Fish aliens???
Lucas J. Riesau
that humans are fishing on Earth and eating their
"relatives" since centuries.
This will drive the fish aliens crazy and they'll start
to kill, butcher and eat humans.
Most of the action will take place in outer space,
but the fish aliens need water to survive. They look
like fish and I wonder how I can explain how they
created space-faring technology? PSI-powers?
Telepathy? Tentacles? Or an underwater slave-race
to do the dirty work for them?
Damien Valentine
...Hm.
Is there an actual genetic relationship between your aliens and
Earthly fish, or is it only cosmetic? That is, do they just happen to
look a little bit like fish, or are they actually descendants of some
ancient fish species that (perhaps) became intelligent millions of
years ago, ventured into space, and are only now returning to the
world of their birth (maybe like salmon going back to their spawning
grounds, but on a larger scale).
One could always go with the "organic/psychic technology" shtick,
especially since a species that lives underwater would find it
difficult to smelt metal in the ordinary way: no fire! Alternatively,
you could have an amphibious species that can survive without water
for a short time, or which carries a few hour's supply of water around
with it somehow. (A species of spider, Argyroneta, carries a silk
bubble filled with air and hunts underwater; I suppose your fish-men
could have something in reverse.)
Michael Ash
> One could always go with the "organic/psychic technology" shtick,
> especially since a species that lives underwater would find it
> difficult to smelt metal in the ordinary way: no fire!
Meanwhile, on Planet Fishbulb: "Your hypothetical land-based intelligent
creatures could never progress beyond the Stone Age, since without access
to plentiful water they will have a difficult time smelting metal in the
ordinary way."
--
Michael Ash
Rogue Amoeba Software
Crown-Horned Snorkack
Michael Ash kirjutas:
There are electric fish. In several unrelated groups: electric rays,
catfish, eels...
Could you have an intelligent electric fish who uses its electric
organs to generate metals by electrolysis?
Bryan Derksen
> This will drive the fish aliens crazy and they'll start
> to kill, butcher and eat humans.
Seems to me that they're already pretty far along the path to craziness
if they let that bother them so much. The fish of Earth are not remotely
close relatives, even if the aliens are descended from Earth-derived
stock in some way. The mere fact that the aliens are intelligent
tool-users and Earth fish are completely incapable on both counts means
they'd have had to undergo quite a bit of divergent evolution.
We do have some rare humans that freak out when people eat animals as
distantly related as cows, but the sort who would commit murder over it
are rarer still and they don't get to start wars over it.
What do the _aliens_ eat? As a fish-derived species I would expect a
major source of food would likely be other fish. Even if they don't eat
fish themselves plenty of other species in their environment would do so
- the alien equivalents of sharks, dolphins, etc. Do they also freak out
when animals on their home planet eat fish? Taking revenge on them by
eating them in return would seem kind of hypocritical since most of the
fish predators would themselves be fish. :)
goodbye...@yahoo.dk
Perhaps the planet they come from has lots of volcanic activity, and
they have harnessed this resource for forging metals and later, for
electricity. Electrolysis for propellants. Melted comets for space
habitats.
pgar...@acay.com.au
>From my encyclopedia.
"In a sense, land vertebrates are simply highly modified fishes, for
when fishes colonised the land
habitat they became tetrapod land vertebrates".
So mayby they could evolve into amphibians, reptiles, mammals, then
primates then develop intelligence, then create spaceships etc. -:)