Rivals To The Human Hand For Fictional Sapient Species

[Spacescifi]

I think it is a given that if a sapient species lacks proper manipulators, their technological progress would be seriously retarded.

 

The human hand is a marvel. With it we write words, make art, give massages, and pick our noses.

 

It is incredible how much we could not have done without hands.... for it is capable of both brute force and precision.

 

Imagination is of course finite, and my mind tends to think that beyond adding on features to the human hand, it really cannot be rivalled or improved upon much that I can think of... unless you can.

 

I seriously doubt something that did'nt even look like a human hand would be as efficient, but a hybrid of sorts... weird as it may look, may be the only real rival.

 

I have seen odd fictional hands with two thumbs lol.

 

Thoughts?

[StrandedonEarth]

On the one hand, yeah, hands are pretty versatile. On the other hand, two thumbs may be useful, or not. 
 

On the gripping hand, how often have you thought you needed a third hand? I was thinking that just today…

Edited April 16, 2022 by StrandedonEarth

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

46 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

Thoughts?

Look into the Moties.

[Spacescifi]

28 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

On the one hand, yeah, hands are pretty versatile. On the other hand, two thumbs may be useful, or not. 
 

On the gripping hand, how often have you thought you needed a third hand? I was thinking that just today…

 

You do not. Koalas have two thumbs on each hand for climbing trees (literally two thumbs side by side and three fingers on a hand).

But you and I don't do much climbing do we?

 

It's ironic, since if you want to give scifi alien sapient species plausibility having manipulators that look like hands helps... because claws and tentacles cannot sew clothing or make clay bricks etc.

32 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

On the one hand, yeah, hands are pretty versatile. On the other hand, two thumbs may be useful, or not. 
 

On the gripping hand, how often have you thought you needed a third hand? I was thinking that just today…

 

A third arm with a special wrench like hand would be helpful... at least until tools were invented. And I suppose those who were cheap could stiill rely on their third special wrench arm.

[StrandedonEarth]

Are you familiar with Larry Niven’s work?  He’s come up with some interesting critters…

The Mote in God’s Eye is where the gripping hand is found. And then there’s the Puppeteers…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierson's_Puppeteers

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 minute ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Are you familiar with Larry Niven’s work?  He’s come up with some interesting critters…

The Mote in God’s Eye is where the gripping hand is found. And then there’s the Puppeteers…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierson's_Puppeteers

Don't forget the Thranx

Thranx | Alien Species | Fandom

 

[Spacescifi]

26 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Are you familiar with Larry Niven’s work?  He’s come up with some interesting critters…

The Mote in God’s Eye is where the gripping hand is found. And then there’s the Puppeteers…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierson's_Puppeteers

 

Only from scifi enthusiasts like yourself.... the only scifi books I read were mainly during my school years.

 

My life growing up was... not good.... and access to such things was simply unknown due to how much of a control freak my father was.

I could read it now of course as those years are history.

[StrandedonEarth]

Well, here’s a Niven primer: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Known_Space  If nothing else, read Ringworld   But I also think that Tales from the Man-Kzin Wars would be great fodder for a TV series

Outside of that, the aforementioned Mote and Footfall are excellent reads, with more alien cultures to explore. 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Oddly, I never cared for Man-Kzin.

These are fun:

Pip & Flinx Series by Alan Dean Foster (goodreads.com)

(or at least they were when I was reading them in the 80s.  Don't know how well they've preserved

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

Pseudopodia. They rule.

[KSK]

The one drawback I can think of for hands is that they're relatively fragile with a lot of moving parts and so there's quite a few ways they can go wrong or be impaired. A tentacle might be more robust (so 'better' in one sense) but wouldn't be quite as versatile as a hand for manipulating tools.  However a tentacle would be a much more flexible and versatile carrier for that tool manipulator than an arm is for a hand.

A tentacle with some kind of receptacle in the end (think of an elephant's trunk) would be reasonably capable as a manipulator whilst being considerably more flexible and versatile than an arm. It could grasp a handle with ease (an octopus would have no problem holding a hammer), the receptacle at the tentacle tip would allow for holding smaller tools or manipulating 'poking' tools like bradawls or punches (or daggers).  About the only thing I can think of where it would seriously struggle would be with scissors and related tools where having multiple digits to operate multiple parts of the tool simultaneously is an advantage. One could operate a pair of scissors two-handed but it would be clumsy.

Perhaps a bifurcated tentacle then, with each tentaclet(?) having a receptacle at its tip?

