What creature would travel space?
This essay will, rather obviously, be dealing with things that used to fall into the realm of "philosophy". Or in more modern terms, "bullshit". That is because this essay will be discussing things that can neither be proven, nor tested.
So why bother? Easy - for the same reason that philosophers back in the day sat around talking about unprovable stuff - because we can.
So then, just what will this essay talk about? The topic at hand is "what type of creature will become a space farer". So obviously this is dealing with science fiction (not to be confused with actual real science).
First, the assumptions. Let us assume that there is life on more than one planet. Let us also assume that there is some type of diversity to said life. And let us assume that not all life is a mirror for Terra. Because only the most arrogant of life forms would assume that their form is the best (and only) form and any other form is a step down.
Logically, any creature that is capable of travailing the stars did not start out as such.
(It would be easy to wander into a lengthy discussion about evolution here but that is for another essay. I will assume that you are at least familiar with the concept of evolution whilst simultaneously not assuming whether you accept it or not.)
Humans did not start out using the internet. There is a logical progression of events that needed to occur before we were able to exchange pornography internationally. Before the internet there were computers. Before computers there were calculators. Before calculators there were abacus'. Before the abacus there was sticks in the sand. And before even that there was counting fingers.
Same with us travelling through space (or at least slightly into it). Before the space shuttle, there was the 747. Before the 747 there was the de Havilland Comet. Before the de Havilland Comet, there was the DC-10. Before the DC-10 there was Kitty Hawk. Before Kitty Hawk there was crazy priests jumping off the parapet with wood and cloth wings strapped to their arms. See? Progression.
So, if we are to encounter aliens whilst traipsing the solar plains, we should already have a good idea as to what they will be like. Or (more usefully) if you wanted to write about meeting aliens then there should be a minimum amount of detail that would be endemic to any alien that we are likely to meet.
(Side note - by "meet" we are referring more to the "they visit us" or "we encounter in space" rather than the "we land on their planet" type of meet. If we land on their planet then the field is wide open as to what might be out there.)
So then, what would be the basic characteristics of said creature?
Firstly, if it is travelling through space then it won't be the bottom feeders. For a species to leave their planet, it is pretty much a given that they would have to be at the top of the food chain. Creatures lower down the food chain won't have the time to discuss philosophy, let alone invent stuff - they are too busy not being food.
Someone might say "but monkeys were not at the top of the food chain - they get eaten by loins and alligators and eagles all the time". Which is true, and also irrelevant. Monkeys don't travel through space (though they might get sent into space, it isn't voluntary). Humans travel through space. And humans are definitely at the top of the food chain. (Okay, so sometimes a human gets eaten by a shark or a lion or their pet Doberman, but remember - anything that eats humans is very quickly shot).
A creature has to have enough spare time to look up at the stars, wonder "what's up there?", develop the technology to get out there and then actually go. This is not the behaviour of a second or third rung creature - only top shelf creatures get to build rockets.
Which brings us to the next item - the creature must have both curiosity and imagination. So long as the early versions of the creature can pick up a bone and think "I can whack something over the head with this" then that is a creature that has the potential to reach the stars.
Curiosity will allow the creature to have a desire to investigate, to poke things with sticks, to put two different things in a jar and give it a stir. Creatures without curiosity do not investigate their world and do not discover elements, alloys or ways of compressing and sending images of their fellow creatures sans clothing.
Imagination will allow the creature to think of new things, new ways doing old activities, of considering different points of view. Have you ever known someone who was just filled with wacky, zany and downright stupid ideas? Well those people are essential. It is people like that which lead to people discovering things like flight, nuclear power, V8 engines and so on.
Which brings us to the next point - not all of the creatures should be the same! Diversity is the key to success!
Think about this: you have a tribe of creatures. All these creatures are curious and have imagination. The creatures see something interesting and they all run over to investigate. The creatures find a new type of plant that looks delicious and all the creatures eat it. All the creatures die.
You need a mix of creatures. Some will be really curious. These are the creatures that go out and find new places to live, new foods to eat, new resources to use. These will also be the creatures that get lost and die, eat poisonous foods and die or get trapped in mine shafts. And die.
