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.