Primitive vs Advanced.
“primitive” is usually used to describe something old, but is better used to describe traits that are close to the origin or ancestor.
A species cannot be primitive, but is rather a mix of primitive and advanced traits.
An example being human hands, which have changed subtly to be better, but still have a lot in common with the hands of what we would consider “primitive” species. whereas a horse has evolved to have far advanced ‘hooves’, which are a single digit (the equivalent to humans only having our middle fingers/toes), the single pad makes galloping easier, but horses do not have the precision grip that humans do. So “primitive” does not equal “bad”
while human hands may be relatively primitive, the structure of our legs, our bipedal stature is advanced, so we are a collection of advanced and primitive traits. these traits developed for different reasons, mostly environmental reasons.
natural selection will eventually decide which traits are best suited for the climate at the time, this video gives a good example…
It suggests that humans gained their intelligence from rapid changes to the environment, changes that required judgement and problem solving skills.
How did our alien get to where it is?
Looking at other subterranean species like the mole, burrowing underground was to do with food and also a way of hiding from predators.
if our alien feeds on kinetic energy, how would that shape them?
above is a quick sketch out of a possible evolution chain.
it doesn’t have to be legs though, perhaps nubs with powerful propelling muscles to move them around.
I thought of the possibility that the reason why the alien species when underground, would be to escape a greater threat in prehistoric times. and then, there in the earth they’d develop cultures and habitats, the adaption to a subterranean environment could enlarge their brain (or equivalent to a brain). In fact, what if they didn’t have a brain or cognitive thought wasn’t linked to environment but a sort of self-betterment.
Since they don’t need to eat other living things to gain energy, what if the surface of their planet became sterile, like if the planet’s magnetic field disappeared and the rays from the planet’s sun killed everything on the surface with radiation. The kinetic feeding creatures could still survive in conditions where plants and other lives are not sustained, but they would have to evolve to be able to either resist radiation, or dig deeper to escape it.
digging into the mantle might not just be a way of escaping sun radiation, but also for getting heat as the atmosphere of the planet would be stripped away from the lack of a magnetic field.
the moon is an example of a mass that has been sterilized by the sun. it doesn’t spin like earth, because earth’s gravity has overpowered it’s motion, ‘snapping’ it to one position relative to earth, and because of this, it doesn’t have a magnetic field.
The moon still has a core will molten in it, but after a while (and I mean a long long long long long long while), it’ll lessen and lessen.
perhaps a planet that suddenly stands still will have its core slowly deplete and in this time the alien species that we are focusing on will evolve alongside other surviving species to the changes that occur when the core shrinks.
What happens when a main predator is suddenly taken away? perhaps other species of creature join the alien protagonist in the ground to escape this predator, and perhaps what separates our advanced alien from the other creatures is it’s ability to create technologies that let it into the molten core or even, eventually, back out onto the baron surface.
Bagworm larva in the Negev (April 2014). Case is made mostly of feathery stork’s bill seeds.
Alien-ic Project 