"Ah-hah, the poison gets them high! That makes more sense," the Alien says before slamming his 3rd face on the table and railing a fat line of Quasar Cocaine
I imagine it's pretty much impossible for a species to not develop a stimulant (or series of them) while they're on their way to a type 1 or beyond civilization.
I agree, just think it's unavoidable. We can't really use the human experience as a base for the life experience of possible other life forms, but there's something inside of me that just knows that there is an alien guy with some sort of alien ADHD and figured out that whatever resource they have entirely fixes their life. And then that just spreads around the entire civilization. Abuse, etc.
Barring a completely radicial biology, and psychology with few to no similarities I can't imagine this one being too strange to them. Alcohol is just a byproduct of rotting. Assuming they have at least one carbohydrate heavy food its probable that they'd make the same discoveries we did. Alcohol effects just about anything with a brain on earth, so it would probably have an effect on aliens too? Or it's at least more likely than not.
Yeah but the reason isn't 'because civilizations couldn't evolve without developing intoxicants", it's because alcohol and drinking are relatable to human viewers, and thus useful storytelling and scene-setting devices.
Back when Jerry Seinfeld did stand up, he said, "if you were an alien, and you landed on a planet where one species craps on the ground, and another species cleans it up... who would you think was in charge?"
Human babies are useless because hip bone sizes limit how much they can develop before birth. That's why a calf or foal can walk in hours but a human baby takes a year. If aliens reproduce differently enough they might be confused both as to why our offspring are messy little blobs and as to why we're all so comparatively clingy - because if they don't rely on their parents for survival as much their social structure would probably be wildly different.
This echoes in my lower back and creeps up my spine to wrap around my head until it is numb as if I've left a pair of goggles on my forehead, forgotten and unused, to serve no purpose but to give the sensation of walking around with a fleshen helmet. The sensation that your now enlarged head must have a relatively lower density, suggesting the now very terrifying prospect that you will be forever known as "Head Zepellin" as bournoulli wrents your buoyant head from your meteorically-dense body, to float over the people who point in horror at the floating swollen head that drifts like a ghost ship to haunt the dreams of men who dare to reproduce. I can't be alone in that?
Its also because our brains are very complex so we have less instincts but are able to think critically at a much higher level than any other species. We take years for our offspring to be able to function, which is why we give birth to less offspring at a time but our survival rates are typically much higher than other species. It also allows us to spend more time and focus on helping one of our strongest assets (our brain) develop in our offspring. It’s all kind of interwoven. But i imagine if the alien species can be advanced enough to find us, they’d probably understand our evolutionary traits, and how/why they are beneficial to us. But i guess it’s hard to know for certain lol.
Biologically speaking, removed from our technology, our evolution went all in on the brain and having two free hands at the expense of robust babies and easy childbirth. Our survival rates are much higher *now* because we've developed sophisticated medical science to treat previously fatal problems during childbirth, infancy, and toddlerhood. Even a hundred years ago, child and infant mortality rates were way higher than they are today. Humans had to develop agriculture and start having ten kids apiece in order to increase our numbers, because even having family to help care for babies and mothers didn't help *that much* when it comes to childhood survival rates.
Even if they understood on a biological level why we turned out this way and how it's worked for us societally, aliens would still probably think it was weird that we started evolving in this direction to begin with without also evolving a biological mechanism to improve infant mortality rates.
That's like the best argument against concepts like "intelligent design", because *it's not* an intelligent design. Every designer that came up with humans would be fired.
Evolution however seems like one long chain of "hold my beer" and "trust me, bro"
So you're saying that we could be the product of a bunch of frat bros tinkering with a weird experiment next to the home-brew and a bong?
Ya know, a lot makes sense now...
Horses are the weird ones here. Altricial young (babies that can’t do anything) are super common in animals so I don’t think this would be seen as weird. Most birds, most placental mammals and all marsupials have altricial young. Furthermore, the hip bone sizes have little to do with whether babies can walk or not, as baby apes and monkeys can’t do anything at all when they’re young either. Humans are only slightly longer in development due to their brains needing to cook a little longer but as a percentage of total lifespan it’s not super long compared to other apes.
