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A2: you know what's even worse? some of them after extracting their food remains, they wipe, with tissue! I get needing such process, but to not use a bidet like every civilized species in the galaxy?!
A1: GOD YOU MEAN THOSE I SHAKE HAND WITH MAY NOT CLEAN THEMSELVES PROPERLY?!
Jokes on you, aliens, bidets suck and the humans who led the charge on going to the stars rightly and roundly distrust them to properly clean their excretory orifice.
When you're laying on your back, having the esophagus at the back means saliva runs down to your stomach rather than into your lungs, and having the mouth and nose feeding into the trachea means that we don't suffocate the moment our nose gets blocked up. Also the mouth can be opened for more air flow during heavy exercise. While people can choke on food or drink, it doesn't happen that often, and even when it does most people survive it.
Where else would the womb and birth canal be placed? As bipeds, using the pelvis to support the growing fetus keeps it from just falling out, and human heads are squishy enough (at birth) to pass through the cradle. Every area above the lower belly has other contents that are more vital.
and human heads are squishy enough (at birth) to pass through the cradle.
Yeah because the birth canal is too small. Nature thought us being able to stand up right was more important than having a birth canal big enough to squeeze a baby out of without deforming their head. I'm with the aliens on this one, the human body is beautiful but this is a huge flaw.
Sexual reproduction acts as insurance against mutations, since every generation has a ~50:50 chance of eliminating genetic damage.
Digesting all our food would reduce the amount of manure passed into the environment. There are species that cannot even reproduce until their seeds have passed through a digestive process. Many fruits rely on organisms to carry their seeds far from the parent plant.
Of course that can be negated with intelligence, but there is also the fact that if you digest everything, you also have a high chance of digesting toxins. Like Sodium for instance, it's a metal ion that is necessary for neural pathways. Assuming they need that for high functioning brains, the only way to consistently take in Sodium is through salt. Chlorine is dangerous gas that can corrode most tissues and unless they also involved to either use chlorine for some reason salt is dangerous in large qualities. In order to dissolve everything you either create a build up that limits consumption of other more necessary minerals and complex organic molecules, or have some use for them, which is unlikely. So either way a build up could kill the creature in question. Imagine your the smartest of the species, you need more sodium to help connect neurons for complex equations and the like. But even if chlorine is neutral and not toxic, you're still limited on salt intake because otherwise the build up itself with no way to expell it is dangerous. Imagine growing pus like bulbs of chlorine on your skin because it's non usable.
It also gives us mutations, lots of them, so we end up, within the first weeks of pregnancy, discarding about half of the created "life begins at conception" zygotes for horrible genetic abnormalities incopatible with life. The product that does survive into babies is also full of additional de nova mutations which are an important source of things like autism and other genetic diseases including cancer and metabolic.
Interesting the cancer rates are about the same between small and large animals even though for example a whale has much more cells than we do so you would expect it to have a much higher cancer rate. For a long time there was speculation about why but it turns out that they actually are very efficient at repairing breakage in the DNA strands which is an important cause of cancer
"We know, have you seen our knees and shoulders? Hell look at our eyes! We have blind spot because our optical nerve goes through the retina, something cephalopods don't have."
And practically speaking we'll never notice the blind spots because of binocular vision.
Having an inverted retina means we can have a massive amount of blood to the choroid to carry away heat and allow for rapid regeneration of photoreceptors. allowing us to quickly recover from flash blindness. Something cephalopods don't have to worry about because they live underwater.
Also their eyes are far more rudimentary than ours and don't see in color.
There's a reason we say "eyes like a hawk" and not "eyes like an octopus."
Not really. We have reasons for these things. Eating and sex are both pleasurable actions, leading to stress relief and better at connecting people, which helps negate the need for telepathy, but even then we do have a limited form of telepathy called empathetic mirroring which allows us to, on the surface, understand and connect with others. This has allowed us to connect with others even of different species. Which allowed taming creatures to be actually viable.
