Some aliens must be stupid.

[Anonymous]

The way that some aliens are dpeicted in illustrations would say that they must have tiny, tiny brains. The owl was assumed for a long time to be one of the wisest of birds because of their large heads. Now, however, we know that they actually have relatively small brains; their large heads are large for their large eyes. Some of the aliens illustrated by the famous Strieber have eyes so big that even with thier large skulls, little room is left for any brain.
Just exposing a red herring.

 

[Anonymous]

Did Streiber not describe the Greys as being sort of drones? Maybe they have a kind of hive mind. Look, I know it's a cliche, but it's just a thought.

 

[Anonymous]

i thought the whole 'cranial capacity = intelligence' was just a bit of victorian silliness which nobody takes seriously any more? it get even sillier when you try to apply it to animals (as if judging their conduct by human standards had any point) and even the victorians didn't attempt to apply it to aliens.

 

[Anonymous]

There are lots of varieties of aliens - just look in David Icke's latest book. The 'bug-eyed grey' is however, less biologically plausable than most.
The grey skin and huge black eyes suggest a creature that evolved underground, with very little light. Yet they seem able to operate on Earth's surface, in all kinds of light, without difficulty. Even inside their ships, there is plenty of light - yet these particular aliens should be blinded by human levels of light.
Also, such large light-gathering optical organs should be backed up with equally large image-processing areas in the cortex - meaning large skull capacity (dolphins have human-size brains, but much of it is taken up with audio- and sonic-processing). In addtion, if these creatures evolved in low light conditions, they should have large ears and exceptional auditory abilities - neither of which have been reported.
As I said, biologically improbable.

 

[Anonymous]

As far as "biologically plausible" arguments go, no comment. And regardless, we must remember these people's technology. Any one kind of alien could have been genetically engineered, that is, they might not be the spitting image of how they started out.
Anyway, my argument is not so much one of cranial capacity and such; my argument is that the eyes are so big that there really would not be any room left for much of any brain of all. While some small brains might very well be very intelligent, the fact remains that the size of these alleged aliens' would not be big enough to have enough cells to compose any adequate brain.
I remember there having been an idea that they're only wearing masks and form-fitting grey clothes.

 

[Anonymous]

I suppose a human in a spacesuit looks like his entire head is just one huge, unblinking black eye.
That would explain why people say that the eyes don't seem to be alive.