Re: Intelligent Design
 

I don't think anthropomorphic is that big of a problem. The general "humanoid" form of two walking limbs, two manipulating limbs, and a head where the sensory organs are concentrated, is actually a pretty efficient layout. I can imagine evolution tending to settle on some variation of it for most sapient species.

Re: Intelligent Design
 

I strongly doubt this.

Re: Intelligent Design
 

Something similar happens on Earth already; its called convergent evolution. Very distanctly related species have very similar body plans, because that body plan is best suited for where they live.

Look at sharks and dolphins. The shape is nearly identical, yet you'd have to go back hundreds of millions of years before you'd find a common ancestor between them.

Re: Intelligent Design
 

Still light years away planet might be more different than 2 region on the same planet.

The truth is I don't know what they would look like but I don't like the "human-centered" view that all who is sentient must look like us...

Re: going back hundreds of millions of years
 

Here's something that get's me tweaked:

I have two parents, and they each have two parents, and they each have two parents...If I go back only 33 generations, then I exceed the entire planet's population.

So that family tree heirarchy can't be a good model, because we're all inbreeds from just a few generations ago?

Sorta makes the evolutionary model a shallow pond, doesn't it?

Re: Intelligent Design
 

Calling it human-centric is irrelevant.

You could look at squirrels, who like to stand on two feet, hold a nut with two arms and chatter away with their sensory-and-processing organ laden head.

Heads:
- The speed of chemical signals is actually pretty slow. Keeping the brain close to the main sensors means faster reactions. This is also why reflexes don't go all the way to the brain, but just to the spine. You gotta get that hand out of the fire NOW, or you don't get to reproduce later.
For the brain to be near to more things, you have to concentrate those things in all the same place, thus forming a head.

- Appendages: Four is nice, but two are all you really need to get around, and using the other two for manipulators allows a lot more flexibility...
Raccoons, squirrels, and dogs use their front paws to manipulate stuff when they're not using them to run.
And those water-running lizards are pretty cool on two legs too.
Two manipulators are far better than just one, of course. Three dosen't add much more aside from juggling ability.

Re: Intelligent Design
 

I feel it is easy to explain the existing feature and find out how very practical there are and then conclude that it must be the optimum configuration and so the only one.

Yet I'm not so sure living being born in the mist of a Gaz Giant would have a head. They could be ball-like, with the "brain" located in the middle of it (better protected that our easy-to-shout heads), yet close to everything, with some kind of wings, or even only floaters whose weight can be chemically altered to navigate.

I mean that some living environment can be so different from ours.

Then of course if you find a planet similar to the earth, then maybe (and only maybe as so many parameters, like sun light, matter, gravity, atmosphere, ...) some aliens could be "similar" (I'm just thinking than on a oxygen-full planet one being could move by burning down oxygen while being of course fire proof.

Just my idea...

Re: Intelligent Design
 

Natural selection dosen't select against "easily shot" until after intelligence arrives on the planet. Or at least technology that originated from something intelligent.

If you've got a gas sac for floating, suspending the brain in the middle is not very good.
More efficient to attach it to the outside (it will naturally rotate to the bottom, like a gondola). Right near the mouth, and the feeding apparatus and any manipulators for getting said food.

Putting the sac on the end of a tail so the critter can lunge with its head to get food would be advantageous if the food is multicellular... filterfeeders won't need anything but shifting winds to blow the plankton-equivalent past them. Having multiple flotation sacs might be good if the environment occasionally pops them. It wouldn't help against predators, tho.

Floater predators could be avoided by climbing higher... the highest prey would survive, and the low/slow/weak ones would get eaten, thus driving both populations to float higher and higher.

Winged predators would be like woves on sheep. Not much that can be done except to live in herds. Face any adults outwards, maybe have some stinger tentacles to wave and discourage them unless they're actually hungry.
Although, floating higher could help somewhat here too... If it takes more work for the wingers to get up to your altitude from wherever they rest, then they'll go after the lower, easier prey.

Re: Intelligent Design
 

However, natural selection does select for the ability to withstand accident. Having the primary processing center of the human body located within the most protected part of the body just makes sense, as it would and does with other species. If the brain wasn't encased in a tough shell, a species probably wouldn't last too long.

Re: Intelligent Design
 

The operative word there being tough...
But still not bulletproof.