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Does the fluff give a reason for most races being humanoid?

Where the Old Ones humanoid?

Old ones created the Orks, possibly explaining the body plan copy?

Where the Necrontyr humanoid before transforming to Necrons?

Did the Eldar have something to do with the creation of the mon-keigh, explaining the body plan copy?

Where the Tau created by an independent abiogenetic event?

Is this a convenience? Are so many races humanoid simply so we empathise with them more?

why do whales, fish and penguins all have fins?

the answer is convergent evolution. certin ecological niches seem to suggest certin forms and evolution tends to converge in similer ways to handle it

The short answer is evolution, the long is evolution. Its an extremly cost efficient designe and thus nature and other things went with it

Is it? What's so good about a laterally-symmetrical, upright, four-limbed bodyplan with a distinct head?

After all, the various races in 40k are humanoid because they're fantasy races lifted into a futuristic space setting. Fantasy races are humanoid because the earlier literature and mythology had them all humanoid. that's because ... well, ask a historian and/or a sociologist. I've heard reasons such as our tendency to anthropomorphise natural processes (weather gods) and mythologising contact with foreign tribes.

Any in-universe explanation will be a rationalisation of the existing design choices, rather than an initial reason from which those designs arose. In 40k, I think it all boils down to the War in HEaven - the Necrontyr and Old Ones were roughly humanoid, and moulded their creations in their image. That does carefully avoid actually explaining the issue, because no-one explains why the Old Ones and Necrontyr were both humanoid.

Eldar were DESIGNED by the old ones - the psychic race for their war against the other things.
Orks were DESIGNED by the old ones as the muscle for that same war.

Humanity is an "accident" of mutation and evolution. They were not designed this way, they just happened.

Tau are more or less also the result of evolutionary pressures - but it may or may not have been "nudged" along.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
Is it? What's so good about a laterally-symmetrical, upright, four-limbed bodyplan with a distinct head?

After all, the various races in 40k are humanoid because they're fantasy races lifted into a futuristic space setting. Fantasy races are humanoid because the earlier literature and mythology had them all humanoid. that's because ... well, ask a historian and/or a sociologist. I've heard reasons such as our tendency to anthropomorphise natural processes (weather gods) and mythologising contact with foreign tribes.

Any in-universe explanation will be a rationalisation of the existing design choices, rather than an initial reason from which those designs arose. In 40k, I think it all boils down to the War in HEaven - the Necrontyr and Old Ones were roughly humanoid, and moulded their creations in their image. That does carefully avoid actually explaining the issue, because no-one explains why the Old Ones and Necrontyr were both humanoid.

Tool-use and reaction to environmental changes being the two biggest components of bipedal form.

I think that considering aliens could be either bi-pedal or quadrupedal is limiting your scope a bit.

We don't know what aspects of our biology we might have in common with alien species. Some aspects of our biology might be necessary for sapient life, and others might be happenstance.

Sapient aliens might look a lot like us, with only minor tweaks like skin color or location of the nose. This would suggest that our form is a sort of apex of evolution where everything is streamlined just right (or that our homonid ancestors migrated here from another planet).

Sapient aliens might look very little like us, and have articulate tentacles, six limbs and other things fill our way of using tools (octopuses use tools, for example, and with some extra intelligence and resources might learn to make tools and adapt the environment to it).


But even talking about octopus aliens is a limiting the scope too much. Any alien species we find will absolutely not fit into any of our categories for life, because they're all about common ancestry.

Not only does that mean they won't be mammals, insects, reptiles or birds, it also means that they won't be plants, animals or fungus. Actually, all life on earth has a common ancestor, and aliens would not share this with us.

The truth is, we don't know what aspects of xenobiology we might have in common with aliens because currently we only have one example of what life looks like, and nothing to compare it against.



-Oh, and GW did import fantasy races into science fiction (well, the Necrons were based on the Terminator films). But humanoid aliens are pretty common thing for science fiction settings, and not just because Star Trek had a low budget in the '60s.

And from a fluff perspective, the convergent evolution that produces humanoids is probably the only way for intelligent life to evolve.

There's several sapient species in the galaxy of non-humanoid form, the Rak'Gol, and the Loxatl being two such Xenos.

It's mostly so they could translate into tabletop well and wield similar class of weaponry/troops.

There are lots of utterly non-humanoid aliens in 40k though. Like these things:

The energy required by brain that thinks at advanced levels is much higher then the energy required by a brain that works on instinct. Heck even the energy required by the brain of canny predator is more then what's needed for a bovine to eat grass. this difference is enough to require complete changes to the internal digestive system and circulatory system and of course diet. Somehow this has to be done efficiently without causing the internal organs to get too hot and spontaneously combust and we humans are fairly close to the point of at least boiling. Through evolution the body types and internal systems that weren't efficient or balanced didn't get to reproduce enough and died off unsuccessfully. What is left are the accident designs that did work. Not to say nature has tried all possible setups yet, as I'm sure it didn't, but from what nature has tried out through mutations we end up with this bipedal setup that does work.
Why warm blooded over cold blooded? Well creatures without internal temperature regulating systems used to rule this planet once. They are at the whims of their external heat source and were not able to adapt to sudden changes in climate when it happened. Meteors and super volcanoes can end them before they begin having advanced thoughts. I suppose an alien race of cold blooded lizards can be theoized but let's hope they came from a planet that was still near a source of energy but also never had things like meteors and volcanic activity etc.. that would make sudden climate changes. Whereas the warm blooded mammals with their own internal temp regulation were the one able to survive sudden changes in the long run and today we are the sentient species of the planet.

