History Main / BizarreAlienLimbs

* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'': "[[Recap/SouthParkS14E3MedicinalFriedChicken Medicinal Fried Chicken]]" has a human example when Randy Marsh uses his balls as a hippity-hop after deliberately giving himself testicular cancer to get a prescription for medical cannabis.

* ''Literature/DoctorWhoMissingAdventures': In ''Venusian Lullaby'', the Venusians have a lot of odd biology, including five tentacle-like arms and five tentacle-like legs.

* ''Literature/KnownSpace'': Puppeteers use their two heads as hands. The heads' lips are made of little finger-like fleshy lobes, and their slender tongues further enhance their dexterity. In effect, this means that puppeteers can see and taste with their hands.

* ''WebOriginal/HamstersParadise'':

* ''WebOriginal/{{Serina}}'':

* ''WebOriginal/{{Snaiad}}'': The Tromobrachids have turned their front limbs into chewing "jaws", which funnel food directly to their chest-located mouths.

** Lieutenant Arex, a bridge officer aboard the ''Enterprise'', has a third arm extending from his breastbone and a third leg between the other two.

For other types of strange appendages, see ArtificialLimbs, CombatTentacles and MultiArmedAndDangerous. Subtrope of BizarreAlienBiology; may be a sister trope to BizarreAlienLocomotion, if legs are involved. Supertrope to HandyFeet, PrehensileTail, PrehensileHair, and MultipurposeTongue. May result in OperatorIncompatibility for other species.

* ''Manga/ElfenLied'': The Diclonii look like humans but also possess a number of invisible (to anyone but themselves and the audience) and flexible appendages called "vectors" that can extend for several meters and slice human flesh with ease. They are not exactly aliens but their origins are never quite elaborated upon.

* ''Manga/ElfenLied'': The Diclonii look like humans but also possess a number of invisible (to anyone but themselves and the audience) "hands" called "vectors" that can extend for several meters and slice human flesh with ease. They are not exactly aliens but their origins are never quite elaborated upon.

** ''Literature/TheAndaliteChronicles'': The future Visser Three turns up at one point with a pair of semi-sapient aliens with [[BizarreAlienLocomotion biological wheels]] instead of legs. Elfangor, the POV character, is dumbfounded.

** ''Franchise/{{Superman}}'': In ''ComicBook/TheUntoldStoryOfArgoCity'', alien Zygors have three tentacle-limbs which they use to feed themselves and propel their bodies through the void of space.
** ''Franchise/WonderWoman'' [[ComicBook/WonderWoman1942 Vol 1]]: While the Rykornians are PlantAliens and the females are large stationery stalks with long leaf-like tentacles the ambulatory males are small rhombus shaped beings whose only notably plant like parts are their four thin leaf-like limbs.

** ''Literature/{{Ultramorphs}}'': The Mercora look like giant, asymmetrical crabs. One side has four large legs and the other three smaller legs, meaning that they move sideways. The four-legged side also has a big, three-pronged claw, while the other has two humanlike arms, but stronger and with tapered, delicate fingers.

* ''VideoGame/{{X}}'': The [[TheKingdom Boron]] are a race of squid-like aliens that have tentacles instead of legs. In the {{novelization}} of [[VideoGame/XBeyondTheFrontier the first game]] this causes a [[ProudMerchantRace Teladi]] doing a salvage operation on a wrecked Boron space station a few problems, since [[OperatorIncompatibility the computer terminals were designed for soft tentacles instead of lizard-like claws]].

** The wingles are a lineage of rattile -- lizard-like hamster descendant with scales derived from hair -- that have adapted to flab four elongated scales rabidly thanks to enlarged and modified erector pili muscles, allowing them to fly like insects. Some species are even capable of shedding and regrowing them since they are basically just fur.

* ''WebOriginal/HamstersParadise'': The rhinocheirids are a family of bipedal hamster descendants that have evolved an elephant-like trunk but theirs have three lobes at the end due to the split upper lips possessed by rodents, leading to what is similar to a three fingered hand. One descent of the rhinocheirid, the fisshors, are more reliant on tool use and even developed a second trunk on their lower lip for increased dexterity.

