A lot of ‘humans are weird’ posts play with the idea that humans are one of the few species that actually evolved as a predator and, as such, we are unusually strong and fast— but what if we’re not.
What if we’re tiny?
What if, to the majority of species in the galaxy, ten feet tall is unusually short— it basically only happens due to rare genetic conditions— and the average human is basically cat sized or smaller?
Instead of being terrified by our strength, the aliens’ most pressing concern is how exactly they’re going to communicate with us when we’re all the way down on the ground.
There are experiments, with aliens crouching low or humans standing on high platforms— but it usually ends up being either uncomfortable for the alien or dangerous for the human, or both, and just generally impractical for everyone.
But, while the diplomats and politicians are trying to figure out a dignified and simple solution, the ordinary people who actually have to work with the aliens have found one. Humans are, generally, pretty good climbers, and most species have conveniently places scales, feathers, fur or clothing that can act as a hand or foothold. Sure, some humans have a fear of heights, but those aren’t typically the ones going into space. Besides, climbing on a living alien often feels safer than climbing up a rock or something— at least you know you’ve got somebody to catch you.
Soon it becomes accepted that that’s the way humans travel with aliens— up high, easy to see and hard to tread on (there were quite a few… near misses, in the first few meetings between humans and aliens), balanced on somebody’s shoulder like the overgrown monkeys that we are.
Many humans see this as kind of an insult and absolutely refuse to go along with it, but they aren’t the ones who end up spending a lot of time with aliens— it’s just too inconvenient to talk to somebody all the way down on the ground. The ones that do best are the ones who just treat it like it’s normal, allowing themselves to be carried (at least, it’s ‘carrying’ when the aliens are within earshot. Among themselves, most humans jokingly refer to it as ‘riding’), and passing on tips to their friends about the best ways to ride on different species without damaging feathers, or stepping on sensitive spots (or, in at least one case, ending up with a foot full of poisonous spines…).
The reason they don’t feel patronised by this is that they know, and they know that nearly everyone else in the galaxy knows, that humans are not just pets.
After all, you’d be surprised when a small size comes in handy.
Need somebody to look at the wiring in a small and fairly inaccessible area of the ship? Ask a human.
Need somebody to fix this fairly small and very detailed piece of machinery? Ask a human, they’re so small that their eyes naturally pick up smaller details.
Trapped under rubble and need somebody to crawl through a small gap and get help? Ask a human— most can wriggle through any gap that they can fit their head and shoulders through.
If you’re a friend, humans can be very useful. If, on the other hand, you’re an enemy…
Rumours spread all around the galaxy, of ships that threatened humans or human allies and started experiencing technical problems. Lights going off, wires being cut— in some cases, the cases where the threats were more than just words and humans or friends of humans were killed, life support lines have been severed, or airlocks have mysteriously malfunctioned and whole crews have been sucked out into space.
If the subject comes up, most humans will blame it on “gremlins” and exchange grim smiles when they’re other species friends aren’t looking.
By this point, most ships have a crew of humans, whether they like it or not. Lots of humans, young ones generally, the ones who want to see a bit of the universe but don’t have the money or connections to make it happen any other way, like to stowaway on ships. They’ll hang around the space ports, wait for a ship’s door to open and dart on in. The average human can have quite a nice time scurrying around in the walls of an alien ship, so long as they’re careful not to dislodge anything important.
Normally nobody notices them, and the ones that do tend not to say anything— it’s generally recognised that having humans on your ship is good luck.
If there are humans on your ship, they say, then anything you lose will be found within a matter of days, sometimes even in your quarters; any minor task you leave out— some dishes that need to be cleaned, a report that needs to be spellchecked, some calculations that need to be done— will be quickly and quietly completed during the night; any small children on the ship, who are still young enough to start to cry in the night, will be soothed almost before their parents even wake, sometimes even by words in their own tongue, spoken clumsily through human vocal chords. If any of the human are engineers (and a lot of them are, and still more of them aren’t, but have picked up quite a few tricks on their travels from humans who are) then minor malfunctions will be fixed before you even notice them, and your ship is significantly less likely to experience any major problems.
