Although I don't usually do this, I found the following on
rec.arts.startrek.info, and thought it might have some relevance to
Traveller as well ...
Article 1360 of rec.arts.startrek.info:
Subject: There's a reason those Trek aliens look human
Date: 1 Mar 93 18:20:55 GMT
Organization: Vulcan Science Academy, Tau Ceti Sector
A lot of people have complained that Star Trek aliens look too much
like humans. Well, maybe there's a good reason for it after all.
There was an article in the Science & Medicine section of the San Jose
Mercury News on 23 February 1993 entitled `Researchers find gene that
orchestrates embryos' written By Natalie Angier of the New York Times.
Quoting from the beginning of the article ...
As any ardent viewer of the ``Star Trek'' television series
will attest, the great majority of alien creatures portrayed,
no matter how theoretically distant their origins, look
terribly familiar.
.
.
.
But lest the creators of the series be accused of intellectual
timidity or laziness, it turns out that nature, too, believes
in an all-purpose, ever reusable blueprint for building
mobile bodies.
The article goes on to describe a recent discovery about animal cell
and DNA structure called Hox genes. It states that every single animal
that's ever been studied for this has been found to contain these
special Hox genes. While different animals have different numbers of
the genes, all have them, and all Hox genes seem to have a very similar
structure, no matter which animal they're found in.
The Hox genes work during the very first days of life causing the single
celled gamete to subdivide in such a way that the animal forms the hands,
feet, eyes, mouth or other distinguishing features appropriate for that
animal. It's no accident that animals are all pretty much symmetric
(e.g. with two hands, feet, etc.) because it's controlled by the Hox
genes.
Since these Hox genes are fundamental enough to be found in every
animal on Earth, there's also no reason to believe that carbon based
life elsewhere in the universe, based upon the standard Amino acid
building blocks, wouldn't have similar Hox genes in their DNA as well.
And so, it's not surprising that other life forms would show the same
type of symmetry and otherwise be very much like life on Earth.
If there were other intelligent life in the universe, it shouldn't be
surprising for it to be bipedal, erect, with hands, eyes, ears, mouth
and other familiar body parts and functions. So maybe Star Trek got
it right after all!
David B. Mears
Hewlett-Packard
Cupertino CA
[email removed]
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Edited by Jim "The Big Dweeb" Griffith - the official scapegoat of r.a.s.i.
Email submissions to [email removed] and questions to [email removed]
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forwarded to TML by [email removed]