You Know That One Post About Humans Being Really Durable Compared To Aliens And That One About Humans

Humans are Space Orcs

Yet another addition…Teething. Babies, specifically.

“Human Veronica, your offspring is attempting to eat his toys.”

“Hm, oh, nah. He’s fine. He’s just teething. It’s normal.”

“Tee-thing? I do not understand.”

“Oh, well,” show baby’s mouth, “we aren’t born with teeth. They grow in when we’re babies. Babies like to chew on things when they teeth.”

“To sharpen them?”

“Uh, no. Not exactly. It’s just…something they do? The teeth have to cut through the mouth tissue after all.”

“Your bodies cut through themselves?” Horrified alien.

“Pfft, you think that’s bad? Our skulls aren’t fully formed when we’re babies. They fuse together .”

Okay, so going off the whole space Australia thing, imagine aliens would think of ACTUAL AUSTRALIA. Humans are batshit insane, we do some crazy shit, but a decent amount of us are shocked by the mere concept of living in Australia. That place is no joke, it’s a death trap of a continent that somehow became a badass country. You don’t fuck with Australia.

Alien: what is a kangaroo?

Human: oh, it’s an animal from Australia. They hop around and the carry their kids in pouches. They may be cute, but don’t get them angry, they can kill you.

The…the human is actually WARNING them of something? The human is AFRAID?

Human: that’s just Australia for you, though. Literally EVERYTHING on that continent can kill you, so I guess it’s not THAT off. Be careful if you ever go to Australia, though. It’s a very dangerous place.

And this all of the aliens avoid Australia at all costs because if the fucking HUMANS are scared then it must be the most dangerous and frightening place ever.

Humans are weird

Imagine if only humans had periods. So if humans are essentially emotional support, imagine if aliens can sense emotions so they (or at least one) can feel a woman’s discomfort in waves and although they’re concerned they leave it because the human is not reacting so maybe they’re fine? That is until suddenly there’s a spike of pain from the human and oh no a human is showing pain so they must be dying. Cue medical scare as aliens find out that female humans bleed out for roughly five days every month and their solution was to carry on like normal. By the time the human has explained it all they’re being pampered and protected by all members of the crew and the captain is screaming at his commander “WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL US HUMANS DO THIS LIKE HOW DO THEY HAVE ENOUGH BLOOD?!?!” The next thing you know alien captains and medical teams are having their ‘how to take care of a human’ pamphlet updated.

A human in need

I probably won’t be on here for a while because my life is honestly starting to fall apart and I’m really really scared of what’s next. I’ve never felt so frightened for my future, and I may need to go in the next month or two

Been seeing a lot of these Humans Are Space Orcs posts around- which is good, because I love them- and I started thinking: in sci-fi stories, humans in the future often have a bit of genetic engineering- like disease immunity or faster healing or even just a lack of body hair.

And I had a thought- what if that’s just us? What if we’re the only species to engineer ourselves like that? Imagine how freaked out they’d be;

“You’re telling me that you alter your own genetic code?”

Or take it a little further- we’re the only species to use vaccines. Every other race just toughed it out and evolved past it, but humans injected ourselves with weakened diseases to make ourselves stronger. 

Or even further back, when people used to drink poison to gain an immunity- imagine that reaction:

“OH MY GROP THEY DRINK POISON TO GET STRONGER THAT’S IT FUCK THIS PLANET I’M OUTTA HERE”

To be fair, humans are some bullshit from a balance perspective.

“I’ll just outrun that human…any day now… any… day… jesus christ it’s the terminator.”

“Maybe I can outsmart it and hide. What’s that you say, its brain takes up 20% of it’s caloric intake? FML.”

“It doesn’t have any natural weapons. I’ll just turn around and kill it. OH GOD IT’S GOT STONE CLAWS THAT ARE UNHOLY SHARP!”

“Okay, fight number two. It’s squishy so if I’m careful and find the right time when it’s weak I can - IT HAS PROJECTILE SHARP THINGS!”

“I’ll try crossing the river. It’s too gangly to be buoya - IT CAN SWIM?!?”

“Okay nothing can swim and run and climb. I’ll just go up this tree… FML it descended from apes.”

“It doesn’t even have fur, I can run to a colder climate and escape. Welp, it’s wearing the fur of my loved ones to keep warm.”

“If the whole herd bands together and protects each other, we can trample it… it can CONTROL FIRE.”

“Fuck it. Might as well just follow them around and get domesticated.”

Prettymuch everything we did to animals comes out of a horror movie.

Humans are odd

To jump into the whole humans are space oddities, imagine an aliens reaction to contacts.

Human Kayla had recently joined the ships crew, who all felt rather prepared. They got her a hamster and everything. And so, they go on for a good two weeks until Human Kayla says her contacts were irritating her.

So, of course, everyone is super freaked out because, “Human Kayla! What are these contacts you speak of? Are they part of your body?” and etc.

But then they watch her reach to her face and shove her finger onto her eye. And peel a bit of it off.

