From: Ray Dickenson <r.dickenson.nul>
Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2012 10:00:18 +0100
Archived: Fri, 15 Jun 2012 08:45:49 -0400
Subject: Alien Body-Shapes


Hello List, a current news-item is headlined "The shape of fear:
why we hate spiders"

http://tinyurl.com/clw2x47

and has only two pertinent quotes:

"Spiders are the source of fear for thousands because of the
shape of their legs and their colour, scientists have claimed."

and

"Their fast movements scuttling across floors into dark corners
also tap into deep-rooted fears, it was claimed.

"Spiders just tick all these boxes, and like any phobia, when it
builds up in someone's mind they can become scared even seeing a
picture," Professor May told the Daily Mail."

Most papers I've seen claimed "scientists explain 'Why we hate
spiders'"

Which of course they didn't!

If you read the much quoted text you see the 'scientist' just
pushed the question back one remove by restating it in quasi-
scientific terms. As Darwin said "It is so easy... to think that
we give an explanation when we only restate a fact." (from the
conclusion of 'On the Origin of Species')

So the question of why we dislike the spider-shape and
spider-motion remains unanswered.

I mention this because an American scientist? speculated (maybe a
decade ago?) that we dislike spiders because they are a truly
alien species which developed elsewhere (can't remember if he
thought they arrived before or after Earth-life evolved - but as
almost all are carnivorous it was probably after).

While not sure about the 'alien' bit, I _am_ fairly certain that
we have a residual dislike of spiders because our small ancestors
(maybe gekko or  shrew-sized) were hunted, caught and eaten in
abundance by spiders' much larger ancestors - back in the
high-oxygen era when dragonflies measured a yard across the
wings.

Does this tell us anything about real, evolved aliens - i.e.
ETs?

Well, it's hard to be anywhere near sure, but we are basically
herbivore/omnivores (witness our teeth and ancestry and the fact
that red meat is bad for us), so if we meet spider-shaped
aliens, or even humanoid aliens with vertically-slitted eyes
(both are almost certainly signs of hunting carnivorous
ancestry), maybe we'd better be careful.

Contrarily, if we met pure herbivore ETs (although I'm a bit
dubious whether they could evolve to a high level of conscious
intelligence) we'd best be even more careful because they
wouldn't trust us at all, due to our recent foray into meat
eating, and herbivore meat at that.


Cheers

Ray D




Listen to 'Strange Days... Indeed' - The PodCast

At:

http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/sdi/program/

These contents above are copyright of the author and
UFO UpDates - Toronto. They may not be reproduced
without the express permission of both parties and
are intended for educational use only.