• ashok36@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    We invented the flame thrower. I know George Carlin did the bit best but… Imagine explaining that to a group of aliens.

    “You… you throw what now?”

    “Flames, bro.”

    “For what purpose…?”

    “Well, We had these people called Nazis and they liked to hide in concrete fortifications so we figured the best way to make them not be in there would be to fill it with fire.”

    “Does that not harm these ‘nazis’?”

    “Oh yeah, it harms them. That was like, a bonus.”

    “Well, It was nice meeting you. Goodbye forever.”

  • Cheshire@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    There’s a correlation between eyesight and intelligence (in species, not individuals) - interpreting visual inputs takes a lot of brain power, and might be one of the factors pushing for greater intelligence. So, there’s at least a decent chance that intelligent aliens would have good eyesight.

    Also, they’d need hands, or something equivalent.

    Once you have hand(equivalent)s, decent eyes, and intelligence, hand-eye-coordination isn’t far off.

    If elephants can figure out how to throw rocks with enough force to kill a child, then so can E.T.

  • sartalon@reddthat.com
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    1 year ago

    I did read somewhere that our brains are really good at calculating where to throw to hit something in motion.

    Granted you need practice to get good, but supposedly we are wired for it.

  • MrJameGumb@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Yeah, most species take FOREVER to get the hang of projectile weapons and us big brained humans only took like 5.5 million years to perfect it! That’s practically no time at all!

    • ProfessorZhu@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The first wars were thought to be a bunch of people facing off and throwing rocks and sticks at each other. We’ve been throwing shit for as long as we could walk

  • edric@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I’ve seen enough videos of chimps and gorillas throwing shit at people that I don’t want to test this claim.

  • demlet@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I just spent several seconds trying to figure out if “kobe” is some imaginary alien word I’m supposed to know from Star Trek or something.

  • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    If true, it’s probably because humans have mostly slow twitch muscle fibers (e.g., great for endurance and manual dexterity) while great apes are mostly fast twitch muscle fibers (good for raw strength). That’s why a chimpanzee, who is much smaller than a person, can perform feats pf strength that would embarrass most strong-man competitors. OTOH, humans evolved to run; the kind of long-distance running that some people do for fun would kill other primates.

    • mr_pichon@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Well, the kind of long distance running that some people do for fun would definitely kill me

    • CitizenKong@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Especially long distance running. Imagine a gazelle in prehistoric Africa running away from this weird ape until it is completely exhausted, just to turn around and see the weird ape still coming after it in the distance. We were the horror villains of prehistoric animals.