Our digestive system is a creation of waste because we excel at getting rid of toxins and wasted food. While no doubt species exist that use, quote un quote "everything" they technically still don't. This means if something with a crucial necessary component for the living being is paired with something that is dangerous for them in large qualities, utilizing their digestive system which dissolve and uses everything means they cannot consume the necessary mineral or complex material in large enough of numbers to combat deficiencies. Say a species needs Sodium to help with neural pathways, and they dissolve all food. Efficient as it is for carbs, protein, and other minerals, sodium is locked with chlorine which, unless they evolved to be neutral to chlorine, salt is something they can't overindulge in. As such sodium in take is limited because even if they could find sodium unbounded in nature (un-fucking-likely) it would be dangerous for them to eat because of its extreme reactivity to everything around it. Especially if the creature is water based, which it most likely is because water is a pretty damn good solvent which is very necessary if its digestion involves dissolving everything with no waste.
Humans excell at expelling waste to the point that blatant poison like alcohol can be downed repeatedly with minimum damage to the digestion process. Depending on the person's genes they can be heavy drinkers and still have okay digestion. And so long as the liver has pieces left, it can reform and reveal if the cut dead pieces are taken out. Kidneys have two of them in our bodies to ensure redundant functioning. And above all our pain tolerance is tied with our pleasure centers to ensure that sometimes a painful situation can be pleasurable enough to seek repeat actions. Such as eating spicy food, or fighting for our loved ones. Adrenaline and dopamine can be activated by stress as much as pleasure experiences.
“It must be really embarrassing to be signing vassalization papers to such a lesser species,” Colonel Cavanaugh said, chuckling as he twirled a silver dollar over his fingers.
The Aurelatian delegate wasn’t sure how he’d managed to read his thoughts without telepathy, but he didn’t like it.
Human psionics were few and far between before first contact.
Most aliens had naturally occuring psionics as a large poriton of their populations, with non-psionics being seen as disabled, or freaks. it had been seen as a law of the universe that no species could achieve space travel without the help of psionics such as telepathy, telekinesis, elemental bending, and other such basic psionic tasks.
Until first contact with humans.
When psionics first found the humans they sent out a telepathy message wave that most humans heard, but couldnt respond to. to their confusion, no telepathic message was sent back by the humans. but scientists experimenting with the very obscure and underutilized technology of radio waves began to pick up signals from the human planet, and after managing to translate the human speach they were able to make a proper first contact by synthesizing human speach with noise recreation technology.
Scientists from the many psionic species were stunned apon realising that humans did not have any form of telepathy , (without using technology , of course!) and psionics were seen among them as nothing but fairy tales, rumours, or kept secret by certain groups for their own benefit or safety.
TLDR, space wizards discover humanity and are confused why they dont use magic as well.
Humans display all the characteristics of domestication. They seem to have domesticated themselves / gone through a natural selection for low aggression and high friendliness. Do humans know that their galactically atypical friendliness and low aggression are the result of them being domesticated?
Okay I agree with the part about having to poop and pee and not having telepathy really sucks but having a sexual partner is fun and can lead to a meaningful relationship where I can confide to someone and vice versa.
Aliens don't have telepathy. Nor those other traits. The disappointing reality is that we are the most powerful beings in the galaxy. That's it. Aliens exist but they aren't like most imagine. They're not these enlightened beings with supernatural powers. More like space slugs with a dash of sentience imo
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A1: And how they ingest nutrients! Their esophagus crosses THROUGH their trachea making it far too easy to choke on food or drink.
A2: Then at the other end, their "play-ground" for reproduction for the females is right BETWEEN the excretory orifices.
A1: Well, for the males the liquid waste is expelled from a dual use "extension".
A2 is a paraphrase from a conversation in "Dragons Dawn" by Anne McCaffrey
A2: you know what's even worse? some of them after extracting their food remains, they wipe, with tissue! I get needing such process, but to not use a bidet like every civilized species in the galaxy?!
A1: GOD YOU MEAN THOSE I SHAKE HAND WITH MAY NOT CLEAN THEMSELVES PROPERLY?!
A2: Have you went to the Netherlands...
A1: ... Yes
A2: WASH YOURSELF IMMEDIATELY!
Jokes on you, aliens, bidets suck and the humans who led the charge on going to the stars rightly and roundly distrust them to properly clean their excretory orifice.
