A Look at Alien Life Forms

Aliens, and I'm not talking about those from south of the border, are a hot topic in many circles. There was once a time when people who reported seeing what appeared to be a creature from space, or even one of the ships they travel in, would be certain to move into a well padded room that was locked from outside. We've all seen the movies and pictures, and heard the stories about the so-called "little green men" who visit us from a world outside our own. The stereotype was actually begun in cartoons and comic books back in the 1950's because green is a color that seems so alien to us as a whole for bipedal intelligent creatures.

The fear of aliens was originally propagated by H. G. Wells in his classic story "The War of the Worlds", in which Martians attacked Earth in an attempt to conquer it. Because in those days the morals of the western world were dictated by religious beliefs, Wells introduced the angle of divine intervention when the invaders were killed by disease germs that humans had become resistant to. God, in his wisdom, protected us from extermination when we were unable to do it ourselves. If I remember correctly, those aliens weren't green, and in the 1953 movie version, they were brown.

Can there really be little green men, however? While it's not outside the realm of possibility, when taking into account all the reported sightings of aliens, it appears that the green variety may be as elusive as a four leaf clover. Just about everybody who has had a close encounter of the third or fourth kind, including those who report actually being kidnapped and medically manipulated by space men, say that the aliens they saw were gray, black, blue, purple, or brown, but never green.

Green is a relatively rare color for higher life forms here on Earth. There's no stretch of the imagination needed to figure that out. How many green mammals are out there? Even birds that are green usually employ that color as camouflage, and that holds true for reptiles and amphibians as well. In the cosmic scheme of things, green just isn't in the cards for the higher life forms, it appears.

Of course, you can't make a unilateral observation like that and say it's absolutely true. There are exceptions to every rule in the animal kingdom. On our own planet there are creatures who defy the norm. Bats are the only flying mammals. The Australian subcontinent is home to two species of mammals that lay eggs. The hummingbird is the only animal that can hover and fly backwards. Cetaceans, a group of mammals that includes porpoises, sea cows, and whales, live in the sea, yet need to breathe air in order to live. Venus fly traps and pitcher plants lure and catch live prey instead of getting their sustenance the way other plants do.

If life can produce such oddball creatures here, can a green alien be that impossible? It would require living conditions quite different from those of Earth, naturally. Perhaps their blood would be based on a different composition than ours, with copper or some as-yet unknown mineral instead of iron. Human blood, of course, contains water and a number of gases, including oxygen, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen. On whatever planets our space visitors come from, judging by the fact that they seem quite comfortable breathing the same air we do, things can't be that different from Earth. Maybe the only difference in their blood is either a smaller amount, or total lack of, water.

Quite possibly, the sun that furnishes life to an alien planet would radiate energy on a different spectrum than ours, and the aliens' skin color could serve as protection from those rays. Perhaps their star is not as bright as ours, and that explains some of their physical attributes. There are virtually thousands of reported contacts with space travelers. Before these reports began getting published, the people who were part of these contact scenarios had never heard of each other and never knew what the other victims' reports contained, yet strangely enough, they all described amazingly similar creatures. The space travelers, with very few exceptions, are described as wearing little or no clothing, with short thin bodies, spindly arms and legs, and very large heads whose faces have slanted black or dark blue eyes that have no lids or pupils.

This would certainly support the possibility of a smaller star. As is widely known, dark colors absorb sunlight and heat while light colors reflect them. The darker skin of the aliens is a must to soak in as much warmth as possible from a star fainter than ours, and the large eyes gather in more light to enable them to see better. Many fourth kind encounter victims say that lighting on the ships was very bright. Even human-looking aliens could come from an environment that differs from ours. They may have internal organs that operate differently from ours, perhaps even be water breathers with gills instead of lungs. Many UFO sightings have been reported over or near bodies of water, and others in the vicinity of volcanoes. The volcano incidents may result from visitors trying to stay in an environment similar to that of their home world, namely a heavy gaseous atmosphere with a low oxygen-nitrogen content.

Obviously, when using the technology of their craft as a measure, these aliens are vastly more advanced than humans are. If this is so, then why are they capturing humans for examinations and in some cases mutilating cattle? Why are human scientists still studying monkeys and apes? Curiosity is one possibility. They want to know about our reproductive systems, and maybe are trying to clone our animals for food. These alien races have been coming here for a long time. There are depictions of advanced flying craft in ancient history and even the Bible. A case can be made that Jesus was the result of artificial insemination of a human female and alien DNA. The "messengers", "angels", or whatever you want to call them, visited Mary and performed this advanced piece of medical science on her. In this case, the aliens appeared to have human features, which is quite a rarity.

The idea of little green men was obviously started by our revulsion of snakes and lizards, and this abhorration was attached to people from space as a result of the UFO scare of the 1950's and 1960's. In movies and cartoons from that era, space voyagers were coming to Earth to scout it out as their next colony or source of food, which usually made us the blue plate special. Two notable exceptions were "Mars Needs Women" in 1967, where the aliens needed breeding stock to repopulate the red planet, and "The Day the Earth Stood Still" in 1951, in which an emissary from another world stopped by to let us know we needed to stop waging war on each other. Although we could say we attached the attributes we were so repulsed by in reptiles to aliens as a way to make them even more remote from us, the truth is that in old black and white movies, green appeared as gray, which helped set apart alien skin from human, and in the early color films, green was a hue that stood out better than blue or red in facial makeup. This "greening" of aliens made it easy to hate them even before they demonstrated any hostile acts. If they're green, they're mean.

With most of the creatures described being so similar it appears that either all of them are offshoots of the same basic race, with color variations like those of humans according to their point of origin on their home planet, or that out there in the vast universe, humans are an extremely isolated species. Those whose bodies are nearly identical to ours may have seeded humanoid life on other planets such as Earth. Keep in mind that the mythologies of most ancient civilizations are very similar. In some cases the names of the gods are the same, and they were said to live either on a mountain or somewhere in the sky beyond the clouds. To the technologically challenged ancient humans, this would be a reasonable description of an orbiting ship or space station.

The gods are depicted as helping humans in a variety of subjects, including transportation, medicine, and warfare. Was their interest in humans merely curiosity to see how we would react to accelerated technological development, or was it an attempt to prepare us for an upcoming invasion from a non-human race? There may have been a precedent to the invasion scenario. Remember the story of the Amazons? They were said to be females with one breast who were fierce fighters. What if they actually weren't females but instead alien invaders whose armor incorporated a breathing apparatus located on the front of their bodies rather than the back? A front-mounted tank would be a lot easier to work in an emergency since its wearer could try to repair it himself instead of depending on someone else.

Somewhere down the line, we will undoubtedly make "official" contact with an alien race, but it's impossible to tell how this encounter will unfold. Will they be a belligerent, aggressive civilization trying to expand their grip on the galaxy by annexing Earth or will they entrust us with advanced scientific knowledge that will rid us of diseases and make our lives easier? Our government, it's plain to see, believes its citizens aren't ready to encounter space men. They say such an encounter would cause panic, but the truth is that today a large portion of the population believes in life on other planets and that these aliens have been visiting and studying us for ages.

For humans to believe we are alone in this universe is not only preposterous, it's the ultimate example of denial of the obvious.