The humans are eager to earn their keep, especially when the more grateful aliens start leaving out dishes of human-safe foods for them.
This, again, is considered good luck— especially since the aliens who aren’t kind to the humans often end up losing things, or waking up to find that their fur has been cut, or the report they spent hours on yesterday has mysteriously been deleted.
To human crew members, who work on alien ships out in the open, and have their names on the crew manifest and everything, these small groups of humans are colloquially referred to as ‘ship’s rats’. There’s a sort of uneasy relationship between the two groups. On the one hand, the crew members regard the ship’s rats as spongers and potential nuisances— on the other hand, most human crew members started out as ship’s rats themselves, and now benefit from the respect (and more than a little awe) that the ship’s rats have made most aliens feel for humans. The general arrangement is that ship’s rats try to avoid ships with human crew members and, when they can’t, then they make sure to stay out of the crew members’ way, and the crew members who do see one make sure not to mention them to any alien crew members.
The aliens who know, on the other hand, have gotten into the habit of not calling them by name— mainly because they’re shaky as the legality of this arrangement, and don’t want to admit that anything’s going on. Instead they talk about “the little people” or “the ones in the walls” or, more vaguely, “Them”.
Their human friends— balancing on their shoulders, occasionally scurrying down and arm so as to get to a table, or jumping from one person’s shoulder to another, in order to better follow the conversation— laugh quietly to themselves when they hear this.
Back before the first first contact, lot of people on Earth thought that humans would become space orcs. Little did they know, they’d actually end up as space fae.
Space fae… I love it… aliens would wake to a full hot breakfast ready… and maybe some missing currencies
So human babies REALLY need to be touched. Its totally critical for development. Small babies can literally die if you don’t cuddle them enough.
But imagine that the aliens are more like reptiles, in that they just sort of hatch and their parents feed them or stay around (and presumably, like, educate them, since they’re intelligent aliens), but don’t carry them around or cuddle in the same way.
So one of them gets stuck with a human baby that they’re responsible for and of course, they go ask a xenobiologist or someone ‘what do you do for a human baby, they’re all weird and squishy’.
And the scientist says: well, you have to stroke them. Like actually pick them up and stroke their skin.
Why, says the alien, what could that possibly accomplish. Does it make their skin tougher. Will they grow proper scales.
No, no, that’s just what human skin is like, you just… you have stroke them or they won’t grow right. They get a stroking-deficiency and can die.
Suddenly our obsession with petting everything makes sense to them.
“Why do they ask to pet our fur? Why do they touch every animal we find? Humans are so strange!”
“No, no, Pod Leader, we have discovered the reason for this. Humans require tactile contact for health. Their young will actually die without frequent touchings of skin, Even as adults, their health deteriorates if they are isolated from touch. Human Technical Adjunct Rupert is trying to nurture us and preserve our healthfulness with this touching they offer.”
“… they actually believe that touching our fur with their grubby paws is healthful?”
“For humans, Pod Leader, it is.A little unsanitary, we are understanding the reservations, but it is kindly meant. We think it is actually very nice of Human Technical Adjunct Rupert to be so concerned with our healthfulness.”
“We are still not sure we believe this. That sounds like a weak attempt at deceit to us.”
“Let us show you this vid of humans nurturing their young, it is very instructive.”
Some time later, Human Technical Adjunct Rupert is bewildered but pleased to find that fur-petting is now encouraged provided they have washed their paws. This seems reasonable to Human Technical Adjunct Rupert.
Guys do centaurs have to eat both horse food and human food?
Centaur, eating out of a burlap sack of hay like it’s potato chips: So do you guys wanna get Chipotle later?
Centaur: *kneeling on the ground, ripping up bits of grass and eating it*
Nearby horse: *neighs*
Centaur: Well it’s easy for you to bend over, isn’t it?
Horse: *snorts*
Centaur: *through a mouthful of grass* Well goody goody for you, but some of us have two spines.
Human: Hey does somebody want the rest of my burger?
Centaur: Oh I’ll have it. I am starving.
