Why Do Aliens Always Look Humanoid?

Richard F. Haines wrote a book in 1979 called UFO Phenomena and The Behavioral Scientist. He explores the psychological dimension of the UFO phenomenon - in particular the strangely humanoid appearance of aliens.

Why are most reported aliens described as humanoids? Is the humanoid form the most favored evolutionary result? Or is it because humans have inherent biases that push them towards creating objects in their likeness?

A 'humanoid' can be considered to mean an ape-like being with varying degrees of human traits. Most creatures on Earth cannot be said to be humanoid. Yet, most aliens are described as some combination of our existing features.

The probability of evolution taking our current human form, even in conditions that support life, is 10-9. This is astronomically low. Taking into account the estimates of other possible habitable planets, it's likely we're the only ones who look this way.

Yet, there are some features that are indeed favored by evolution - such as bilateral symmetry. Why do humans and most animals have bilateral symmetry? Because our need to distinguish up from down is higher than our need to distinguish left from right.

For example, for a fish to rapidly find food, it doesn't need to distinguish left from right. When we evolved as land beings, we still didn't have much need for it - danger, food, mates were equally found on both sides. However, gravity forces us to distinguish up and down.

These requirements are specific to our own environment. For life to develop in Jupiter's Great Red Spot, development would need to be in lopsided shapes. Asymmetrical development can be favorable too - like a cow with shorter right legs to walk on one side of a mountain.

Our imagination and creativity prefers non-living objects to have symmetry. We create shopping centers, bathtubs, musical chords and rhythms, all with symmetry. Hence, it's possible we expect to find bilateral symmetry in aliens primarily because we are formed that way.

Our form is also only a stop in the journey of evolution. It's likely we won’t look like this in some million years- and perhaps there are more efficient evolutionary versions of us. Scientists have arrived at a 'bimanous monopedal kangaroid' as a possible example.

Bottom line: Are people seeing humanoid aliens, or just creating humanoid projections in situations with compromised visuals? The jury’s out. But it seems very suspicious that most UFO occupants have human-like form.