Something else to think about when considering alternatives to hands is that you're also likely to be considering alternatives to feet. In general nature seems to be quite good at coming up with symmetrical body plans or body plans where similar structures can be pressed into service for different roles. Arms and hands vs legs and feet for example. I would find an alien creature with tentacle manipulators which walked on another set of tentacles to be much more believable than some half-and-half critter with humanoid articulated legs and tentacular arms. Of course - as you've mentioned before - 'aliens' could be the product of human biological engineering, in which case all bets are off.

From a worldbuilding perspective, I'd find it interesting to write about a fictional race of tentacle critters. How would that reduced dexterity (compared to hands) affect their approach to every day matters. Take clothing for example - I imagine that manipulating buttons or zips with tentacles could be a real pain, so they might favour clothing with as few closures as possible, and perhaps rely on toggles or overgrown cufflink style closures (longer, easier to grip with a tentacle) than buttons. Hook and loop fasteners would be significantly easier to use, so perhaps all their clothes would rely on alien Velcro. Likewise for spacecraft controls - they might depend more on buttons and biggish levers rather than fiddly small switches, assuming that their spacecraft are still flown with manual controls. 

Or, what would arts and crafts look like for these critters?  I doubt they're going to be much good at needlework, so anything hand-stitched might be the mark of a true crafts-critter. So much so that human crafts like embroidery or tapestry work would completely knock their socks ( or other tentacle-tip protective garments  ) off! Maybe that turns out to be the basis for their peaceful artistic and cultural exchange with humanity?

It's those kind of small details that I think would make this fictional race feel really alien rather than humans-by-another-name.

Edited April 16, 2022 by KSK

[Spacescifi]

1 hour ago, KSK said:

The one drawback I can think of for hands is that they're relatively fragile with a lot of moving parts and so there's quite a few ways they can go wrong or be impaired. A tentacle might be more robust (so 'better' in one sense) but wouldn't be quite as versatile as a hand for manipulating tools.  However a tentacle would be a much more flexible and versatile carrier for that tool manipulator than an arm is for a hand.

A tentacle with some kind of receptacle in the end (think of an elephant's trunk) would be reasonably capable as a manipulator whilst being considerably more flexible and versatile than an arm. It could grasp a handle with ease (an octopus would have no problem holding a hammer), the receptacle at the tentacle tip would allow for holding smaller tools or manipulating 'poking' tools like bradawls or punches (or daggers).  About the only thing I can think of where it would seriously struggle would be with scissors and related tools where having multiple digits to operate multiple parts of the tool simultaneously is an advantage. One could operate a pair of scissors two-handed but it would be clumsy.

Perhaps a bifurcated tentacle then, with each tentaclet(?) having a receptacle at its tip?

Something else to think about when considering alternatives to hands is that you're also likely to be considering alternatives to feet. In general nature seems to be quite good at coming up with symmetrical body plans or body plans where similar structures can be pressed into service for different roles. Arms and hands vs legs and feet for example. I would find an alien creature with tentacle manipulators which walked on another set of tentacles to be much more believable than some half-and-half critter with humanoid articulated legs and tentacular arms. Of course - as you've mentioned before - 'aliens' could be the product of human biological engineering, in which case all bets are off.

From a worldbuilding perspective, I'd find it interesting to write about a fictional race of tentacle critters. How would that reduced dexterity (compared to hands) affect their approach to every day matters. Take clothing for example - I imagine that manipulating buttons or zips with tentacles could be a real pain, so they might favour clothing with as few closures as possible, and perhaps rely on toggles or overgrown cufflink style closures (longer, easier to grip with a tentacle) than buttons. Hook and loop fasteners would be significantly easier to use, so perhaps all their clothes would rely on alien Velcro. Likewise for spacecraft controls - they might depend more on buttons and biggish levers rather than fiddly small switches, assuming that their spacecraft are still flown with manual controls. 

Or, what would arts and crafts look like for these critters?  I doubt they're going to be much good at needlework, so anything hand-stitched might be the mark of a true crafts-critter. So much so that human crafts like embroidery or tapestry work would completely knock their socks ( or other tentacle-tip protective garments  ) off! Maybe that turns out to be the basis for their peaceful artistic and cultural exchange with humanity?

It's those kind of small details that I think would make this fictional race feel really alien rather than humans-by-another-name.

 

I like your thinking.

 

Basically it is like making a weakness a storytelling strength.... making what does impair them a legitimate point of interest to both the plot and character development.

Scifi is all about going where we have not gone or done before right?

 

After all the blind and the deaf always find ways to compensate.

Compensation is a mark of intelligence, and the greater one can compensate against the odds against them I honestly think is the mark of high intelligence or at least a lot if experience.... maybe both.

 

What if.... that is arguably the most important question that scifi is well qualified to answer in so many ways.

Edited April 16, 2022 by Spacescifi

[kerbiloid]

Hair is nice, too.

