Humans are the weirdest aliens?

Hah, yeah-I've tried to throw things down the driveway and gotten them onto the roof, somehow.
On the other hand, it's impossible to teach a chimp or whatever to reliably aim a bow and arrow, or a nerf gun-human toddlers can use a nerf gun with some accuracy.

 

Heres a concept: did u kno humans have possibly lethal bites just because of the sheer amount of bacteria compared to oher animals like dogs and usually need antibiotics etc
they also have the stronest relative jaw strength of any primate but thats besides the point

so if an alien somehow manages to get bitten and shrugs it off by patching it up, a more savy alien would have to reveal to them that they just had sown shut a biological time bomb on their arm
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also dont get me started on hunting methods like imagine humans as the go-to species for tracking down wanted citizens in pre super tech eras and people would be horrified bc they just dont stop moving will these things ever get tired?? and maybe the humans would even have to carry the alien that commissioned them because jesus fuck its been 15 miles cant you guys chill for a second -


srry i love the horror framing of this concept aliht

 

other related good things: aliens that have made more progress technically have also evolved to conserve their energy by having pretty frail bodies and using their fuel for their brains only mostly, is completely horrified at the concept of an alien that is both able to potentionally beat someone to death and has nuclear arsenals

thankfully for the lone aliens that finds their way onto a space deck the humans onboard seem to have a strong bias towards two things:

1. aliens
2. weak things that may or may not look like some sort of baby animal or at least tick off the "i gotta protect this thing and ill maul whoever threatens it" instincts

 

holy shit we're the komodo dragons of the universe

 

humans being the komodo dragons of the universe is so good
also humans being disappointed because "wait does this mean we can't fuck the aliens?????"

 

aww
it's like a "do I take alien antibiotics so I dont kill my datemate or do I not so I can win every fight ever"

the eternal paradox

 

human just wears a fucking muzzle during sexxi times but its ok because they kinky

 

meanwhile, over on the alien's side
"I'M GONNA FUCK THE HUMAN."
"you are going to die."
"I LIVE FOR DANGER"

 

My pet theory: Humans are special because of gravity.

Earth is a heavy planet: it's at the very upper limit of what can be escaped by chemical rockets. We're burning the most energetic fuels possible (pure liquid hydrogen and oxygen) through engines that are marvels of efficiency and rockets still need to be ninety-odd percent fuel by weight to go anywhere.

So, humans are space dwarves. Our wounds are self-sealing in high pressure environments, our skeletons are made out of rock, and we think that swinging razor-sharp chunks of iron alloy is a reasonable combat strategy.

And we have the annoying habit of turning the artificial gravity in the ship's gym up to hazardous levels because "it feels like home."

 

i like the idea of humans as chaotic neutral big scary things that have a lot of murder potential, messed up battle strategy and probably has a protocol of "have 2 nonhumans in the room at any time of interaction and keep at a long sticks distance" but also are totally unpredictable like beginning to coo over a war general because they have cute lil feathers on their head or trying to get high on the ship fumes or showing someone their baby pics after grilling their comrade bc "was hungry and they kinda looked like a chicken anyways"

basically they are seen as unpredictable, dangerous, amoral wild cards that has a 50/50 chance of either killing you for fun or knitting you a sweatshirt

 

I also like the idea that compared to the rest of lifeforms in the universe, humans are FUCKING HUGE.
Just think about it. Even here on earth, what percentage of all life forms top 100 pounds? How many top FIVE FEET?!
Hardly any, comparatively. Most life on earth is like... cat-sized or smaller. Which makes sense, since small animals burn less fuel and require fewer resources.

So, imagine that the rest of intelligent life in the universe tends to be like, 3 feet tall or less, and rarely top 40 pounds in weight.
Humans are basically tireless superstrong GIANTS that can just... pick up the fiercest warriors of other races and carry them around.

I think about this a lot

 

Conversely, I've seen works where aliens are taller but lighter than humans, coming from lower-gravity, easier to escape planets.

 

I APPROVE OF THIS

also bonus if a lot of the aliens are conventionally adorable so theres a lot of towering monsters randomly picking up people and going whimpering "holy shiiiiiit good alien"

it is confusing and kinda scary

 

I saw a work where, while most of the aliens shown came from lower-gravity planets or moons, there was this one planet called Lyr that was designed as a model of non-tidelocked planets in a red dwarf system-basically, it's huge and has a thick atmosphere, meaning that in between tidal heating from its large moon, heat from its core, and greenhousing, it stays at an Earthly temperature range despite being in the inner edge of Europa-type worlds, like its moon.

That planet's aliens (plural-lots of species, as they generally follow a six-limbed body plan, with a lot of species with hands as they're useful for things like grooming) are generally flighted, but had trouble leaving their planet before humanity made first contact because of two factors: the general metal-poorness of a world with proportionally more light elements than Earth, and the fact that, while they were at a similar or better level than us socially due to the ease of information travel when your populance is winged, technologically they were generally stone-to-medieval age.


EDIT: Flightedness was caused by the thick atmosphere more than counteracting the increased gravity, as light elements and gases were better retained-like what happens in gas giants, but less, so instead of a huge ball of gas, it was just...a thick atmosphere and a heck of a lot of water. If it didn't have a moon, its tectonic processes (not like big, rigid plates-lots of small plates and areas that are more like putty than plates) might not have been vigorous enough to get any land above the waterline yet.

 

Also think about parkour. Like, not even good parkour, just the ability to get over and around obstacles. If you compare a biped and a quadruped and their ability to jump a fence you end up with sightly faster creatures vs. these crazy lanky two legged aliens who can CLIMB WALLS YOU GUYS, JUST STRAIGHT UP IGNORE THE IMPENETRABLE STONE BARRIER AND GO OVER IT LIKE IT WASN'T EVEN THERE!

 

Hah, what if we were the only brachiating species? Everything else that has the range of motion of our shoulders either flies, or used to fly, but we're a terrestrial species that can think in 3-d much easier than most and has a relatively absurd range of motion. Other species then wouldn't have ladders...or monkey bars...or a bunch of other things probably. So humans would then be really weird, because as well as running on walls we'd be able to comfortably hang from things.

 

good stuff yall keep it coming this is my fav thread now

im inclined to draw stuff from this mainly concept art of humans as terrifying abominations hired to do "gritty work" on spaceships and who are mainly seen as rouge, possibly violent possibly not creatures that noone fucks w enough to have them be ""common"" in multispecies spacefare

 

I saw a thing where aliens from a single-sapient-species planet generally hated the idea of using drones etc to do things, because they didn't evolve used to the idea of having allies that had different capabilities from them-except for humans, because of our tendency to domesticate animals.

 

Also in regards to domesticated animals: I refuse to believe that once true spaceflight is achieved, humans would do anything other than immediately drag every single creature ever domesticated with them.
And now aliens have to deal with this really weird, lanky ape species that just showed up on the galactic map and apparently dragged half of their native fauna with them??? Who does that.
Humans, that's who.

 

Heh, like archer and porthos