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The Moon, Pandora, from the film "Avatar"
Topic Started: Dec 20 2009, 02:13 PM (8,064 Views)
Yorick
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I took someone's suggestion and created another topic to speculate on the moon's inhabitants' evolution.

So...speculate!
"I believe, that whatever doesn't kill you, simply makes you...stranger"

-The Dark Knight (2008)
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T.Neo
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Quote:
 
So the least human thing that comes to mind is still humanoid?


A pillar-erect biped, if you wish. Which is what the Prawns are.

A hard mathematical figure provides a sort of enlightenment to one's understanding of an idea that is never matched by mere guesswork.
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Venatosaurus
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Amazing film !!! Just finished watching it an my gone, I was left literally left breathless and stunned when we first walked through the Pandoran jungle, it was one of the few movies that left me excited, inspired, and saddened ! In IMAX it was gorgeous ! And who cares, it's a film, honestly their humanoid appearance never bothered me, I was very interested in the neural botany though !



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Canis Lupis
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.

Very good movie, I've got to admit.

And, not trying to rehash the debate, but the biology makes sense in the universe.
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Holben
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Rumbo a la Victoria

Maybe- it is merely variation between kingdoms that bugs me.
Edited by Holben, Jan 12 2010, 04:24 PM.
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

"It is the old wound my king. It has never healed."
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T.Neo
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Here's a little wild speculation that I've heard on the 'net.

Apparently, the last tamer of the Leonoptyrex did so in a previous "time of great sorrow".

Now, since the Na'vi are all at perfect peace in their environment, what could cause a "time of great sorrow"?

Alien invaders; from another planet. Not Earth, not Pandora (my favourite origin would be ACB or Proxima) who also came to pillage Pandora from natural resources but got repelled by the Na'vi.

Any thoughts?
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Venatosaurus
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Maybe when humans first landed on Pandora ?



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Empyreon
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Are you plausible?

Well, it is mentioned that another of Polyphemus' moons has an atmosphere suitable for life, yet it gets no mention anywhere else. Could this be the source for another marauding space-borne society?
Edited by Empyreon, Jan 15 2010, 04:20 PM.
Take a look at my exobiology subforum of the planet Nereus!

COM Contributions


food for thought
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T.Neo
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Perhaps.

It just doesn't make sense though. If the humans found Polyphemus/Pandora, they'd have found suitable bodies elsewhere and at least probed them.

They could potentially even have launched manned missions to this second moon, and they'd certainly have found intelligent life there if it existed.
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lamna
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The Na'vi claim they are all like that, but who's to say they all believe the same as the tribes near the mines are? I mean there are parts of Brazil where people are completely isolated and islands in India with very hostile tribes in them. So hostile nobody has been able to study them.

I mean a few hundred kilometres away their could be civilization and the Intheway tribe would never know. Some of the Na'vi might even be nice people who would happily trade to help a advanced race in need, but did not have as much of the Unobtanioum as the Intheways do.
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Are nipples or genitals necessary, lamna?
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Carlos
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Okay, my commentary on all of this insanity.

NOTE: PORTUGUESE RAGE BENEATH. VIEWER EXCRETION EXTREMELY ADVISED

Quote:
 
I can't think of a film where it failed because the characters were too different from humans. Generally it comes from when they are too human they fall into the uncanny valley and become creepy, which I think Avatar managed to avoid rather well.


WHAT!?

No, just no. For those who don't get how serious this is, there is no clear defenition of furry, but under one of the many I'm one in the sense I love anthropomorphic animals. And there's no way in Hell, drugs or alcohool that Na'vis are by any means outside of the uncanny valley!!! I mean, look at the gigantic eyes that make the human appearence look profundely screw up! Look at the ungodly body proportions, look at the teeth everything combined and make disturbingly human!

So I, a guy that would find perfectly acceptable sex with an anthropomorphic canine, cannot by any stretch of imagination see how a human being can possibly feel attracted to something as hideous as a Na'vi! Pandora's fauna is usually beautifull, but those guys pollute the planet with their horrible appearence! The goddess should get rid of them not of humans! Its a relief to see there's actually things that eat them.

Anyway, I find the humanoid debate stupid. While a human like look can be possible, I find that a vaguely humanoid design would be far more likely, and I cannot see why people cannot conceive something that isn't exactly like a human being can't be relatable. Prawns, while vaguely humanoid, where still as far apart from men as bats are from birds, and yet everyone loved them! ET was vaguely humanoid, but no matter how grotesque it was people still love it! The squibbons are totally inhuman and yet...oh wait, nobody likes them.

As a whole I like the concepts of the movie, but the story is just silly. Also stop using taxonomy, use cladistics
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T.Neo
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"Intheway" tribe. LOL.

Indeed, you could have different (and conflicting) cultures, but I doubt there could be a whole civilisation sitting there undetected,
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Venatosaurus
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What, I loved the Na'vi and thought they were a beautiful race ! More beautiful than many humans ! I thought the film was amazing, though I doubt humans would go through that much trouble getting minerals, and if they traveled at all to the planet may try to make relations with the Na'vi and research the biota to learn of ways to help mend Earth's broken ecosystem. Oh and all of the Na'vi tribes know of each other, remember they can 'upload' into the biological neural interface ;)



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lamna
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I did not really find then disturbing, but that's hardly surprising if you've seen my exchanges with Yellowdrakex. I suppose it's subjective, though they avoided looking like animated corpses and like characters.

And they Na'vi would not know about other groups that don't "jack in". It's irksome where on earth we have 820 languages spoken in Papua New Guinea alone and 38,000 religions in the world. Opps, not religions, that's just denominations of Christianity. Yet on every other planet it's assumed their will be one language, one religion, one ethnic group.

And they don't have the same culture, the Space Rohan (or one of the other tribes that help) has nasal piercings.

Also we don't know about how the world brain works. It could be like an organic internet, you have to know what to search for to find it. I mean imagine trying to remember something you have no clue about.
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T.Neo
 
Are nipples or genitals necessary, lamna?
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Carlos
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Well, I suppose I was a bit hard on the abominations Na'vis, but still they look horrible, both in the context (among the native fauna) and in looks (compared, for instance, to actual anthropomorphic mammal races I've seen before, just as as the panserbjorne of His Dark Materials and the satyrs of Narnia)
Lemuria:
http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/topic/5724950/

Terra Alternativa:
http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/forum/460637/

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Venatosaurus
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True lamna, the coastal Ikran tribe also had body paint, something the other tribes did not, but I agree with you full-heartedly that it is unrealistic to assume and alien race would all have the same languages, beliefs etc, then again since they are able to 'download' memories and the songs of other tribes it is safe to assume they'd retain the same language, and since their belief is an actual entity (well not actual but it does exist as the hive minds of all of the plants) they'd share that as well.



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