Spoiler

 

[magnemoe]

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Hair is nice, too.

  Hide contents

 

Don't think that would work. 

Yinglets on the other hand should work, yes its an pretty boring but very plausible design except the brain case is to small, yes the brains could be more efficient but then make it larger as most are not very bright. Interesting in that they use the dinosaur body plan with an heavy tail to counter the upper body.
And some very excellent world building. https://www.valsalia.com/
No its not fantasy, more likely an colonization project with multiple upliftings who failed spectacular. 

[Nuke]

ive heard it said that some great apes actually have better evolved hands than we do. of course those hands are evolved for mostly arboreal use, so they are simply better at climbing trees. seeing aliens with less evolved hands in scifi makes me wonder how they ever developed tool use. we used to have a hamster who liked little cheese crackers. i liked watching him hold onto his food while he bit off pieces to shove into his cheek pouches (i like to think he ate some of it). that's actually way more evolved than a cat's paw, which are great at climbing, jumping, stealth, and killing things, but ive seen my cats try to hold objects in their paws, drop them, and try to pick them up again. thus i have my doubts about cats ever developing tool use. and i like to think the hamster stands a chance, so long as he doesn't get eaten by a cat.

this particular hamster died years ago, of old age, so he escaped cat-death even though they always liked to watch him while licking their lips.  

and then i realize it does not necessarily be hands. the kitties can and do carry objects in their jaws a lot better than they do in their hands. in fact its their only means of moving objects, they can both bite hard and be gentle enough to say move kittens around, anything they do with their paws in terms of manipulating must be done in a stationary position. this got me thinking about elephants. some have been trained to paint for example (the alaska zoo up in anchorage used to have an elephant that could paint, and would sell the artworks to help fund their wildlife programs), and it takes some dexterity to use a paint brush. im not sure if elephants in the wild have been known for their tool use, but its certainly something they are capable of learning. whats more it can carry things, which cats are not so good at. they are a pretty intelligent species, and i cant imagine that developing agriculture is very far from their current capabilities. being limited to a single trunk is probibly not as big of a limitation as you would thing, as they are very social animals. 2 or 3 elephants working together could probibly weave baskets and make gardening tools. and being powerful creatures, would make plowing a field a fairly simple job. though they would need a lot bigger fields than humans given their appetites. 

Edited April 17, 2022 by Nuke

[kerbiloid]

Fractality.

A creature grabs objects by folding a body outgrowth (a limb, a finger, a mouth) around the object.
Then friction against the body cover holds the object inside the folded shape.
The more freedom degrees of flexibility (usually joints) the effector has, the greater the angle it's flexed is.

As the effector has its own thickness, but at the same time its soft tissues are elastic, one joint provides 135° angle, which can't grab the object around.
But the second joint adds 45+° and lets it roll around the object and form a ring to hold it.

In the human case, we can see this at several zoom levels:

fully:

• finger (two joints), ~2 cm
• hand (finger attachment joind and wrist), ~5 cm
• low arm (wrist and elbow), ~15 cm
• full arm (elbow and shoulder), ~25 cm
• full body (shoulders and pelvis joints), ~50 cm

partially:

• leg behind (knee joint, thigh and tibia), ~25 cm
• pelvis front (pelvis joints, belly and lap),  ~40 cm
• scrotch (pelvis joints, two thighs),   ~40 cm
• under chin (neck joints, chin, top of chest), ~5 cm
• aside neck (neck joints, head side, shoulder), 10 cm
• jaws (them), ~5 cm
• lips  (them), ~1 cm
• tongue and any jaw, ~3 cm

Also as the effectors of same type are splitted at the end into bunches of the next level effectors:

• fingers of hand
• two hands
• two legs
• limbs of body
• two or more people around the object, ~1 m.

Also, the human effectors of next size level have nearly the same size as the previous level ones, basically follow the golden ratio.

Spoiler

This allows to operate with objects of any size without gaps and of several sizes at once.

So, the human body is extremely fractal, being compared to other species, and allows to form a holding shape at various levels of scale, from millimeters to meter on size.
This allows to operate with various objects, hold, split, and combine them.
The cognitive abilities allow to add moar effectors by using and creating tools to operate with objects from atomic size to millions of tonnes heavy.

The apes lack at least the thumbs opposed to other fingers.
They have two more hands, but this is not needed when you have tools.
Also  the upper hands are closer to the sensors, so they allow to operate with objects much quicker and more often.

The bones inside the effectors reinforce the holding effectors and allow to apply stronger force. Also they make the fractality levels discrete.
Thus, no tentacles are better than a good skeleton.
(The liquid metal teminator can form temporary hard objects like bones, but needs energy to keep them hard.)

The cognitive functions are fractal, too.