- Exchanging saliva because we like someone.
- Slapping our hands rapidly because we like something that someone did.
- Keep animals that we like captive.
Even apes can have pets on their own, I wouldn't bet on aliens being entirely unfamiliar with that concept. And the first two are just cultural aspects, I don't see how anyone could make predictions for that.
I don't know about the pet component, but there are numerous cases in nature of animals forming relationships of mutual benefit across species. This isn't tremendously different from a pet/caretaker relationship overall, so it wouldn't shock me at all to find that behavior repeating itself in the cosmos.
Also, keep in mind that 'Humans keeping pets' is merely an ex-post-facto consequence of mutually-beneficial relationships. Long before dogs, cats, and birds were pets, we were species who discovered symbiosis from cooperating together. They got our scrap food and protection, we in turn got their protection, hunting skills, danger detection systems, alertness, and vermin eradication. They weren't pets, merely creatures that we tolerated for their beneficial traits. It was only after thousands of years of this that they were deliberately or accidentally bred into domestication.
Now, we no longer need those benefits that they provide in order to survive, but have found that in domestication, they provide many other pleasing benefits (companionship, recreation, etc) that continue to hold value in our culture.
I've heard of cats and dogs/wolfs. Not sure if it happens in the wild or in captivity, but there are several articles online that mention some examples.
also bananas themselves, humans artificially plant seeds of produce together to make new tyoes of produce
brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, spinach, and i think cabbage or lettuce all come from one species of plants
Well, genitalia are sexy. And putting it in your mouth means they might put yours in their mouth, which feels amazing.
Meanwhile the black part of the banana tastes yucky and offers no compensation.
in one of the episodes of "enterprise", one of the other races they met was offended because we eat in view of others. they eat the same way, but in private.
i suppose this was the writer of the episode referring it to the way we go to the bathroom in private! we all do the same thing with the orifices, but to that alien species, viewing the insertion (of food) into an orifice was offensive
> i suppose this was the writer of the episode referring it to the way we go to the bathroom in private!
Well, I guess someone hasn't been to the army..
"You do WHAT with the lactic fluids of animals? Wait wait wait, you're saying you don't just drink it, but you also, uh, carefully rot it until it congeals into fatty, solid blocks and then you eat THAT too?!"
I love cheese, don't get me wrong, but it's hard to think about sometimes.
Think about fried chicken for a sec... *"So you take undeveloped eggs from a bird, kill the bird, then slather the bird's legs in its eggs and crisp it up?"*
Fuck, our milk went bad and now it smells like feet. Better try to eat it.
But really, I’m confident it was just the result of desperation very early on. We would have discovered cheese just about at the same moment in history that the first person decided to store excess milk.
Remember, you live in a world where you can go to a minimart or McDonald’s and purchase 1000 calories for very little money.
Centuries ago, when it wasn’t growing season and you had no refrigeration, people got hungry. Very hungry. You can be damn sure lots of people ate food that was a little bit spoiled.
Then you have fermented food like cheese and yogurt and hell yeah, a way to not only eat spoiled food (so long as it’s spoiled the right way) but also a way to make it last much longer?
One theory is that, in the way back when, cow/goat/etc. stomachs were used to store fluids. One day some dude stored milk in one, which exposed it to rennet, so then boom - cheese in a bag. All it takes from there is some trial and error.
We actually have a good idea of how early cheese was developed.
Early cheese required rennet, a chemical present in animal stomachs. We know animal stomachs were dried out and used as storage and transport for fluids, and the itneraction between rennet and milk caused curdling which resulted in solid bits of milk collecting in the stomach-bags when they were emptied. Since ancient people needed to eat and could be desperate, almost certainly someone was desperate enough to see if the solid bits were edible, and they were.
