The Humanoid Form

Few scientists will discuss UFO reports except to dismiss them, but some are willing to speculate about alien life in general. Almost always, they start with the notion that alien life will not look anything like Earth life, certainly not anything like us. Indeed UFO skeptics use that assertion to say the little humanoids found in many alien abduction stories are the product of limited human imagination, not of an evolutionary process on another planet that came up with beings similar to ourselves, at least in general form.

That's clearly one possibility, and given the state of our current knowledge, the most likely. The most likely, however, does not square with the absolute statement often made that because these alleged visitors are humanoid in form, they cannot be from another world.

One driving factor of evolution, at least in larger animals, is the interplay between form and environment. Because animals must live in an environment, the ones best suited to a given environment tend to be the ones that produce generations of offspring. That, in sketch form, is how species develop. On Earth, the larger land animals all tend to have a body, four limbs, and a distinct head. Many, of course, also have tails. That basic form presumably comes from a common ancestor deep in the past.

The question is: Why have the descendants of that common ancestor done so well? If the answer is essentially "serendipity," then yes, it's fair to say that the humanoid form is closely, or exclusively, associated with Earth. However, if the reason most big animals on Earth have four limbs, a head, etc., is because that form works well on this type of planet, we can entertain the idea that a similar evolutionary process operating in a similar environment might have produced a similar form. Maybe not, but maybe. If the evolution of humanity was tied to environmental factors, an intelligent, technological species from an Earthlike planet could possibly be similar in form to us.

Perhaps thousands of events went the "right" way to get humanity out of the ancestor that also gave rise to modern apes. Would such a series happen roughly the same way on another world? Answering that question is beyond us at the moment. Science, however, doesn't generally like explaining natural processes as finally due to simple chance.