[[quoteright:350:[[Film/WarOfTheWorlds https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tripod_aliens_fanart.png]]]]

*** One lineage, the mammal-like tribbetheres, develop erect forearms with seven digits on each forepaw. One canithere species, the thylacine-like painted repandor, developed its single hind leg having a backwards-bending knee joint, and a downward-curved back that turns the hind leg into a spring to help launch the creature forward when running. Merwals, a type of aquatic canithere, have a tail fluke derived from its single hind leg, and thus still possesses an ankle and knee joint, almost resembling a person wearing a mermaid tail.
*** The antlears are a group of circuagodonts -- herbivorous, ungulate-like tribbetheres -- that developed mobile, jointed antler-like limbs on their ears that they use to pull branches down to their mouths. The explanation for this is that the ears of tribbetheres have a bony matrix in them due to being derived from the gill plates of their fish ancestors, unlike the cartilaginous ears of Earth mammals. This gives them much better mobility and the ability to grip. Scorplears take this to an entirely new level: they walk on their ''ears and front legs'' while lifting their hind leg into the air.

Common variations include extra joints in limbs, or an odd number of limbs, [[TripodTerror usually three.]]

* ''Franchise/WonderWoman'' [[ComicBook/WonderWoman1942 Vol 1]]: While the Rykornians are PlantAliens and the females are large stationery stalks with long leaf-like tentacles the ambulatory males are small rhombus shaped beings whose only notably plant like parts are their four thin leaf-like limbs.
* In ''Franchise/{{Superman}}'' story ''ComicBook/TheUntoldStoryOfArgoCity'', alien Zygors have three tentacle-limbs which they use to feed themselves and propel their bodies through the void of space.

* The monkey-like Prolemuris from ''Film/{{Avatar}}'' are a missing link between the four-limbed sapient Na'vi and the rest of the six-limbed Pandoran wildlife. Strangely, their arms are partly fused, having a single shoulder and humerus but bifurcating at the elbow joint.
* The aliens in ''Film/{{Battleship}}'' have hands that are apparently four opposing fingers. Also their feet appear to be similar to dogs' or cats' feet, in that they appear to walk on their toes.
* Some of the kaiju in ''Film/PacificRim'' have two seperate forearms attached to a single hand, making it look like their radius and ulna are splitting apart.
* The MUTO from ''Film/Godzilla2014'' have a total of eight limbs: in the male, he has one pair of front legs, one pair of wings, a pair of smaller arms on his abdominal region and a pair of digitigrade hind legs. The female MUTO has a similar arrangement, though instead of wings she has a second pair of forelegs.
* Sebulba the Dug from ''Film/StarWarsThePhantomMenace'' walks on his arms, which lift his entire body off the ground and allow him to use his feet as hands, basically swapping the use of his arms and legs.
* The Heptapods from ''{{Film/Arrival}}'' have seven limbs, arranged radially around their bodies [[StarfishAliens like a starfish]]. Each of the seven legs can open up into a star-shaped, seven-fingered hand, out of which they can produce a squid-ink like substance which they use to communicate.
* Bor Gullet from ''Film/RogueOne'' apparently uses his tentacles to MindRape people so that Saw Gerrera will know if they're lying to him.
* The aliens from Spielberg's ''[[Film/WarOfTheWorlds War of the Worlds]]'' provide the page image, featuring three legs and two arms, evoking the tripod fighting machines they pilot.

* The gyrosprinter in ''Literature/{{Expedition}}'' is a two-legged antelope-like alien herbivore from the planet Darwin IV, with one front leg and one hind leg, seemingly from its front and back legs fusing together. Despite this seemingly unstable configuration the gyrosprinter evolved highly-efficient balance organs, becoming Darwin IV's fastest land animal.
** There is also the Emperor Sea Strider, a massive bipedal creature that roams the Amoebic Sea: an immense, gelatinous superorganism covering a tenth of the planet's surface. As it feeds on this gelatinous material to support its great bulk, the Sea Strider has ''mouths located on its feet'', taking bites out of the "sea" with every step.