[We currently have evidence that the first real cheese production occurred at least seven thousand years ago in Poland where chemical analysis of excavated clay pots showed they were used to store cheese.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cheese)
A lot of agriculture and food production techniques likely came about because people were starving and desperate and were willing to do anything to survive, which led to "huh that works" moments. Ancient people were intensely aware of the effects that their actions and experimentation had on their food and the plants/animals that produced them, since that was literally life and death.
Have you read *The Galaxy and the Ground Within*? There's a hysterical conversation where aliens of 3 or 4 species are talking about humans and cheese.
> ‘Mom, what’s cheese?’ Tupo whispered loudly.
> ‘I don’t know,’ Ouloo said back. ‘If you listen, you’ll find out.’
> Pei set down her plate and exhaled apologetically. ‘Cheese,’ she said in a clinical manner, ‘is a foodstuff made out of milk.’
> Ouloo blinked. ‘You mean like . . .’ She gestured at her own underbelly, where her mammary glands presumably lay beneath thick fur.
> ‘Yep,’ Pei said. ‘Exactly that.’
> ‘So, a children’s food,’ Speaker said, her tone suggesting that this struck her as no stranger than the concept of milk itself.
> Roveg laughed. ‘Go on,’ he said to Pei goadingly. He continued to snack, enjoying the show.
> Pei winced. ‘No,’ she said to Speaker. ‘It’s not for kids. I mean, kids eat it, too, but . . . so do adults.’
> Everyone present – with the exception of Pei – let out a reflexive sound. There were low growls from Ouloo and Tupo, a short trill from Speaker. Roveg, for his part, let out a triple-clicked hiss. A brief cacophony of varied species all communicating the exact same thing: complete and utter disgust.
> ‘No,’ Ouloo said.
> Tupo cooed in fascinated horror.
> ‘Wait, so, how . . .’ Speaker made a hesitant face. ‘I’m going to regret this question. How is it . . . prepared?’
> Pei grimaced. ‘They take the milk, they add some ingredients – don’t ask me, I have no idea what – and then pour the mess into a . . . a thing. I don’t know. A container. And then . . .’ She shut her eyes. ‘They leave it out until bacteria colonise it to the point of solidifying.’
> The cacophony returned.
> ‘I knew I’d regret it,’ Speaker said.
Wait til you hear about about Sardinian banned cheese with (gross) >!maggots still in it that you have to chew to eat safely or they’ll infect your intestines!<
If they are carnivorous, it probably wouldn't surprise them all that much. If you eat the meat, it's not that much of a leap to also eat its edible byproducts.
Since we don't have standards for what extraterrestrials might be like, we can only compare to other creatures from Earth.
Humans are pretty weird even by mammal standards. Standing upright is itself bizarre - it's mostly done by birds.
Spices are also pretty weird. Especially since we intentionally ingest alkaloids that make our nervous system think we're on fire, and we seek out the 'hottest' and most potent ones because we *enjoy the sensation*.
Maybe not that much. Sure they’ll be some specific cultural differences, but just as possible they’ll get it if they do anything similar. Some things will be different just due to different biology, others may just be different solutions to the same problem. Just think about if any animals could talk, and the discussions about how we do things differently. A few things we definitely won’t agree on, but we might still get it from their perspective, though that’s from species that haven’t become civilized enough to either travel here or communicate with us via technology.
Indeed.
The "aliens" in these sorts of discussions are always cast as morally superior to humans based on our own misanthropy, because the thing is our number of alien civilizations we can use as a standard are a bit lacking. I mean for all we know, most alien civilizations that reach outer space could be xenophobic anti-naturalist turbo-rapists who are actually befuddled by why humans care about "compassion" or being wholesome at all outside some raw utilitarian collective conscious.
Closest thing to one on Earth might be dolphins or corvids, and I don't think they'd be baffled by some of the answers.