Human: Didn’t you just eat like an entire barrel of hay?
Centaur: *snatches the burger* That was for the horse stomach not the human one. Don’t be racist, Carl.
Centaur: *eating a carrot*
Human: So does stuff like that go through both stomachs or…
Centaur: *pauses mid chew* *swallows hard* Well that’s something else to keep me up at night.
Centaur digestion might not be all that much different than what horses already do. Horse digestion is already divided into two, the foregut and hindgut. The foregut is like a more traditional GI tract like a human or dog, with an esophagus, stomach, and small intestine, and works pretty much the same way. Because horses are not ruminants and don’t have the multichambered fermentation stomach a cow does, only the easier-to-digest surface nutrients are digested in the foregut. (This also means that a horse ends up with more direct protein and fat absorption than a cow, because the symbiotic bacteria in a cow’s multichambered stomach usually ferments and consumes a lot of the proteins and fats from incoming food before the cow’s body has a chance to absorb. And proteins and fats are vital to brain development.)
However, a horse’s hindgut is different from most mammals. After otherwise indigestible cellulose passes through the small intestine, it enters a specialized section of the large intestine called a caecum, and that’s where the horse’s symbiotic fermentation bacteria live. Feed stays in the caecum for about 7 hours, where it ferments and the nutrients are eventually absorbed. The caecum is a very odd digestive organ; both its entrance and exit are at the top, presumably to allow a horse to better pass any gasses generated by the fermentation process, but because the exit is at the top, it is very easily blocked by any solids that the caecum failed to digest, and gravity does not help. The bacteria mix in the caecum is very specialized, usually only capable of digesting very specific foods, and it can take several days or weeks of slowly introducing new foods so that the caecum grows the bacteria needed to be able to digest it. That’s where you get most colic in horses, when the caecum is blocked by solids that the bacteria weren’t adapted to digest. Colic is extremely painful and can be quite deadly for a horse. After fermentation in the caecum, food travels on through the large intestine like most other mammals.
So, in regards to centaurs, I doubt the digestive tract would change all that much. Whether a centaur has one stomach or two, they would probably have a caecum in addition, since fermentation has a much higher energy yield than digestion alone, and they’d need that energy to run. But if they do have a caecum, a centaur would have to be extremely careful about what they ate, and they’d probably be very averse to trying new foods. They’d probably try to eat the same thing all the time, with maybe one or two variations to keep it a little interesting, but nothing terribly extreme. A traveling or adventuring centaur would probably keep a supply of food they know they can eat with them at any time, because adapting to a new food is extremely slow. If they were moving to a new region, they’d probably bring a couple hundred pounds of their old food with them so they could mix in the new region’s food a little at a time.
You are a demon, a creature of hellfire and ash and sin. You are not meant to have a heart, you are meant to fill the world with pain and discord and suffering. You do this for centuries, it isn’t pleasant but it’s your duty to your prince. One day, you infiltrate a home to plant discord, only to find the place is ravaged with it. A young child sees you, and you see the light in their eyes threatening to fade away. You remember you were once an angel before you fell, and you vow to protect that innocent light in whatever way you can. You can’t do good, but you can purposefully do evil to those who threaten the child. Months pass in this fashion and one day you find an ivory feather sprouting from your wings.
“son of a bitch,” keli said, plucking the feather from the tip of her wings. it licked up the sunlight, edges curling inward. she could feel its warmth through her hand, soft and inviting, as gentle a lull as the way BabyTodd’s eyelids drooped when he got sleepy.
“what’s wrong?” asked norma, poking her head into the nursery. she glanced at where BabyTodd was kicking idly at his mobile. “did he poop?”
keli held up the feather.
norma raised her eyebrows. “….very pretty?” she offered after a moment, voice pitching up in question at the end of the word. “i didn’t know they grew in colors other than black. i thought that was like, the whole vibe.” her brow furrowed suddenly. “oh–is that like–the demon version of a gray hair? are you getting old?”
keli is older than time itself. she was called into creation by the unexpected voice of the blackest heaven, pieced together by the inverse desire of the too-small things which would become men. she watched them grow from the very first pieces of matter, and waited in moonlight for them to evolve enough to hear her voice, and follow it.
she has explained this to norma many times.