* The flightless bats in ''Literature/AfterManAZoologyOfTheFuture'' have played this trope to full effect, with some, such as the slothlike Shalloth, using its former wings as webbed, gripping hands, while others, like the predatory Nightstalker, actually walk around on their arms while using their hind legs as arms.
** Also from ''After Man'', the grobbit is a small hoofed mammal which can use its feet to grasp branches and pull them low for browsing. Double dewclaws make it far better at hooking and gripping vegetation than any extant hoofed animal.
* The mulefa in ''Literature/HisDarkMaterials'' have a single two-fingered trunk. Since even simple tasks, like tying a knot, require more than one individual, it strengthens the community's bond. They also have legs adapted to use a kind of giant disk-shaped seedpod as wheels.
* Martians in Creator/RobertAHeinlein's ''Literature/DoubleStar'' were mushroom-shaped entities capable of forming tentacle-like pseudopods.
* The fithp from ''Literature/{{Footfall}}'' have twin elephant trunks that split into four little tentacles each.
* In Creator/AlanDeanFoster's ''Literature/HumanxCommonwealth'' novels, the [[InsectoidAliens Thranx]] have "truhands" at the end of their praying mantis-style forelimbs. They look like four tendrils about five inches long coming out of the end of the limb. Also, their second pair of limbs (out of four) end in pincerlike "foothands" which can do duty as either kind of limb.

* In Creator/DavidBrin's ''Literature/{{Uplift}}'' series, the g'Keks are a semi-artificial, gene-engineered species that actually have biological wheels.
* In ''[[Literature/{{Animorphs}} The Andalite Chronicles]]'' the future Visser Three turns up at one point with a pair of semi-sapient aliens with [[BizarreAlienLocomotion biological wheels]] instead of legs. Elfangor, the POV character, is dumbfounded.
** The Mercora look like giant, asymmetrical crabs. One side has four large legs, the other three smaller legs, meaning that they move sideways. The four-legged side also has a big, three-pronged claw, while the other has two humanlike arms, but stronger and with tapered, delicate fingers.
* In the ''[[Literature/DoctorWhoMissingAdventures Doctor Who Missing Adventures]]'' novel ''Venusian Lullaby'' the Venusians have a lot of odd biology, including five tentacle-like arms and five tentacle-like legs.
* In the ''Literature/JohnCarterOfMars'' series, many Barsoomian species have at least six limbs - two arms, two legs, and a third set of appendages that can serves as either extra arms or extra legs.
* The Jan in ''Literature/AlienInASmallTown'' have three sexes with different body shapes. The male workers and sterile warriors each have three legs. The workers have three tentacles, two ending in three-fingered hands and the third ending in a big black eye (and no head). The warriors' single eye is flush with their bodies, but they have six tentacle arms each ending in a nasty hook. The female matriarchs are sessile, with no feet at all, and grow to the size of mountains, and have the same two-arms-and-eyestalk arrangement as the workers, but enormous.

* In ''Literature/TheFutureIsWild'', 200 million years in the future, and all mammals have become extinct. Their replacements are terrestrial cephalopods known as Terrasquids. Some, such as the elephant-like Megasquid, walk about on eight pillar-like tentacles (which have no bones and instead support its weight with contracted muscle), while others, such as the monkey-like Squibbon, use their tentacles to swing about in the treetops.
* The Malcorians in the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "First Contact" had fused phalanges with suction cups. Benzites from the same series had four opposing thumbs- two on each hand. The Traveler also had oddly-shaped hands, possessing fewer and larger fingers than humans.
* The Centauri in the ''Series/Babylon5'' have six prehensile tentacles that grow out of their backs, and apparently act as the male genitalia. At one point a Centauri is caught using it to cheat at cards, meaning that one can apparently extend several feet.
* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'': In "Rule of Law", the Medusans have pincer appendages for arms.

