Are We Crazy to Think We're Only in Things Through Human Colored Glasses?

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If we see a complex ecosystem on another planet, the chances are there will be sexual reproduction. Reproduction of some sort that there's got to be. And what's inif you take a very broad view of kinship then you don't need sexual reproduction to have kinship. We could, in theory, see whole societies, whole families, based on on kin action, without sexual reproduction. But it seems unlikely because fo what we know about about life on earth. It doesn't seem to be unduly etcentric to thinkt tha some form of sexual reproduction will arise on another planet.

If extraterrestrial life is out there — not just microbial slime, but big, complex, macroscopic organisms — what will they be like? Movies have trained us to think that they won’t be that different at all; they’ll even drink and play music at the same cafes that humans frequent. A bit of imagination, however, makes us wonder whether they won’t be completely alien — we have zero data about what extraterrestrial biology could be like, so it makes sense to keep an open mind. Arik Kershenbaum argues for a judicious middle ground. He points to constraints from physics and chemistry, as well as the tendency of evolution to converge toward successful designs, as reasons to think that biologically complex aliens won’t be utterly different from us after all.

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Arik Kershenbaum received his Ph.D. in Evolutionary Biology and Ecology from the University of Haifa. He is currently College Lecturer and Director of Studies at Girton College, University of Cambridge. He is the author of The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy: What Animals on Earth Reveal About Aliens — and Ourselves.

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