I see allot of pics with aliens that have six fingers and the structure of there hand couldent suport a sixth one and if you look closely there is a nice close up of the aliens hand in alien and it only had 5 fingers. any one see this.

one word: Evolution.

The thing is the structure of ther hands can't suport a sixth finger.

the queen does - but it also supports extra arms. Hmm. Well, the fingers just have to be comparatively smaller. I mean, if the artist can put them there, then evolution will find a way ^.^

The queens chest can suport the extra arms.

i didn't say it couldn't

Nice come back!

But the thing is, Evolution is a correct facture in the debate, a species can change over time to be suited for different actions and logical abilties, the thing is, the hand may look like it can't support 6 fingers, but it does, so there fore it can support 6 fingers.

all you have to do, is make the other fingers slightly smaller

The thing is evilution takes time and lots of it and the fingers are not smaller. the sixth finger on the pics I'v seen would not funtion at all because the muscular sistem isnt corect for such a thing and its not atached to the rist so it wouldent work and it does not give them any edvanteg so they wouldent evalve to have it in the first place, nothing evalves a new apendeg unlles it is usefull for something.

It could be a mutation, people are born with fully functional sixth fingers all the time. Or it could be there is variation in alien morphology depending on the host.

most likly they added it to make them more off worldly.

razor, how people draw their xeno hands is their business, and how do you know the muscle thingies wouldn't work out? you can't see beneath what the artist has drawn -_-

I know it's there bissnuss. I wanted to see if any one had the same opinun as me.

I forgot to tell you that the only way a finger can funtion is if it is atached to the wrist and from what i've seen thers aren't. I also forgot to say that mutation is out of the question because humans do not have six fingers and dogs have five aswell so there for mutation is out. Like i said it is probably to make them more off worldly.

razor...
Look at your hand. Go on, it won't bite. Are your fingers connected directly to your wrist? Probably not. On my hand, there is a large ammount of space in between my wrist and fingers, filled in by what i like to call my "palm". True, the tendons that move my fingers, and the bones connected to them all trail back into my wrist. And i'm sure aliens have roughly the same arrangement. ROUGHLY. You can't see under their skin, so how do you know if the fingers aren't connected to the wrist?
You don't.

The alien in the first film had 6 digits - 4 fingers and 2 thumbs on each hand. The aliens also have large hands, probably as a result of the extra digits. Sometimes their fingers seem to be fused together in pairs, but are still considered to be 2 sets of 2 fingers.

When you think about it, what with predaliens, dog aliens and the like, the species is so mutatable, that numbers of fingers are as likely to vary as any other part of their anatomy.

Nuthouse_Escapee Look again, what im talking about is the bones conecting your fingers to your wrist. Im not saying that every artist should start drawing the way I say I'm looking at it sientificly and the sixth digit is not conected properly for it to funtion corectly. Like I said I'm looking at it sientificly. Don't hate me for this but I realy don't care how people draw it I'm going by sience.

my brother has a comment here it is: I say that the sixth finger could not work because it starts as a bulge at the side of there wrist and gose strait forward there is no way that they could have tendons and muscles atatched to it that would give it any useful movement. remember that my brother and I go by sientific rulze and not by artistic designe. my online name is RazorTechDragonCommando. P.S. don't be hatin[img]/images/forum/smilies/icon_razz.gif[/img]

Your thumb is a bulge connected to the side of your hand as well when parallel with the rest of you hand (at least mine is), yet it operates just fine. That is because the tendons do not have to be exactly parrellel with the fingers, they can go at an angle and still work fine. Both the thumb and pinky finger tendons are at an angle relative to the direction of the fingers (at least mine). The other three fingers have tendons roughly parrellel to the fingers. That is most likely why, at least for me, the most comfortable position is for the three middle fingers to be roughly parrellel, with the thumb and pinky out at an angle (close to parallel with the tendons). We are also assuming the aliens have tendons at all. If they are indeed exoskeleton creatures long tendons like we have may be unnecessary, their muscles may be inside their fingers as opposed to on their arms like ours are.

So far I have been able to find a number of different alien drone hand configurations:
2 fingers and 1 thumb
2 fingers and 2 thumbs (1 thumb on each side)
3 fingers and 1 thumb
4 fingers and 1 thumb
2 pairs of partially fused finger and 1 thumb
4 fingers and 2 thumbs (1 thumb on each side)
2 pairs of partially fused fingers and 2 thumbs (1 thumb on each side) (from Alien)

Your thumb isn't exactly a bulge, ther is a bone conecting it to the wrist.

from Razortech Dragon Commando:
I don't see the point in arguing any one can have an opinion on something but it is sience fiction main word sience.
in my feild (fantacy) something can have eight arms but it still has to have the body structure to handle that many arms. I can say that I can come up with ways for any creatchure to be real but it still has to be in the bounderys of sience. I can tell you ways of dragons actualy breathing fire. realisticly they arnt breathing it but that is what people call it so anything is posible if it is physicly posible. physics is one boundery that can not be broken no mater what you do.