The "...Gorzuni goons..." (p. 418) at Serendipity, Inc. are a good future historical detail because of the number of times that this species crops up in the Technic History. But they are one of many bipedal species.
OK, parallel evolution. However, direction or no direction, I do not think that we are going to find thousands and thousands of species of two- or four-armed bipeds, each with a head with a face with two eyes above a nose above a mouth with one ear on each side. We inherit certain physiological and physiognomic features from some early Terrestrial ancestor.
The limbs of a hexapod can evolve into four legs and two arms, two legs and four arms or two legs, two arms and two wings. All of these adaptations occur in different works by Poul Anderson.
ERB's green Martians have two legs, two arms and a pair of intermediate limbs that can perform either function which makes them difficult to draw.
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I am not so skeptical as you are. I think it would make sense for many species if evolution freed the forelimbs to become arms. And for such races to have a head with organs/senses for seeing, eating, hearing, etc., placed near the brain.
Ad astra! Sean
Manipulative organs, certainly.
Niven invented the Puppeteers to show that intelligences need not be anthropoid.
Evolution tends to avoid unnecessary complexity.
If four limbs will do, you're unlikely to get more in an environment that's even roughly like ours for animals that are in a mammal's size range.
Six-limbed animals would be more likely under higher gravity, for example. And just as we became bipeds to free up our hands, so they might become centauroids.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree. And while extreme examples of complexity like Niven's Puppeteers or Anderson's tribodied Didonians may be possible I don't think they will be numerous.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: evolution is random, and random processes produce weird outcomes now and then, if not all the time. Low-probability events do happen.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree! The duck billed platypus is a surviving example of that kind of evolutionary weirdness.
Ad astra! Sean
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