"Hiding Place."
See also:
The Zoo Ship and its links;
Aliens in Anderson and Niven.
Eliminations
Brains
Van Rijn hypothesizes that the aliens might have brains in their bellies and Torrance murmurs that some people do before presenting the standard argument for minimum distance between brain and principal sense organs at the top of the body.
Larry Niven did us all a favor by arguing that the brain can be better protected at the center of the body and that an eye at the top of each of two long necks/throats would provide adjustable binocular vision but even his Puppeteers can be described by comparing them to Terrestrial organisms. I expect that extraterrestrial organisms do exist and that they look like nothing on Earth.
9 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Of course I'll expect MANY extraterrestrial living forms, plants and animals alike, to look like nothing on Earth. But I still would not be surprised to see SOME resemblances and parallels to terrestrial organisms. I think both will be likely.
And whatever that figure is on the illustration you chose is, it's standing on the elephantoid's TUSK, not horn.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Indeed it is.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And the problem with Niven's Puppeteers having an eye at the end of those long necks/throats is that it exposes them to injury, accidental or not. A Kzin warrior could easily slice off one or both of those long necks!
Ad astra! Sean
In Ringworld a Peirson's Puppeteer does get a head amputated. Its life is saved with a tourniquet around its neck. ;)
The weird fossils from the Burgess Shale do give some idea of the variation that might be possible. Many of those I recall seeing pictures of do seem to have eyes etc. on one end, presumably the front end of mobile animals. Is that presumption sometimes incorrect? Could some without an obvious front end still have been mobile?
Note: I did hike to the Burgess shale, & have seen the section of the Tyrell museum devoted to the Burgess Shale.
A starfish has an eye at the end of each tentacle and no front or back.
good point
Jim,
I quoted something that I heard in a talk at an aquarium but without checking details. I thought that you might do a bit of research and come up with a different slant!
Olaf Stapledon's Last Men have eyes facing in different directions and a telescopic eye on the crowns of their heads but I suppose that, for practical purposes, they still have a front and a back of their bodies.
Paul.
According to Wikipedia starfish have *eyespots* on the tips of the arms & photoreceptor cells on other parts of the body. So it sounds like they don't get much more information than changes in the amount of light. They wouldn't get the sort of detailed image one would want for fast motion.
Right on.
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