It depends on the attitudes of the species. Non-standard appendages might be a sign of ill-health. Humans are not the only species that uses a heuristic approximating “looks like a normal member of my species” as a proxy for health and general evolutionary fitness. So breeding hands might be tough, in that they wouldn’t be able to breed easily with the other members of the population necessarily. On the other hand, breeding for intelligence doesn’t have that problem. But all of this is highly speculative and to a large extent is a function in detail of what the species is like and what obvious phenotypical variation there is that can be easily traced to genetics.
My understanding is we’re starting from the assumption that the species in question is on average far more rational (and probably more intelligent) than humanity. If creatures that can create a thriving scientific community in the total absence of technology have gotten to the point of saying “You know, things would be a lot easier if we had hands. Hey, how about selective breeding?” I don’t imagine the fact that they’d likely find hands unsexy would be an issue.
It depends on the attitudes of the species. Non-standard appendages might be a sign of ill-health. Humans are not the only species that uses a heuristic approximating “looks like a normal member of my species” as a proxy for health and general evolutionary fitness. So breeding hands might be tough, in that they wouldn’t be able to breed easily with the other members of the population necessarily. On the other hand, breeding for intelligence doesn’t have that problem. But all of this is highly speculative and to a large extent is a function in detail of what the species is like and what obvious phenotypical variation there is that can be easily traced to genetics.
My understanding is we’re starting from the assumption that the species in question is on average far more rational (and probably more intelligent) than humanity. If creatures that can create a thriving scientific community in the total absence of technology have gotten to the point of saying “You know, things would be a lot easier if we had hands. Hey, how about selective breeding?” I don’t imagine the fact that they’d likely find hands unsexy would be an issue.