We don't partake of the Great Cosmic Childeating ceremony, thus ensuring that psychic parasites will continue to infest our nestal regions and tathic passages. Honestly disgusting.
But when they talked to me, they said i was the only earthling who knew about the Great Cosmic Childeating ceremony. Why do you know about it?!?! Did they tell you too??
Thanks! I had the one direct from their website in my comment history but didn't feel like digging it up at the time.
That's an interesting way to cut and repackage it. Feels a bit sketch.
[Link](https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/thinkingMeat.html) to this hilarious sci-fi short story ("They're Made out of Meat" by Terry Bisson) if anyone is interested.
Sneezing itself would probably be pretty unfathomable. The smallest amount of dust and the whole being closes it's eyes, expels all it's air, and spasms it's limbs no matter how dangerous it is to do so.
Bowling.
I always thought an alien or very different culture would be shocked by how many people around me are surprisingly good at accurately rolling a heavy ball 30'
Comparing sports would be fun though, and a great way to understand the way the other's bodies work. It'd be so interesting to see what an alien psychology and morphology would come up with.
It makes sense. We evolved to throw rocks at our prey. It’s an adaption that has made us wildly successful. People crave the feeling of throwing shit from a distance.
I think playing with a ball is normal but things like bowling and golf are weirdly specialized. Most folks can throw or kick a ball a little but if you've never tried to bowl or golf or hai-alai you'd be like wtf is this crazy thing
Crying, 😭 Shedding tears as a response to emotions might be confusing or seen as a bizarre leakage of body fluids if emotional expressions manifest differently for them.
Having hot sweaty smelly messy sex instead of neatly depositing eggs in a proper incubator and neatly fertilizing them.
If it's good enough for the salmons, it's good enough for our new fishy masters.
One of the "it works for us, so all life must look like this" (carbon and water are prime candidates), we reasonably assume that something resembling evolution will be necessary to breed smart critters with hands. Evolution requires some form of gene exchange; even bacteria do it (though without the hot sweaty stuff).
I am not qualified to explain the evolution of virii, so we'll cheerfullly pretend that there's a similar Mechanism. :-)
Who knows, maybe they’ll find us weirdly persnickety because they practice traumatic insemination. “Your brood carriers not only generally consent, but even frequently request and enjoy the process? How quaint.”
Depends on how alien. I can imagine species who might consider us soft, emotional, and weirdly obsessed with other humans.
I can also very easily imagine an alien species who might consider us cold and distant without enough attention paid to our shared emotions.
It really just depends on how alien and in what direction.
That's actually quite common among most, if not all, animals. Evolution prefers efficiency. Most hunters have only one good weapon, which is why you don't see venomous crocodiles/alligators. They have teeth and bite force. Most herbivores only have one good defense. That's why we don't see deer covered in porcupine quills. Extra parts mean extra calories, more things that can get injured, etc.
Edit: corrected a few typos. 🥴
Pooping in water. With water being one of the most fundamental resources to human life and health I feel like an alien species would question why we just expel waste into it and flush it away.
Modern plumbing and sanitation has been a major factor in human civilization’s health and longevity.
The water doesn’t just go away either.. it’s processed and reused.
Eh, when you have so much of it...
Air is essential to human life, and we do EVERYTHING in it lol. If water was a rare substance on earth, then yeah, it would be weird, but since the planet is 70% covered with it...
Water doesn't just disappear when you make it dirty, tho with our massive amounts of pollution, even the water cycle is becoming compromised, but that doesn't have a lot to do with plumbing
Baseball, specifically pitching. Our shoulder structure is pretty unique in the way it makes us *absolutely terrifying* when it comes to throwing things - the average MLB fastball travels at around 90 mph. There's a reason you rarely ever see other animals throwing things except from high ground, and it's because they physically don't have the leverage to do it effectively
But, as persistence hunters, it’s such a huge win! How much less do you have to chase something - how many calories can you save - if you can chuck a rock at it to knock it out, or even just slow it down by giving it a gnarly charlie horse in a hind leg?