The more primitive a creature is, the more linear is its behaviour and thinking.
The more developed ones can keep in mind several different topics at once and unexpectedly bite your finger while squinting and purring (and who knows, what this hairy jerk had suddenly recalled to revenge for).
The human thinking is extremely fractal, the human can think on several different topics at once, constantly varying their priorities.

So, the fractality of both mind and body is the key.
And the fractal mind could develop only in a fractal surrounding, like a forest with labyrith of trees and bushes, requiring fractal thinking to survive, perfect labyrinth task solving abilities to get throw or hide, fractal limbs to interact with different objects.

So, the line of rodents/primates gave the most fractal of the known creatures, the human.

[Nuke]

sometimes i wish i had ape foothands for those tricky soldering joints. i think it would be somewhat dangerous to hold a hot iron between my toes. 

foothands also seem like they would be useful in zero gravity. for navigating both in and outside of the vehicle/station.

Edited April 17, 2022 by Nuke

[Scotius]

I always doubted Puppeteers lips would work as manipulators. Any of you ever tried to unscrew a bottle using only lips? Great thing about our hands is skeletal support when we need to apply significant force. Or need a strong, stable grip. The same might be held against tentacles. When octopus needs to open a clam, it has to use its own body for leverage - human (or otter) just needs two rocks to crack the shell.

Another thing against Puppeteers would be the location of their eyes - just next to the end of manipulating "limbs". Good for precise work, much less good if you need bigger field of view. Also, unsafe to the delicate eyes.

[Nuke]

13 hours ago, Scotius said:

I always doubted Puppeteers lips would work as manipulators. Any of you ever tried to unscrew a bottle using only lips? Great thing about our hands is skeletal support when we need to apply significant force. Or need a strong, stable grip. The same might be held against tentacles. When octopus needs to open a clam, it has to use its own body for leverage - human (or otter) just needs two rocks to crack the shell.

Another thing against Puppeteers would be the location of their eyes - just next to the end of manipulating "limbs". Good for precise work, much less good if you need bigger field of view. Also, unsafe to the delicate eyes.

no but ive seen video of an octopus opening a jar, from the inside. 

[Scotius]

And an elephant can be trained to play piano with his trunk. It doesn't mean he would be able to build it first. I sincerely doubt soft bodied creature could make a flint axe, and use this tool to cut down a tree and build a shack. It's hard, exhausting work for humans, even with our muscles supported by strong and fairly rigid skeleton.

[StrandedonEarth]

3 hours ago, Scotius said:

And an elephant can be trained to play piano with his trunk. It doesn't mean he would be able to build it first. I sincerely doubt soft bodied creature could make a flint axe, and use this tool to cut down a tree and build a shack. It's hard, exhausting work for humans, even with our muscles supported by strong and fairly rigid skeleton.

Well, an elephant would just push the tree down. Although I admit trimming the branches / roots and construction would be another matter. 

[kerbiloid]

Does an elephant even hear the piano with its big ear membranes?

[Nuke]

1 hour ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Well, an elephant would just push the tree down. Although I admit trimming the branches / roots and construction would be another matter. 

i figure they are well equipped for agriculture. they have a great ability to clear land. they might tend to grow crops like melons and gourd vegetables, tall grasses, perhaps corn. agriculture would eventually come with a need for food storage, so silos may be a thing that they would construct. possibly out of timbers and mud. while shelter may be something they can make use of, larger animals tend to be better at maintaining their body heat in cold conditions, and are well adapted to radiating surplus heat during the hot months. so i dont think they would have the same shelter requirements that we do. the construction of shaded coverings might provide them some comfort in the summer months, but would not be required to survive. moving into areas with colder climates would necessitate better shelters. wetter climates would require a different construction technology than mud and timber.  stone construction perhaps or exploitation of natural caves (which actually is a thing wild elephants have been observed doing).

mastering fire may be somewhat harder for an elephant as most of the techniques are two handed, so it would need to be a team effort. then again having a trunk means it would be fairly easy to stoke the fire, so perhaps a technique involving using the trunk to hurl flit rocks at each other in a pile of tinder to start it followed by blowing on it with the trunk. then applying progressively larger tinder until a steady fire is achieved. mastery of fire then comes with the ability to manufacture charcoal, pottery, bricks, and eventually the smelting of metals. the ability to forge weapons which can defend their young from predation will provide a boon to their survival and also open more construction methods. forward progress is within the grasp of their physical capabilities, only their mental capabilities hold them back. needless to say the elephant space program would be interesting, to say the least. 

Edited April 18, 2022 by Nuke

[kerbiloid]

33 minutes ago, Nuke said:

elephant space program

 

[Nuke]

still not as cumbersome as the blue whale space program.