so they are'nt plausible to me.

 

As for being alien, can a human make an alien? Yes. But it is not an alien.

No one of us can really say what they make in scifi is alien, since it is not.

All I am interested in is making my 'aliens' different from baseline humanity in several ways.

That's good enough for me.

 

[radonek]

6 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Gas bag aliens would have a tough time developing fire and metals among many other things, so they are'nt plausible to me.

Not sure bipedal humanoids are plausible either. Obviously, their twodimensional habitat must hinder their comprehension of space, they lack natural ways to manipulate even simplest of carbon nanostructures, their grasp of world elements is limited to crude oxidative reactions.They can't even tell most simple hydrocarbons apart! How can one even start to use natural resources with such handicpap, much less industrialized civilization? Totally implausible :-p

[magnemoe]

10 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

As it is scifi, and I have already made the eye stalks semi-plausible enough for my satisfaction, I am really not concerned about whether it conforms to accepted popular ideas.

The rainbow thermal vision would always work, but would be impractically blurry to use unless you poured cool water on it. From there the thernal vision would be clear for 15 min before it began to blur if it was a hot day. In cool weather it could last longer.

And I am not changing their head or neck size anymore than a normal human. It's a stylistic choice.

Fiction allows for that. I also think the ability would be great fun use and write about.

The nutrients part is actually the simplest fix.Just have the planet provide foods that meet their energy needs efficiently (much like Earth does for us).

If its an technological civilization use technology. We already have this and it not be an major issue making this much more portable. More advanced and you can use it with direct neural interface. Yes its possible to do biological but very unlikely to evolve. More likely for something living in an cold environment as its easy to keep the IR eye cold. 
 

[kerbiloid]

55 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

If its an technological civilization use technology. We already have this and it not be an major issue making this much more portable. More advanced and you can use it with direct neural interface. Yes its possible to do biological but very unlikely to evolve.

A natural, environment-friendly, carbon-neutral, direct neural interface adapter.
Brings basics of knowledge to the brain storage via the low-level touchpad.

Spoiler

Primitive electric impluses forms a whole picture of knowledge in the brain.

Edited October 12, 2019 by kerbiloid

[k00b]

12 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

 

The discussion was primarily to see what other biological upgrades we could apply to humanoids (because otherwise you have a plain human).

The humanoid shape is arguably more efficient than four legs, especially for building stuff as a team.

no it's not... it's only more efficient, for not having to crawl into small spaces / not having to contort etc.

verterbrate is only good for planets comparitive to earth... but granted upright posture is better for "building" ("upwards"), as opposed to "tunneling"... THUS i would debate as general statement something like "smaller then humanoid invertebrate with 4 legs and 2 arms, and non-auditory / visual sensory sytem" would be better as default, but this would be providing there was adequate engery sources to power said limbs... (and no sharp out of-sensory pieces about the place) - "swings and roundabouts".

the "mostest bestest" would be a "being" composed of supreme intelligence and no matter...

Edited October 12, 2019 by k00b

[Thor Wotansen]

The form and organism takes is highly dependent on it's diet.  For the most part, I would expect that most, if not all, species that achieve intelligence and sentience to be omnivores.  Large carnivores are, by nature, very territorial, and they are unlikely to develop agriculture or fire, since evolution would have given them a digestive system that obviates the need for plant crops and cooking.  Without agriculture or fire, the species won't advance to the stone age.  A herbivore might be able to pull it off, but most herbivores go for either big herds for safety in numbers, or for large size (or both).  They also tend to have no need of cooking, and will instinctively fear fire, as well as a lot of other things.  Their digestive systems require a lot of intake to provide the energy they need, and in general, high energy foods like grains and starches, are quite unhealthy for them.  Omnivores, on the other hand, aren't specialized in eating any particular thing, which means their digestive systems kinda sucks at a extracting energy from a good portion of their diet.  This means that cooking is a massive advantage, and therefore, taming fire is more likely.  This means that our species must have some way of easily manipulating things.  Humans evolved from apes, who were optimized for life in trees, although the larger apes evolved to work better on the ground.  Humans are the pinnacle of the ground apes, having evolved to have absurdly high stamina, which allowed our ancestors to chase down game like antelopes and deer until they literally died of exhaustion.  Our ancestors that lived in trees gave us thumbs and an upright posture, as well as large brains and sharp eyes for calculating jumps between branches.  This means that Humans are uniquely specialized in pretty much nothing, but our stamina allowed us to develop all sorts of things.  Any technological race, therefore, will have a similarly convoluted evolutionary history, since evolution won't just crank out a big-brained creature that can eat just about anything, with huge stamina reserves and spare appendages for grabbing and carrying things.  Instead it will tend to optimize for other things.  The creatures that evolve to a technological level will come from tiny niche environments that are sufficiently isolated to allow time for evolution, and sufficiently rich in resources to allow a non-optimized creature to succeed.  This rules out any extreme environments and probably also any large biomes.  Essentially and technological species will be similar to humans in form, baring any variation in ancestral lineage regarding numbers of limbs and whatnot, although I'd expect four limbs to be pretty common, since more limbs means more muscle and bone for not that much more benefit.  That's not to say they won't look really alien, they might have their noses in weird places, or have a prehensile tail.  The largest variations will likely be from their planet's gravity and atmospheric density, as well as the nature of the environment they came from.  On a planet with lighter gravity (unlikely because of a number of things, but not impossible) they may still live in forests to titanic trees and use their lower limbs as their "hands".  On a planet with higher gravity, they might indeed have six limbs and be very squat and muscular.  It is very unlikely, though, that any race from a planet with higher gravity achieves space flight.  The gravity of Earth stretches the limits of what is possible with chemical fuels, and any planet with higher gravity will require too much ΔV to get any meaningful payload into space. 

In summary, the most useful feature for a humanoid race of sentient, technological beings is probably a home planet with an orbital velocity of around 7km/s, an orange dwarf as a sun, and a large moon with a molten core that helps their planet maintain a very strong magnetic field to keep the solar wind of a more active star at bay.  A thicker atmosphere might also help, but it could also be a hindrance.