Uhm, we're over 100 degrees away from boiling, what are you talking about?

 Psienesis wrote:
Uhm, we're over 100 degrees away from boiling, what are you talking about?

Celsius, Fahrenheit or Kelvin? Either way, no, we are not ~100* from boiling. We're just under 70* away from boiling water on the Celsius scale.
We're far from boiling water, but we are very far above boiling temperature of oxygen. So the temperature/boiling thing is subjective.

I think the point being made, though, is that we have an increased surface area around our chest/abdomen, resulting in a greater ability to cool ourselves down by moving our blood supply to the skin.

If biologically you weren't humanoid then you would likely be physically better than a humanoid. So you wouldn't need tools to survive, so you wouldn't develop technology and wouldn't learn to build guns, go to space, etc... The humanoid on the other hand would need to build tools to survive, which would lead onto weapons, technology and eventually space travel.

Um, they're all humanoid so making sweet conversions is easier, duh!

Maybe evolution has decided the humanoid form is the most ideal for the universe.

Maybe its because humanoid life forms are more relatable if they use human like technology.

But what I think it is this. We all know too well that GW is a company that makes money as a primary target. So they would want to make models that will appeal to the widest possible target audience. For example, there isn't an arachnid race because several people don't like spiders, and even have a phobia to them. On the other hand, Tyranids are like Xenomorphs from Alien, because they are more widely known, thus a more popular race.

I think it's less of a fluff reason, but an actual design decision.

 Psienesis wrote:
Uhm, we're over 100 degrees away from boiling, what are you talking about?

He might not refer to actually boiling as in water but to the fact we start having problems if we get too hot. Just a couple degrees (Centigrade) too high body temperature causes significant distress and lowered performance. There's even a risk of brain damage once our body temperature goes above 42 C. We're frail creatures, using tools to cover our weaknesses.

A race with more powerful bodies wouldn't necessarily have the same need for helpful devices and thus never start inventing anything. If you have claws that can cut down trees and open cocnuts you don't need an axe. If you have thick fur or fat for insulation you don't need fire. And so on.

Oops forgot about this thread. When I saw degrees in a write up I should've considered that I was reading something a bit old school and uses Fahrenheit and I saw it as Celsius. For further confusion our nations should all switch to Kelvin tommorow XD. There was a point I was making from it. How best to describe it... There's a certain limitation to how much volume our bodies can be for a warm blooded animal. Too big and it reaches the point where in order for the body to heat the extremities in the internals will get soo hot the animal will cook itself to death. Having an advanced brain further complicates this as this brain needs energy and it's not getting it if that energy is being burned up to heat the body that is too big an inefficient and thus would require that animal to spend it's entire life eating instead of pursuing other more creative endeavers. Nature found a balance between size, form and energy required. I doubt it's the only balanced combo in the universe but it's the one our Earth settled on and it's what we know works for now.

But yes we are only a few degrees away from seizure and death. I knew death was around the corner but I mistook which degrees was what so I retract the boiling. But rofl if in studying this that I find our that there is some boiling that can happen in the human body somewhere. We are complex creature made up of many particles not just water.

Evolution is false.

Don't bring politics into it, Daly.

 Dalymiddleboro wrote:
Evolution is false.

LOL greatest post ever! Been to Galapagos saw evolution first hand really eye opening experience recommend all people to go there...

 Signet-Powers wrote:
If biologically you weren't humanoid then you would likely be physically better than a humanoid. So you wouldn't need tools to survive, so you wouldn't develop technology and wouldn't learn to build guns, go to space, etc... The humanoid on the other hand would need to build tools to survive, which would lead onto weapons, technology and eventually space travel.

This.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Spetulhu wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Uhm, we're over 100 degrees away from boiling, what are you talking about?

He might not refer to actually boiling as in water but to the fact we start having problems if we get too hot. Just a couple degrees (Centigrade) too high body temperature causes significant distress and lowered performance. There's even a risk of brain damage once our body temperature goes above 42 C. We're frail creatures, using tools to cover our weaknesses.

A race with more powerful bodies wouldn't necessarily have the same need for helpful devices and thus never start inventing anything. If you have claws that can cut down trees and open cocnuts you don't need an axe. If you have thick fur or fat for insulation you don't need fire. And so on.

Actually, in Fahrenheit, we are more than 100 degrees below the boiling point.

 dusara217 wrote:
Actually, in Fahrenheit, we are more than 100 degrees below the boiling point.

Agreed, but our bodies die long before reaching that point. Exhaustion, seizures, brain damage. We're not boiled as such but too much heat still kills us.

 ColonelFazackerley wrote:
Does the fluff give a reason for most races being humanoid?