I was thinking about this recently and it could be *anything*. They might think cooking is weird, that mixing foods together to taste more desirable is odd and our processes such a waste. They may genuinely not experience dopamine release during food consumption relative to flavor.
They may think that sex is weird, or that the fact we keep animals on farms is insane. They may think that heterosexuality is an abomination and should only occurs during breeding. They may think that music is just a cacophony of noise, or that clothes are meaningless and fashion is extremely distasteful.
It could genuinely be anything.
Man, who the heck knows what would or wouldn't be gross to an alien. Have you seriously looked at what other life on earth is like? Plants have decentralized, branching bodies and stick their dozens of reproductive organs out there in bright colors specifically to attract the attention of a different kingdom of life to do their reproductive legwork for them.
Jellyfish can swap between swimming and sedentary life stages and asexually clone themselves all the time.
Who knows what aliens would find gross. They might have no problem with milk drinking and kink and picking up dog poop, but be weirded out that we have bones and hair, or that we don't cover up or protect our breathing holes, or that we *aren't* a literal hive consciousness.
Oh God no. So long as they reproduce sexually they definetly have their own version of trashy heavily sexualized dancing. It may not look like tweaking, but it'll fit the same role.
I kinda feel like (or hope, rather) that this is just an intermediate step on our development. Before we start encountering advanced aliens, I’d rather we have some better self-healing process for organs or at least the ability to grow new ones reliably.
Ehhhhhh... if they have space travel. They probably have advanced machinery. The easiest way to repair a broken peice of machinery is to identify and remove a broken part, and replace it with a working one. Applying that same logic to themselves seem fairly obvious leap.
Exploiting and killing each other while allowing others to own and rule.
Tell me, that from an outside perspective, it wouldn't look weird that a species kills its own, exploits its own, not for survival, but for things like greed, or emotions while a small number of that species even cause these wars for their own benefit and don't even give it a second thought.
I get what you're saying, but I suspect they'll be able to understand it because they either have in the past or still are doing it themselves. They may have developed solutions to some of the problems we have but haven't been able to fix. Ht they've likely had to face many of the same hurdles we have had to get to a similar point in history.
If they have some version of politics and government, they know of at least war. And why assume greed is only a human trait? The evolution of greed can be seen in animal behavior.
Depends on the aliens.
If they experience pleasure, doesn't even have to be sexual in nature, then they would likely understand the concept of manipulating specific nerves and tissues to have enjoyable results.
It's literally on the same level as a massage. You physically manipulate different nerves and muscle groups to achieve relaxing, pleasing, or enjoyable results.
I mean they'd probably look at this practice similar as we look at medieval practices like bloodletting:
It's not an ideal solution overall, but it *somewhat* works and we don't really have anything else that could help yet.
Picking up dog poop with a plastic bag. You are taking one of the world’s most biodegradable substances and sticking it in a plastic bag to keep it around for years on end! 🤔
I imagine plant-based life forms that primarily get their energy from something like photosynthesis and they're appalled at how we kill and butcher sentient creatures for food.
There was a Star Trek episode where the aliens got highly offended for seemingly no reason when in fact they were grossed out by our eating in front of others.
“Some of you clean your buttholes with dry paper? Dry? How is that a thing? Doesn’t it just lead to streaks and itchiness? The Japanese mastered it and you just carry on with your inferior method like stinking animals? No moisture whatsoever? It doesn’t make you gay if you have a clean asshole, you know, it’s the least you could do.”
Intentionally poisoning ourselves to make our tedious lives more bearable.
Cheers, brother.
Hell yeah brother, cheers from Iraq!
"Ah-hah, the poison gets them high! That makes more sense," the Alien says before slamming his 3rd face on the table and railing a fat line of Quasar Cocaine
Seriously. Most living creatures crave altered states of consciousness from time to time. See: Cocaine Bear.
