From Ben Haller, Ithaca, New York, US
I was a bit shocked to read Raymond Hickey’s dismissal of the circle-writing by aliens that visit Earth in the movie Arrival. He says no animal “would use such a short-supply resource as their ink for primary communication”. Why assume that it was even their own ink? Or maybe their own ink isn’t, for them, a “short-supply resource” – like how urine, used for communication by many animals, isn’t a scarce resource?
If we are to think usefully about talking to aliens, open-mindedness and imagination are essential (30 September, p 29).