“no, norma,” she says, somewhat patiently, but also somewhat like she is saying how many fucking times do we have to go over this, norma? “this is not a demon gray hair. it is an angel feather. here, listen.”
keli ran her fingertip along the edge of the wing and the feather sang out, a soft and lilting tune like a harp, but also like the sun filtering through the leaves of lush, green trees. the song that david wrote, that night so many years ago when he had sat on the floor and loved god the only way that he knew how.
“oooooo,” said norma. “neat. can i touch it?”
keli handed the feather over, and norma strummed it a few times. even keli had to admit the song was beautiful, although it wasn’t exactly pleasant for a demon to listen to. “this could make top 40 radio, easy,” norma mused. “like, throw in a baseline and some peppy lyrics about being single for the summer and you’d make bank. new music friday all the way, baby.” she frowned suddenly, then narrowed her eyes at keli. “did you kill an angel to get this?” she asked. “because we have talked about this. i am not bringing BabyTodd to visit you if you go to jail.”
“no prison can hold my dark power,” keli said. “norma. i need to know that you understand this, because we really have gone over it a lot and i’m starting to think that maybe you don’t listen to me when i talk to you.”
“well, i’m not bringing BabyTodd to visit you in hell, either,” norma answered placidly, “because hell is no more a place for baby than prison is.”
keli pinched the bridge of her nose. “i didn’t kill an angel for it,” she said on a sigh. “i grew it. by accident.”
“you grew it?” norma’s eyebrows rose. “like … on your body? yours? the demon one?”
“yes.”
“but you’re a demon.”
“i know.”
“but if you’re a demon, how can you grow an angel feather?”
keli waited a few seconds, until norma got it.
“holy shit,” norma said. “holy shit, you’re turning into an angel! holy shit!! your redemptive love for BabyTodd is making you a warrior for god!”
keli slumped into the rocking chair and covered her eyes with one hand. “not if i can help it,” she said grimly.
This is so gorgeous and perfect and funny. A great, great story with such rich emotion and tension and loveliness. I MUST FIND THE CREATOR AND SCREAM AT THEM IN TUMBLR FASHION
reblog to SCREAM YOUR LOVE AT THE CREATOR IN TRUE TUMBLR FASHION
Hey, biology nerds! I know you’re out there, lurking, knowing facts.
If you were watching an underground/mountain-dwelling humanoid species evolve, like say, fantasy dwarves, what biological traits would you expect them to develop that are unlike those of humans?
For that matter, what might tall, desert-dwelling elves look like? Or small, hill- and forest-dwelling hobbits? I’m trying to get to something a little more interesting than “tall human”, “beard human”, and “short human”.
Dwarves:
Tapetum Lucidum
Third eyelids, if they do a lot of digging. Related, ears and nostrils that can seal – keep that loose dirt out of the mucous membranes!
Beards? Try vibrissae, or electro-sensitive or motion-sensitive hairs
Low body temperature and poor thermoregulation when above ground – use it or loose it re: high metabolic costs, and your underground environment doesn’t swing wildly
Related: increased photosensitivity
A mechanism for torpor or severe reduction in metabolic activity. This is a common adaptation in cave-dwelling and fossorial mammals, probably related to the thermoregulation thing above, and also the low oxygen concentrations and irregular food sources than can be available underground. tl;dr dwarves can hibernate
Something Weird and Off about upper arms and shoulder joints and musculature – digging requires a bunch of morphological specialization of the upper arms to be remotely energy-efficient
The ability to do that terrifying mountain-goat thing where they can scale and balance on 90 sheer vertical cliff faces
Elves:
If it’s a hot desert, dial the elf-ears up to fennec proportions for excess heat venting. Sweating is an inefficient use of water. Panting is better for evaporative cooling.
Very long, very dark, very thick eyelashes
You can actually re-use the third-lid and sealable nostrils and ears mentioned for dwarves. Keeping out sand is important!
