Rivals To The Human Hand For Fictional Sapient Species

[Scotius]

Speaking about elephant trunks, they are the closest thing to "tentacles as hands" we can observe. And they work just fine for elephants and tapirs. Several genera of extinct animals apparently had trunks too. However! Trunks do need a robust support from the skull, improved by structures developed specifically to provide better support. Apparently it's not as easy as "slap a bunch of tentacles together and call it an alien".

[kerbiloid]

Sometimes they fail.

Spoiler

 

 

[KSK]

Elephants are the obvious example of ‘tentacle manipulators’ and, thinking about it, an excellent counter example to my previous post where I thought that tentacled critters using tentacles as both ‘arms’ and ‘legs’ would be more plausible than something that mixed up articulated limbs with tentacles.

So - scratch that comment.

I was curious about octopuses as another possible example of ‘tentacle manipulators’ though and found this paper:

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(09)01914-9?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0960982209019149%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

It describes an interesting - for this discussion - ‘stilt walking’ behaviour which a certain octopus species will use when carrying coconut shells around.

”To carry one or more shells, this octopus manipulates and arranges the shells so that the concave surfaces are uppermost, then extends its arms around the outside and walks using the arms as rigid limbs.” (emphasis added)

Admittedly ‘stilt walking’ is pretty cumbersome but I thought the rigid limb thing was relevant to this discussion, as an example of a soft bodied critter being able to rigidify(sp?) itself if required.

On that basis I could imagine a soft bodied tentacular alien being able to rigidify itself if it needs to brace for tool manipulation.

 

[kerbiloid]

11 minutes ago, KSK said:

and walks using the arms as rigid limbs.

Spoiler

 

 

02;35

[Spacescifi]

On 4/17/2022 at 11:51 PM, Nuke said:

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. 

 

Hahaha! Elephant space program!

 

Now I wanna see a movie with intelligent elephant civilization.

 

That would be weird.

 

Probably only be one or two astronauts per rocket given how heavy they are.

 

Not a lot of cars either... just trains.

[Beamer]

16 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Now I wanna see a movie with intelligent elephant civilization.

Don't know about a movie, but the aforementioned Larry Niven also wrote Footfall, about an invasion of Earth by an elephant-like  civilization. Another great read from the master of sci-fi world building.