Quote Originally Posted by Deborski View Post
Well, I was thinking more of behaving like a cat, which I consider more intelligent and evolved than a dog - as well as cleaner and more attractive - but I digress.
See, even a terrestrial crocodile like myself made a mistake, what would you expect from the extraterrestrial?

Quote Originally Posted by Deborski View Post
Ah, but if this alien being has no limbs - and thus no concept of limbs - how would such a gesture be interpreted? The alien is not going to "grok"* the human-cultural implications of palms up versus palms down. Imitating is the best idea. But what if imitating is, for all practical purposes, impossible? The creature is globular in shape, right? How would a human body imitate it's movements?
Ah, very true. B-U-T!! The exopsychology makes some assumptions, one of them being that the extraterrestrials made some observations of the Earth before landing. They know more or less we have limbs and if they are interested in contact, they will try to imitate the limbs. Or they can do some other movement we might imitate, like moving side to side, jumping or rolling, shaking, or making a series of sounds. As for the palms, the open palms are better than the clenched palms, the up and down or side movement is better than the front-back movement, etc. We can't do perfect by knowing nothing about the other race, but we can do the best we can. Does it make sense?

Quote Originally Posted by Deborski View Post
And where would I do that? No one has met an alien yet (except George W. Bush and look what the experience did to him!!) so where would be an encyclopedia documenting the various "concepts of the exopsychology"? Can I find it at the library...?
I found some sources online, but maybe some books exist too. It's mostly the bits and pieces I remember from the variety of places, maybe I should write a book of my own?

Quote Originally Posted by Deborski View Post
Yes, that would be a very tricky situation. We would not want to be useful as food, for example. I wonder what humans would be able to provide that an alien race would need?
Exactly. We don't know anything about that. But if they don't need anything at all, why did they visit Earth on the first place?