Conversely, some of your creatures will be cautious and calm. They will provide stability, raise crops, do all the grunt work. These are also the type of creatures that will stay when the local food supply runs out and die, that will not change when the seasons change and die, that will create ten-tier governments. And die.
This is why there needs to be diversity. Sometimes, the summers will be good and there will be lots of food so plenty of the curious creatures can be sent out to look for new places to live. Sometimes, the winters will be harsh and the curious creatures will die in the woods while the stable ones huddle in their mud huts. Sometimes, the other village of creatures will invade and everyone who stayed put gets killed or carried off while those out in the field prosper. So long as there is diversity, at least some of the creatures will survive to bring forth the next generation.
Next, the creatures must be tool users. In order to use tools, they must have hands or tentacles or paws with extra long claws or something. You can't build a rocket without aluminium. You can't get aluminium without a refinery. You can't build a refinery without steel. You can't get steel without digging iron out of the ground. You can't dig iron out of the ground if you can't pick up a shovel.
Sure, a sufficiently advanced race might be able to have legions of slave creatures to do the manual labour, or use machines to do it. They might shed their arms and legs and change to winged butterflies or energy beings - but before they could get there, they had to be able to dig latrines. Unless the creature is telekinetic (able to move things without touching them), but that is just a variation on method. They still have to have had the ability to affect their environment.
From "Force Unleashed" - telekinesis is fun!
The final ingredient has to be communication. Soft communication such as discussing philosophy, reading poetry and singing are good starters, but this needs to progress to being able to transfer large, complex blocks of information from one creature to another. Try sending the plans for a 747 by squeaking like a dolphin, or intelligence on enemy positions and fortifications by changing colours like a chamelon.
Being able to compile, compress and transfer large amounts of information (such as by putting it into a book or the equivalent of an email) is paramount before the creatures in question will be able to travel across the stars. And they will need to be able to pass accumulated knowledge on to their progeny.
Those five would be the most fundamental requirements for a creature to be able to travel the stars. With that in mind, we should be able to infer a bit of an idea as to how the creature will look.
The creature would optimally be somewhere between the size of a child and a large human. Smaller, and they might lack the physical strength needed to wrestle resources out of the ground. Larger, and they might be too heavy to attain flight (a key step between space flight and crawling in mud).
The creature will probably have forward-looking vision with a minimum of two eyes. Stereoscopic vision is a requirement for depth perception. Although there is a good argument to be made for creatures that do not see in the visual spectrum, they will still need to be able to perceive things that are further away than they can reach. They will need to be able to quickly pass informations on to other creatures (such as "Danger - land mines!") without getting close to them. And more fundmentaly, they will need to hunt down food.
Creatures with eyes on the sides of the head look around them, looking for danger. These are not creatures at the top of the food chain. These creatures are food for the creature at the top of the food chain.
The creatures will need to be mobile. A creature that cannot traverse rocks, sand, forests, rivers, gorges, fjords and other obstacles is a creature that will be cornered and eaten by something that can. Legs make a good form of transportation (albeit a little on the slow side). Wings are good because the creature can travel greater distances, but take up a set of appendages that would be better employed in tool use. Slithering on the body (like a snake) might look really cool, but most creatures that slither do not have any appendages. And how does a creature that has trouble picking up a stick to hit things with fare when trying to do something complicated - like soldering a circuit board?
The creature will need to be able to survive in a variety of climates. So they will have clothing of some type, even if it is just a flight suit. Aliens that run around butt naked and melt when splashed with water are aliens that should not invade planets covered in the stuff, at least not butt naked. (Offtopic: how the hell does a species invent space travel but skip a little thing like rainjackets, or umbrellas???)
With all that in mind, there would appear to be a fairly narrow range of appearances that a creature capable of travelling through space can have. However, a good writer should be able to work out ways around this. Peter F. Hamilton, in his Night's Dawn trilogy had some aliens (the Tyrathca) who were described as "unimaginative" and "cow-like". As it turned out, they were able to travel the stars because another species built the ships they travelled in (and most of their technology).
In summation, one would expect that any species encountered "out there" (either in real life or, more likely, in fiction) would conform to some basic characteristics:
- Be at the top of the food chain
- Have both Curiosity & Imagination
- Have diversity
- Be tool users
Which my or may not work out well for either party...
Last updated: December 2008