And do not go to India, they 'wash' their food in a river of excrement and dead people's ashes!
When you're laying on your back, having the esophagus at the back means saliva runs down to your stomach rather than into your lungs, and having the mouth and nose feeding into the trachea means that we don't suffocate the moment our nose gets blocked up. Also the mouth can be opened for more air flow during heavy exercise. While people can choke on food or drink, it doesn't happen that often, and even when it does most people survive it.
Where else would the womb and birth canal be placed? As bipeds, using the pelvis to support the growing fetus keeps it from just falling out, and human heads are squishy enough (at birth) to pass through the cradle. Every area above the lower belly has other contents that are more vital.
Yeah because the birth canal is too small. Nature thought us being able to stand up right was more important than having a birth canal big enough to squeeze a baby out of without deforming their head. I'm with the aliens on this one, the human body is beautiful but this is a huge flaw.
Dragons Dawn is my favourite Pern book!
Sexual reproduction acts as insurance against mutations, since every generation has a ~50:50 chance of eliminating genetic damage.
Digesting all our food would reduce the amount of manure passed into the environment. There are species that cannot even reproduce until their seeds have passed through a digestive process. Many fruits rely on organisms to carry their seeds far from the parent plant.
Of course that can be negated with intelligence, but there is also the fact that if you digest everything, you also have a high chance of digesting toxins. Like Sodium for instance, it's a metal ion that is necessary for neural pathways. Assuming they need that for high functioning brains, the only way to consistently take in Sodium is through salt. Chlorine is dangerous gas that can corrode most tissues and unless they also involved to either use chlorine for some reason salt is dangerous in large qualities. In order to dissolve everything you either create a build up that limits consumption of other more necessary minerals and complex organic molecules, or have some use for them, which is unlikely. So either way a build up could kill the creature in question. Imagine your the smartest of the species, you need more sodium to help connect neurons for complex equations and the like. But even if chlorine is neutral and not toxic, you're still limited on salt intake because otherwise the build up itself with no way to expell it is dangerous. Imagine growing pus like bulbs of chlorine on your skin because it's non usable.
Those are very good points.
It also gives us mutations, lots of them, so we end up, within the first weeks of pregnancy, discarding about half of the created "life begins at conception" zygotes for horrible genetic abnormalities incopatible with life. The product that does survive into babies is also full of additional de nova mutations which are an important source of things like autism and other genetic diseases including cancer and metabolic.
Interesting the cancer rates are about the same between small and large animals even though for example a whale has much more cells than we do so you would expect it to have a much higher cancer rate. For a long time there was speculation about why but it turns out that they actually are very efficient at repairing breakage in the DNA strands which is an important cause of cancer
Many humans are so disgusted by their own odor that they do everything they can to cover it up. What species is disgusted by their own scent?
Any species that’s civilized enough to recognize the difference between natural scent and dirty from labor.
So either you’ve gotten so lazy that none of you work anymore, or you’re too dumb to attend to basic hygiene.
That, or you don’t sweat and we’re going to outcompete you on every planet warmer than 32° Fahrenheit.
...32° Fahrenheit at an ambient atmospheric pressure of 1013.25 hectopascals. But yes.
Shove it, Spock 😂
The thing is this is only partly true, and it seems to also play a role in mate selection
"We know, have you seen our knees and shoulders? Hell look at our eyes! We have blind spot because our optical nerve goes through the retina, something cephalopods don't have."
And practically speaking we'll never notice the blind spots because of binocular vision.
Having an inverted retina means we can have a massive amount of blood to the choroid to carry away heat and allow for rapid regeneration of photoreceptors. allowing us to quickly recover from flash blindness. Something cephalopods don't have to worry about because they live underwater.
Also their eyes are far more rudimentary than ours and don't see in color.
There's a reason we say "eyes like a hawk" and not "eyes like an octopus."
Not really. We have reasons for these things. Eating and sex are both pleasurable actions, leading to stress relief and better at connecting people, which helps negate the need for telepathy, but even then we do have a limited form of telepathy called empathetic mirroring which allows us to, on the surface, understand and connect with others. This has allowed us to connect with others even of different species. Which allowed taming creatures to be actually viable.
