Evolution

If your religion does not permit you to “believe in science” then read no further. You won’t like this. I am not of the opinion that scientists know everything there is to know. Quite the opposite. We will always have more questions than answers. That is the nature of science.

Being a devotee of science I get a little tired of seeing “aliens” in science fiction shows that look an awful lot like humans. Those of you who follow my blog know that I am a fan of Star Trek. But Star Trek, both the original series and its successors, is probably more guilty of this than anyone. Consider the following: We have Vulcans who look like humans but with pointed ears; Romulans, who look like humans with pointed ears; Klingons, who have changed in the various incarnations but even at their most outlandish, just look like humans with plates on their forehead; Kardashians, who look like humans but with big boobs and butts (sorry I couldn’t help myself); I mean Cardassians, who look like humans with scaly necks and ridges on their face; Bajorans, who look like humans with nose wrinkles (even if I did have a crush on Major Kira); Talosians, who look like humans with big heads; Ferengi, who look like humans with big heads and big ears. Andorians, who look like blue humans with antennae. I could go on and on, but you get the point.

To think that natural selection that developed on a different planet would produce anything that remotely looked like us would be like taking a million monkeys who were banging on a million typewriters and having two of them produce identical 200 page novels (maybe with one or two words different).

There are certainly parallel characteristics that appear through evolution. These happen because of convergent evolution and divergent evolution. The fact that goldfish and sharks both have fins is an example of divergent evolution. They share a common ancestor way back in the evolutionary chain that developed fins as a good way of producing locomotion through the water. That common ancestor had offspring and descendants that eventually branched off into new species. Those species had descendants which eventually branched off into more and more species. Most of them retained the fins because fins work well, and fish with fins survive better than fish without fins. This is call divergent evolution because as all the species diverged from one ancestor, they kept the same trait (fins). In this way we can see that they are all related, at least back to that one ancestor.

Convergent evolution is a bit trickier. Bats, birds, and some insects all have wings. But in this case, they do not share a common ancestor that had wings. Bats, birds and insects all evolved wings completely independently from each other. This may be why bat wings, bird wings, and insect wings all look quite different. They all perform the same function (flight) but in each case evolution had to reinvent something that looked like a wing. They developed wings because being able to fly is a useful thing, and there is only one kind of structure that will help you to achieve flight.

Electric organs in fish is another interesting case. Electric eels are the most well-known of fish with electric organs, but there are actually lots of fish that produce an electric charge, though in most cases it is used for navigation (like sonar) rather than as a defense mechanism. As it turns out electric organs developed independently no less than five times. I guess it is just a handy adaptation when you live in murky water. But this is another example of convergent evolution. They all share the same trait even though they do not share a common ancestor with that trait.

So you could say that the same pressures that sculpt the life evolving on other planets, might lead (through convergent evolution) to the same characteristics that developed here; in other words: humanoids. Not very likely. Even if you started with a planet that was exactly like the Earth of three and a half billion years ago, and started with the exact same building blocks for life, and it were to evolve an intelligent species, there is no reason to think they would look anything like us. They might share a few of our characteristics through convergent evolution, but probably no more than the similarities shared by a dragonfly and a fruit bat.

Evolution is a huge roulette wheel. Random mutations happen in life and most of the time those mutations are bad and lead to the death of an organism before it can reproduce, but every once in a great while you will get a mutation that has advantages (like fins) and that will be passed on to the offspring. Organisms that have the advantage will survive and reproduce better than the organisms that don’t, so those that don’t eventually die out.

It seems like Hollywood has been less human-centric in its aliens in recent years. I hope that trend will continue, though, if the story is good enough . . . I will probably watch it anyway.

(My novel Star Liner, is now available as an ebook through Copypastapublishing.com, Amazon, or the other usual online sources. For those who like to turn physical pages, the paperback will be out soon).

link to Star Liner