And now, of course, the aliens are terrified, because humans can casually peel the top part of their eye off if it hurt them, and it was once again time to update the intergalactic human manual.

Humans and Terraforming

If there is one thing that can be said, humans are very good at changing their environment. Now regardless of your views on climate change or greenhouse gases, it cannot be denied that humans have left a big and very literally mark on our planet.

We’ve been doing it ever since our primeval ancestors figured out that fire can be used to clear forest, and that the grasslands created by such burning attracts grazing animals and gives us a clear line of sight for our throwing spears and nets. We have been doing it ever since the ancient humans figured out they could damn creeks to make ponds that lured in waterfowl. That if you repeatedly burned a clearing, the berry bushes would keep coming back ever year. That if you created stone walls along the low tide line, you could create sandy terraces that are perfect for clams. We managed our resources, only fishing at certain times, only hunting certain types of animals, or only cutting certain types of trees.

Then we invented agriculture and we wrought even more changes on the planet. We cleared forests to make room for our fields, pastures and cities. We terraced entire hillsides to allow us to grow crops. We drained swamps and cut the landscape with irrigation canals to provide our crops with water. Often we changed the very course of rivers and altered the soil we relied on, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. Forests disappeared as our cities and emerging states needed timber for construction, ship-building, and fuel to make pottery, smelt metals, cook our food, and keep us warm.

But we didn’t just change the landscape, we also changed the plants we grew so that they suited our needs. We changed the animals we relied on. We turned wolves into dogs, auroch into cows, ibex into goats, jungle fowl into chickens, and wild boars into pigs. We called this process domestication, and soon quickly forgot that we had ever been without these domesticates.

We made artificial hills for our rituals, built mountains out of cut stone to mark the tombs of revered rulers, carved symbols into the landscape. Sliced into mountains to carve roads, mine metal ores, and quarry stone. We made monuments so astounding that people thousands of years later thought they must have been made by the gods, and buildings of the modern age that dwarf them.

We’ve also traveled. We’ve crossed all our oceans, bringing with us the animals and plants of our homelands, and returning home with the animals and plants of other lands. Some is intentional. New crops that offer new advantages. Animals from far away to awe visitors or remind us of home. Some is unintentional. Plant seeds lodged in the tread of our boots. Insect larva in the bilge of our ships. Rats that scurry and stay out of sight, and hitch a ride on our sailing ships and outrigger canoes. Some we regret bringing, intentionally or not, others have settled in and carved their own place in their new home.

And now we look to the stars and wonder if we could do the same to other planets. To bring our life and our world to the stars. To turn a red planet green and blue.

And what if we succeeded? What if a red planet turned green, and flushed with our success, we turned to other balls of rock orbiting distant stars.

And what if we encountered other life. Life that was like us, but also very different. What if they had never seen life like ours before, that spread to the stars turning red, grey, and brown planets blue and green.

What if some are fearful. What if they seen our domesticated animals, our sculpted landscapes, and our diverse nations and fear that we will assimilate and change them and their world like we did to our ancient animal enemies and our distant home planet.

But what is some our awed, and look at us and see a species that can not only adapt itself to new and challenges and environments, but that also changes the challenge and environment itself. Often changing and adapting to the changes they themselves wrought. For better and worse, humanity sailed the stars on the crest of a wave of change that they themselves have been creating since their distant ancestors set fire to the underbrush and realized they could use this.

You have captive extraterrestrials on your planet?

agent: this is area 51, where the aliens live me: cool agent: and over there is area 69, where the aliens… uh… me: what agent: …. me: what do they do there

humans are weird

of course there’s been lots of posts about how humans have pets

dangerous pets. that can kill. that are kept even having injured their human. ugly pets that humans still gush over.

but what if what really makes humans weird is the love we have for our pets? like, aliens can sort of understand pets because not only can they be used to hunt, but also because humans are known throughout the galaxy as a species that will aggressively pack bond and adopt even inanimate objects.

but humans love their pets. humans will cry over their pets. even humans who have been identified by other humans as criminals and dangerous have and love pets. humans that abuse their pets are looked at with disgust and considered criminal. humans will risk their lives for animals that aren’t even theirs. humans will make their pet toys. humans will groom their pet simply because their pet enjoys it.

imagine an alien experiencing a pet’s funeral. and every human crew member is crying. a couple even do a little speech for poor bobby. and the alien crew are just utterly confused? because isn’t this usually reserved for dead humans? not a non-sentient being?!?!

they ask Human-Bee after the funeral- why is your species upset. you ingest poison for fun. you evolved on the planet from hell. you can get another parasite- sorry- I mean pet, can’t you?

yes, crewman t’sk, of course we can get another pet, but we loved bobby

the humans are all noticeably upset for the next week, so the alien crew on the next shore leave sneak away and when they come back present their humans with a new dog called jeff

watching all the humans smile and coo over the new dog, the alien crew think that maybe the universal pamphlets advertising how to care for humans were wrong. maybe these humans and pets aren’t in a parasitical relationship, but a symbiotic one.