Where do you get, from the fluff, that 'most races' are humanoid?

Most of the races that engage in battles on the tabletop are humanoid, but that doesn't, in any way, indicate that most races are humanoid.

First, you'd want to consider the billions of species that were microscopic spread across the entire galaxy. None of these are humanoid.

Then, the billions of species of small arthropods/insects/insectoid/basically little unintelligent critters. Probably, none of those are humanoid.

Then, you'd want to consider the millions/billions of unintelligent species across the galaxy. Grox, razorwings, pterasquirrels, etc. Probably the vast majority of these aren't humanoids.

Then, you'd have to consider all the intelligent species which have not developed stellar travel. We almost never encounter these in the fiction, and never in the tabletop game, so who knows how many of them are humanoid.

Then, when you get down to the infinitesimally small percentage of living creatures that aren't limited to a single star system or even a single planet, and who are capable of military action and interstellar travel, then, that tiny, tiny fraction of all life forms in the galaxy--has a lot of humanoid species, except the tyranids, who aren't humanoid for the most part, seem to be possibly the most numerous.

A lot of the races seem to be humanoid because the game and the novels are situated in places and situations where humans might encounter them. Just like a lot of the beings driving cars on the highway are humans, even though there are a ton more beetles out there than humans. The game could certainly have more non-humanoid antagonists, but don't confuse the question of why the 'armies' are mostly humanoid with the question of whether most 'races' are humanoid.

Even if you are talking about the 'races' that make up the armies, I still think the reason is that these types of species are the types which are most likely to come into confrontation with humans in the 40K universe in battles that can be represented on the tabletop. If you have intelligent, 400-meter long space eels, they aren't going to be fighting IG over a bunker. If you have sentient plants that divine the future, you probably won't have them in tank battles with Space Marines. If you have immortal intelligent vapor trails, they aren't going to be fighting hand to hand with your orks.

Most Imperial military actions might consist of carpet bombing primitive aliens out of existence, or virus bombing intransigent populations from orbit, but you aren't going to see TT models of virus clouds or mushroom clouds. You are going to see models of the stuff that happens in the scale of the game.

"Most" of the 'antagonists' are humanoid (and again, I'd argue that, by weight, most of them are tyranids instead), because you're looking at situations where they interact with humans.

Humans are the pinnacle of evolution. Can you blame xenos for wanting to emulate us?

Because Games Workshop's artists lack imagination. I mean, hell, they steal so much content... errr ... "Independently think up ideas such as Aliens, Giant/Robots, the Greek Alphabet, robot skeletons that look nothing like the Terminator and melee weapons without ever having seen any, ever.'

 BaronIveagh wrote:
Because Games Workshop's artists lack imagination. I mean, hell, they steal so much content... errr ... "Independently think up ideas such as Aliens, Giant/Robots, the Greek Alphabet, robot skeletons that look nothing like the Terminator and melee weapons without ever having seen any, ever.'

To be fair, none of the above except Terminators is copyrighted. If it were, popular culture would be full of copyright infringement cases since a great crapton of stories are basically aliens, robots, shooty things, Greeks, and killer robots.

The humanoid form is ideal for predators. Hence why each humanoid species has evolved to be at the top of the food chain on each of their home worlds.

Long legs for running fast, arms for wrestling, thumbs for holding, tall posture so you can see farther, forward facing eyes for good depth perception. All excellent traits to make you better at hunting and not being hunted which is why these space faring races have them.

Taffy17 wrote:
The humanoid form is ideal for predators. Hence why each humanoid species has evolved to be at the top of the food chain on each of their home worlds.

Long legs for running fast, arms for wrestling, thumbs for holding, tall posture so you can see farther, forward facing eyes for good depth perception. All excellent traits to make you better at hunting and not being hunted which is why these space faring races have them.

That's a bit much HFY...
Don't you believe that some non-humanoid forms can do all of that better?
ex: the ultimate predator...

Here's the thing with that, Talon: Tyranids share the same traits that Taffy ascribed to humanoids.

An extra pair of arms and a natural suit of armour does not negate the fact that Tyranids have long legs for running fast, arms for wrestling, thumbs for holding (even if they are often bio-bonded to weapons), tall posture and forward-facing eyes for finding prey and locating threats.

Even the pseudo-quadrupedal Gaunts are fully capable of 'meerkatting', and the Ravener's standard posture is raised up on its tail to look around.

 Talon of Anathrax wrote:

Taffy17 wrote:
The humanoid form is ideal for predators. Hence why each humanoid species has evolved to be at the top of the food chain on each of their home worlds.

Long legs for running fast, arms for wrestling, thumbs for holding, tall posture so you can see farther, forward facing eyes for good depth perception. All excellent traits to make you better at hunting and not being hunted which is why these space faring races have them.

That's a bit much HFY...
Don't you believe that some non-humanoid forms can do all of that better?
ex: the ultimate predator...

Spoiler:

A tyranid Norn queen, or quite a few of it's offspring (genestealers, lictors and maybe even Mawlocs come to mind)

The Norn Queen is a non-predator. If that biomorph actually exists at all, her ass doesn't leave the fleet.