Our digestive system is a creation of waste because we excel at getting rid of toxins and wasted food. While no doubt species exist that use, quote un quote "everything" they technically still don't. This means if something with a crucial necessary component for the living being is paired with something that is dangerous for them in large qualities, utilizing their digestive system which dissolve and uses everything means they cannot consume the necessary mineral or complex material in large enough of numbers to combat deficiencies. Say a species needs Sodium to help with neural pathways, and they dissolve all food. Efficient as it is for carbs, protein, and other minerals, sodium is locked with chlorine which, unless they evolved to be neutral to chlorine, salt is something they can't overindulge in. As such sodium in take is limited because even if they could find sodium unbounded in nature (un-fucking-likely) it would be dangerous for them to eat because of its extreme reactivity to everything around it. Especially if the creature is water based, which it most likely is because water is a pretty damn good solvent which is very necessary if its digestion involves dissolving everything with no waste.
Humans excell at expelling waste to the point that blatant poison like alcohol can be downed repeatedly with minimum damage to the digestion process. Depending on the person's genes they can be heavy drinkers and still have okay digestion. And so long as the liver has pieces left, it can reform and reveal if the cut dead pieces are taken out. Kidneys have two of them in our bodies to ensure redundant functioning. And above all our pain tolerance is tied with our pleasure centers to ensure that sometimes a painful situation can be pleasurable enough to seek repeat actions. Such as eating spicy food, or fighting for our loved ones. Adrenaline and dopamine can be activated by stress as much as pleasure experiences.
“They’re so generalized… they’ve somehow turned inefficiency into hyper-efficiency!”
“It must be really embarrassing to be signing vassalization papers to such a lesser species,” Colonel Cavanaugh said, chuckling as he twirled a silver dollar over his fingers.
The Aurelatian delegate wasn’t sure how he’d managed to read his thoughts without telepathy, but he didn’t like it.
Human psionics were few and far between before first contact.
Most aliens had naturally occuring psionics as a large poriton of their populations, with non-psionics being seen as disabled, or freaks. it had been seen as a law of the universe that no species could achieve space travel without the help of psionics such as telepathy, telekinesis, elemental bending, and other such basic psionic tasks.
Until first contact with humans.
When psionics first found the humans they sent out a telepathy message wave that most humans heard, but couldnt respond to. to their confusion, no telepathic message was sent back by the humans. but scientists experimenting with the very obscure and underutilized technology of radio waves began to pick up signals from the human planet, and after managing to translate the human speach they were able to make a proper first contact by synthesizing human speach with noise recreation technology.
Scientists from the many psionic species were stunned apon realising that humans did not have any form of telepathy , (without using technology , of course!) and psionics were seen among them as nothing but fairy tales, rumours, or kept secret by certain groups for their own benefit or safety.
TLDR, space wizards discover humanity and are confused why they dont use magic as well.
Humans display all the characteristics of domestication. They seem to have domesticated themselves / gone through a natural selection for low aggression and high friendliness. Do humans know that their galactically atypical friendliness and low aggression are the result of them being domesticated?
Okay I agree with the part about having to poop and pee and not having telepathy really sucks but having a sexual partner is fun and can lead to a meaningful relationship where I can confide to someone and vice versa.
A2: Why do you think they are destruction incarnate? A1: Your right, that was a stupid question.
A1: I must have misheard. They DELIBERATELY poison themselves?
A2: No, you heard correctly. And they do it for fun.
A1: ...how?
A2: gets out a list Oh hey, I forgot this one. They have had armed conflicts over the right to poison themselves.
A1: And they made it to the stars HOW?
H: we're just built different
built wrongWorse, we are dependent on the micro-biome in our guts. It's a complex and fragile balance that drives our health or will kill us if out of balance.
Aliens don't have telepathy. Nor those other traits. The disappointing reality is that we are the most powerful beings in the galaxy. That's it. Aliens exist but they aren't like most imagine. They're not these enlightened beings with supernatural powers. More like space slugs with a dash of sentience imo