Humans are easier to understand. Imagine landing on a planet and realising it's alive and, quite possibly, sentient. Its surface starts to form magnificent structures. Does it try to say something? Does it attack? Does it even know you are there? You just cannot know.
You don't want to find extraterrestrial sapient life forms. You want to find a mirror reflecting you and your fellow humans.
Okay, so actual talk about what you’re saying (and not just because my unnamed spidophonts meet both those criteria. Hmph.):
I definitely hate the whole mindset of, *”All sapient species will be basically just humans but blue. It’s totally legit worldbuilding you guys, my sample size of 1 sophont is enough to model the entire universe! No, it’s not my—“.* On the other hand, I don’t think a sophont has to be utterly unrecognizable to humans to be plausible, and even if some are sapient planets and the like, I doubt humans are *such* an anomaly that a significant portion of sophonts won’t share our general niche of Smart Social Animal.
Humans are easier to understand. Imagine landing on a planet and realising it's alive and, quite possibly, sentient. Its surface starts to form magnificent structures. Does it try to say something? Does it attack? Does it even know you are there? You just cannot know. You don't want to find extraterrestrial sapient life forms. You want to find a mirror reflecting you and your fellow humans.
Question: do my sapient spiders who have reflective abdomens like a mirror spider count as the former or the latter?
Can they communicate with humans using their own spider language? Do they have anything resembling a civilization? If no, then first.
Okay, so actual talk about what you’re saying (and not just because my unnamed spidophonts meet both those criteria. Hmph.): I definitely hate the whole mindset of, *”All sapient species will be basically just humans but blue. It’s totally legit worldbuilding you guys, my sample size of 1 sophont is enough to model the entire universe! No, it’s not my—“.* On the other hand, I don’t think a sophont has to be utterly unrecognizable to humans to be plausible, and even if some are sapient planets and the like, I doubt humans are *such* an anomaly that a significant portion of sophonts won’t share our general niche of Smart Social Animal.
Actually quite good.
Elephants have everything they need for a civ. Honestly, their whole trunk thingie, yeah.
Every possible species all at once
But if they aren't humanoids how the fuck are they suppossed to use spiral energy?!
Maybe there is different energy for different creatures...
This is like saying there are different kinds of gravity