* The hanar in ''Franchise/MassEffect'' are essentially sapient jellyfish that can live on land. As such they have tentacles instead of legs, which is one of the reasons none of them ever move from place to place in game: the game engine is optimized for humanoid locomotion.
* The horn-like appendages of the Zerglings from ''VideoGame/StarCraft'' were revealed in the ''Remastered'' edition to actually be an extra pair of vaguely-humanoid arms emerging directly behind their heads, almost like ears.
* In the ''VideoGame/{{X}}-Universe'' the [[TheKingdom Boron]] are a race of squid-like aliens that have tentacles instead of legs. In the {{novelization}} of [[VideoGame/XBeyondTheFrontier the first game]] this causes a [[ProudMerchantRace Teladi]] doing a salvage operation on a wrecked Boron space station a few problems, since [[OperatorIncompatibility the computer terminals were designed for soft tentacles instead of lizard-like claws]].
* Implied for some of the aliens in ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}'', as most are based on real animals that are known for this trope (see the RealLife section below). Special note to [[https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/File:Arthropoid_massive_11.png this]] arthropoid portrait.
* In ''VideoGame/OriAndTheWillOfTheWisps'', the [[AnimalisticAbomination mutant/zombie/demon owl]] BigBad Shriek walks on her elongated wing digits Sebulba-style, allowing the use of her talons as makeshift hands.

[[folder:Web Comics]]
* The wyverns from ''Webcomic/DarkWings'' have two little claws on their wing joints that act as crude hands.
* Bleen from ''Webcomic/{{Vexxarr}}'' have six thin tentacles sprouting from just under their heads.

* ''WebOriginal/{{Serina}}'': The tribbets are tripedal terrestrial descendants of guppies that modified their tails and pectoral fins into three walking limbs. Beyond that, the various tribbet lineages develop a number of very unusual limb arrangements.
** One lineage, the mammal-like tribbetheres, develop erect forearms with seven digits on each forepaw. One canithere species, the thylacine-like painted repandor, developed its single hind leg having a backwards-bending knee joint, and a downward-curved back that turns the hind leg into a spring to help launch the creature forward when running. Merwals, a type of aquatic canithere, have a tail fluke derived from its single hind leg, and thus still possesses an ankle and knee joint, almost resembling a person wearing a mermaid tail.
** The antlears are a group of circuagodonts -- herbivorous, ungulate-like tribbetheres -- that developed mobile, jointed antler-like limbs on their ears that they use to pull branches down to their mouths. The explanation for this is that the ears of tribbetheres have a bony matrix in them due to being derived from the gill plates of their fish ancestors, unlike the cartilaginous ears of Earth mammals. This gives them much better mobility and the ability to grip.
*** Scorplears take this to an entirely new level: they walk on their ''ears and front legs'' while lifting their hind leg into the air.
** Another group of tribbets entirely, the handfishes, shorten their forearms but lengthen their fingers instead, eventually turning their individual fingers into separate limbs themselves (becoming hexapedal with the former wrist becoming a double-shoulder joint).

** The bumplets are a species of small burrowing bird that uses wings tipped with two claws for digging. This resulted in their wrist bones growing larger till they reached their shoulders, meaning that they and their more terrestrial descendants the bumblebadgers, have no elbows. One of their sapient descendants, thalassic gravediggers, rely on group cooperation in order to effectively make and use their tools since they lack to dexterity to do so alone even with their more prehensile fingers.

* The ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' episode "Medicinal Fried Chicken" has a human example when Randy Marsh uses his balls as a hippity-hop after deliberately giving himself testicular cancer to get a prescription for medical cannabis.

** During "The Eye of the Beholder", the away team on Lactra 7 is captured by gastropod aliens, which have one elephant-like appendage with three or four tendril fingers. The aliens put the away team in a zoo, because they regard humans as dumb animals.

* In ''Manga/ElfenLied'' the Diclonii look like humans but also possess a number of invisible (to anyone but themselves and the audience) "hands" called "vectors" that can extend for several meters and slice human flesh with ease. They are not exactly aliens but their origins are never quite elaborated upon.

For other types of strange appendages, see ArtificialLimbs, CombatTentacles and MultiArmedAndDangerous. Subtrope of BizarreAlienBiology; may be a sister trope to BizarreAlienLocomotion, if legs are involved. Supertrope to PrehensileTail, PrehensileHair, and MultipurposeTongue. May result in OperatorIncompatibility for other species.