Tolkien-hobbit-equse feet: large, flat, with unusually thick soles, if they’re walking on hot, shifting sand.
Some animals will ‘cry’ excess salt through specialized glands near the eyes, to either fix salt balance (seagulls) or to avoid wasting water in urination (roadrunners). Your main goal re: desert adaptation is water conservation, which means figuring out how to avoid peeing whenever possible in many cases. Mammals usually will concentrate uric acid into a pellet or paste, but the idea of elves with bright-white, reflective salt-lines down their faces is Aesthetic™ as hell.
I’m gonna lean on bug biology here cuz why not.
Underground dwarves:
-specialization to oxygen levels at different depths (can’t move easily between them?)
-daily and seasonal thermoregulation via moving higher and lower in the ground (or even into sun-catching, above ground mounds or mountainsides)
-vibrational hearing/communication through substrate? vibrational prey-seeking
-farming of fungus/aphids/ etc on plant root structures
Desert-elves:
-strongly nocturnal or crepuscular (dusk and dawn) activity cycles
-sensitivity to UV light— can feel/see it with their skin. helps them stick to shadows.
-seal the fuck out of any avenue for water loss
-burrowing
-postural thermoregulation by holding body far away from heat reflecting ground in day, close to heat-retaining ground at night
-some beetles stick their butts up in the air and absorb water vapor that way, that’s pretty fun
-estivation (summer hibernation)
Forest Hobbits
-Thicker pelts (fur or skin) to deal with undergrowth
-Food gathering and underground food storage
-Hibernation in cold winters, extra fat gain during warm season
-Climbing/arboreal
Thank you! Fascinating hobbit thoughts. Also elves just…slouch at night.
A great (if comical and sometimes kinda disturbing) example of dwarves that have evolved to be suited to underground life can be found in the Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer.
“This is your daily, friendly reminder to use commas instead of periods during the dialogue of your story,” she said with a smile.
“Unless you are following the dialogue with an action and not a dialogue tag.” He took a deep breath and sat back down after making the clarifying statement.
“However,” she added, shifting in her seat, “it’s appropriate to use a comma if there’s action in the middle of a sentence.”
“True.” She glanced at the others. “You can also end with a period if you include an action between two separate statements.”
Things I didn’t know
“And–” she waved a pen as though to underline her statement–“if you’re interrupting a sentence with an action, you need to type two hyphens to make an en-dash.”
You guys have no idea how many students in my advanced fiction workshop didn’t know any of this when writing their stories.
Reblog to save a life
I love how easy it can be to learn stuff like this through tumblr and not through school.
I want to read a story about a wizard whose only spell is “fix this”, but the specially-crafted magic takes their intent into account. "Fix this" can mean repairing the wheel on the adventurers’ cart or healing a broken arm or “fixing” a lock so that it’s in what the wizard considers the “correct” (unlocked) position. Imagine the other mages getting increasingly frustrated as the wizard stubbornly refuses to learn any other spells.
Wizard: *points at a canyon* Fix this
Other casters: That’s not really how spells –
Wizard: Oh look, one of our blankets is now a magic carpet. Guess we don’t need a bridge.
Casters: How –
Wizard: *points at logs that won’t catch fire* Fix this
Other casters: There’s been too much rain, it won’t –
Wizard: I fixed it so that it’s in the same state it was yesterday. Someone here knows how to start a fire, right?
Casters: What –
Wizard: *points at charging dragon*: Fix this
Other casters: THAT’S NOT HOW MAGIC WORKS YOU IDIOT WE’RE GOING TO DIE
Dragon: *coughs* Did you just… cure my intestinal problems? I’ve been trying to stop breathing fire for weeks, but it just kept spilling out, and every time I tried to ask for help, I burned everything down. I won’t forget this kindness.
And it’s legit good too, given the dude who does ‘em also studies these kinds of things for a living!
this series looks super interesting and entertaining and im gonna check it out but goddam if this isnt the funniest name for a video ive ever seen
I love youtube precisely because it gives ordinary people the outlet for talking about their well-researched opinions on very weird and specific subjects that you would not hear about otherwise.
wupacing 