Aliens in Human shells

Why do UFO proponents, "contactees," "abductees" and other supporters always seem to depict their aliens as humanoid? Why are they insistent that these alleged life-forms follow the human body-plan?

This goes against our understanding of science and all current biological models of how life evolved on earth, let alone other worlds. Even if the entire process of evolution on earth were re-simulated with all of the original parameters of biological genesis in place, we still wouldn't come out looking the same. So why would a visitor from an alien world look like us?

It's a near guarantee that they wouldn't.

Let me give you one example ( out of possible billions: )

Let's start with a world that could serve as a location for our hypothetical biosphere. It's a low-gravity, Titan-like moon with an upper atmosphere saturated in energy rich polymers powered by the radiation and magnetic fields of the central planet. These gradually filter down various strata where assorted types of hunter-gather clades develop alongside other more stationary biota. The entire pace of life is incredibly slow and almost frozen in comparison to our earth-like perception of time. Things live for extraordinarily long periods, and evolution itself takes a virtual eternity to run its course.

Eventually, a sentient race emerges. Their biochemistry is based on liquid hydrocarbons, fullerenes, ammonia and nitrogen causing them to appear as a very large and bizarre crab-like or spider-like configuration that only vaguely resembles anything that we could recognize. They move and function so slowly that they can barely be perceived to be living things at all. Their senses are not visual or aural - instead, relying predominantly on sonar-like transmission and detection. (This means no written language or art, but instead similar concepts being employed with geometric configurations and textures conveying the equivalent.)

These beings become the dominant species of the planet and go on to discover space exploration after millions and millions of years of slow advancement.

Incidentally, long distance or sub-relativistic journeys would not be a problem for this species as the passage of time is not really an issue considering their pace of life and perception. Traveling to a distant star system would be no more strenuous to them than sending someone to the moon is for us. Their technology would be based on cryobiology, developed from low-temperature life feeding on Titan-like or Kuiper-belt environments and growing the necessary structures out of polymers, ice and frozen gas. So, basically some VERY exotic stuff. They prefer to compile constructs in orbit or on dead, moon-like worlds without atmospheres.

Their technology, aesthetics, psychology and even architecture would be absolutely mind-bending to behold. If their machinery were put before a population of human beings for examination, almost nothing useful could be extracted from them aside from the fact that they would be quite obviously "alien." Their 'ships' and other components melt, explode or "die" when exposed to earth temperatures and pressures and any 'probes' sent to earth would have to be "custom-made" to adhere to our planets physical constraints. Their behaviors and methods of construction would be a profoundly disturbing sight to anyone first attempting to make sense out of them, and communication or any relative attempts at contact would be extremely difficult requiring a number of years of careful study.

And that is just ONE example of ONE type of world that life could develop on.

This does not take into account how gaseous, Jovian life would develop if it became sentient. (But it's probably safe to say that they'd probably make the guys I just described look pretty normal in comparison.)

My point is this: Considering the possibilities of life in the universe, how intelligent life developed on earth, and how the mechanism of evolution itself works - the idea of humanoid aliens is absurd.

I can understand what you mean by not look like us, but what im trying to point out here is that the mentality is also key to the way that lifefom will look in some respects..

If we take basic logic here and say ok we have 2 planets bother are identical! and we let them fester... the same things that happen on one would not infact happen on the other at the same time "number of factors" wind rain geolgy ect"..

Infact you could have 2 planets with the excat same thing and one may never have life on it and the other one will.. why is this? because in order for life to happen it must be planned..!!

Now if we scale this up to our universe.. the amount of earthlike planets are good alot infact, will like take hold on one of them "well we know that for sure because we are here" would life on that planet evolve humans from the very first spark "well we know for sure it can because we are here" now if we take into account what the earth is made from ect we can say that any earth like planet would hold a good change of making the same stuff on it.. Tho we dont know the chances of it actualy making humans becuase of metor impacts ect... but the "basic" blocks are there that give the "chance for it" to happen just like it did on earth and with that world called infinity you can bet ur bottom doller its happend alot!!!

Now would aliens Look like us from a planet that is not the same "lets say jupiter" well no way would it look close, infact nothing on the planet would come close to any alien that resided on jupiter.. would it have intelegence? well if life is there then the possiblity of it getting or making intelegence is 1 because we have life "prerequsist ofc"...

So with that i can firmly say yes other aliens do stand a very good chance of looking like the way we do.. and some will not "they are the ones who may not visit" infact i find it hard to imagen why they would bother...

now another thing also is Bactira, there is a good possiblity of GIANT bactira aswell that live in the skys of planets.. just like the pretty worms we see floating about in ours, i dont think like is limited to only planets i can imagen life living in space aswell...

dont ask my what the hell it would look like lol but the place in witch we live is VERY odd indeed, we should know this because we are here!! that is odd on its own dont you think.

maybe the aliens are humanoid because that's the most common genetic blueprint for sentient beings. we cannot say for sure because we clearly do not know, so assuming its not is just ignorant (or disinfo).

humanoids have five appendages that extrude from our core; head, two arms, two legs. we have five fingers, and five toes on each hand/foot. makes sense to me. why would a sentient being have three legs and one arm? because that's illogical. i also don't don't know for sure, and neither do you.

so im going to go ahead and believe the eye witnesses over your opinion, which is just an opinion with no evidence to back your claims.