Dexterity

[Sandman]

Lizardmen are fantasy trailer trash. Don't use them.

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by MrFun


Can you be a little more specific? You mean fisting would be a much more popular form of gripping and there would be less handling of smaller objects by using two fingers in a pinching manner?

[Winston]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison

Now that's just wrong.

It's like MrFun using the smiley..

[Apocalypse]

I can't stop laughing about the fisting posts

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by MrFun


Oh, trust me -- this is not the only difference from humans of the fantasy world I'm constructing. Trust me.



The other difference is that this non-human sentient species will be descended from a reptilian animal, eventually evolving to become warm-blooded, capable of speech, and bipedal but retaining a scaly-type skin, and lacking hair and so on. Can't get into the details at this time.

Sounds like the Saaur in Raymond E. Feists Serpent War Saga.

Your lizardmen aren't nomadic are they?

ACK!

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Odin
To expect an intellegent species on a another planet to have a body plan that similar to the body plan of Terran terrestrial vertebrates is madness.

The bipedal form have its advantages over other forms.

Originally posted by Odin
Give your creatures an extra pair of limbs, different general arrangement of the skellaton and possitions of the sense organs and orfaces, etc. Have thier bones made out of, say, calcium carbonate instead of our calcium phosphate bones. Make them distinctive organisms, not humanoids with scales.

Oh, you mean details. I don't think they make much of material difference, unless a critical event in the story hinges on the main character having two pairs instead of one pair of limbs, say.

Details may make the species more alien, but adds little to the actual story.

[Urban Ranger]

Back to the OP.

The dexterity of a hand probably has less to do with the number of digits than things such as shape and limberness. For example, if the joints of the can bend backwards like bird's knees, that adds extra dexterity. Or if the digits have one more joint than us, that adds extra dexterity. These features, OTOH, likely to make the hand weaker.

[Odin]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger

The bipedal form have its advantages over other forms.

prove it. a 6-limbed "centaur" like creature would work just as well as a bipedal tetrapod.

[ajbera]

Larry Niven designed his Puppeteers, a 2-headed/handed (the mouths functions as hands), tripedal centauroid in response to those who said the anthropoidal form was the only viable configuration for an intelligent species.

[Urban Ranger]

A bipedal being can enter areas where a "centaur" cannot.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by ajbera
Larry Niven designed his Puppeteers, a 2-headed/handed (the mouths functions as hands), tripedal centauroid in response to those who said the anthropoidal form was the only viable configuration for an intelligent species.

Sure, you can create any body form in a science fiction world, more or less. This is no reason why such a body form should exist.

There are very good reasons to a lateral symmetry.

[OzzyKP]

Originally posted by Timexwatch
I have two words:

Backwards Kneecaps.

Watch "The Arrival" with Charlie Sheen to see what I'm talking about.

Damn straight.


Also, I encourage you to imagine beyond our standard species as well. Our species definitions are arbitrary anyways, but if you want to be creative reimagine totally new creatures. Break down the barriers of warm blooded vs. cold blooded. Don't ask me how, but I'm sure it could be done.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
Our species definitions are arbitrary anyways

Maybe, maybe not.

Lateral symmetry is a very good design, and you see that in virtually all animals. There are a few exceptions, but they are all relatively primitive. So, it seems lateral symmetry is conducive to become successful in competition.

Lateral symmetry may only arise as an accident, but once it gets on the scene, it could dominate the rest of the designs.

[MrFun]

To say that if a writer creates an entirely new sentient species and makes effort to use his/her imagination to make them different from humanoids in other significant ways, but then shrug off those efforts simply because one of similarities is that they're bipedal is to depreciate the areas in which the writer did diverge from the norm with his/her creativity.


My reptilian (not lizardmen) sentient beings will be bipedal -- cry a river, and then deal with it.

[OzzyKP]

What evolutionary advatages did being bipedal offer the early lizardmen?



btw, what evolutionary advantage did being bipedal offer us humans? I forget. If we were swinging from trees and such, why become all rigid and upright?