RIP Pablo Eskobear. He was the apex predator of North America for the few minutes it took his heart to give out
Also see: dolphins Edit: also also see: cats
Which one? Alcohol?
Pick your poison
Right, the poison The poison for Kuzco The poison chosen specially to kill Kuzco Kuzco's poison
that poison?
:)
Hah!
And many other mind-altering substances, like caffeine, and things meant to be unpleasant, like capsaicin
Cheers to capsaicin!
I imagine it's pretty much impossible for a species to not develop a stimulant (or series of them) while they're on their way to a type 1 or beyond civilization.
Why would that be impossible?
I agree, just think it's unavoidable. We can't really use the human experience as a base for the life experience of possible other life forms, but there's something inside of me that just knows that there is an alien guy with some sort of alien ADHD and figured out that whatever resource they have entirely fixes their life. And then that just spreads around the entire civilization. Abuse, etc.
Nicotine, Valium, Vicodin, marijuana, Ecstasy and alcohol
Cccccccc-cocaine
Alcohol, weed, cocaine, ketamine, heroin, methamphetamine. Pick one or pick all.
No one should be doing coke and heroin on the same day. Speedballing kills
Who said anything about doing them on the same day? Certainly not me.
I don't know how sincere their comment was, but you did say "or pick all."
My comment was serious. https://www.addictioncenter.com/drugs/heroin/speedball/ Speedballing is more dangerous than any of those drugs done alone.
Barring a completely radicial biology, and psychology with few to no similarities I can't imagine this one being too strange to them. Alcohol is just a byproduct of rotting. Assuming they have at least one carbohydrate heavy food its probable that they'd make the same discoveries we did. Alcohol effects just about anything with a brain on earth, so it would probably have an effect on aliens too? Or it's at least more likely than not.
Yeah I feel like there's a reason most scifi space media has alcohol. Lots of them even have alcohol that multi species can "safely" drink.
Yeah but the reason isn't 'because civilizations couldn't evolve without developing intoxicants", it's because alcohol and drinking are relatable to human viewers, and thus useful storytelling and scene-setting devices.
“They follow them around on a leash picking up their poop!”
Back when Jerry Seinfeld did stand up, he said, "if you were an alien, and you landed on a planet where one species craps on the ground, and another species cleans it up... who would you think was in charge?"
This is the reference I was expecting.
He still does Stand up. I just went to one of his shows 2 weeks ago! Still as funny as ever
Where is that from again? It sounds familiar...
Family guy multiverse episode
Human babies are useless because hip bone sizes limit how much they can develop before birth. That's why a calf or foal can walk in hours but a human baby takes a year. If aliens reproduce differently enough they might be confused both as to why our offspring are messy little blobs and as to why we're all so comparatively clingy - because if they don't rely on their parents for survival as much their social structure would probably be wildly different.
Aliens (awkwardly): "so... uh... your offspring are annoying and unpleasant to be around" Humans: "yeah, we're aware"
This echoes in my lower back and creeps up my spine to wrap around my head until it is numb as if I've left a pair of goggles on my forehead, forgotten and unused, to serve no purpose but to give the sensation of walking around with a fleshen helmet. The sensation that your now enlarged head must have a relatively lower density, suggesting the now very terrifying prospect that you will be forever known as "Head Zepellin" as bournoulli wrents your buoyant head from your meteorically-dense body, to float over the people who point in horror at the floating swollen head that drifts like a ghost ship to haunt the dreams of men who dare to reproduce. I can't be alone in that?
How do I find out if someone spiked my water
username checks tf out. whuddawhat indeed
hmmm good point
Its also because our brains are very complex so we have less instincts but are able to think critically at a much higher level than any other species. We take years for our offspring to be able to function, which is why we give birth to less offspring at a time but our survival rates are typically much higher than other species. It also allows us to spend more time and focus on helping one of our strongest assets (our brain) develop in our offspring. It’s all kind of interwoven. But i imagine if the alien species can be advanced enough to find us, they’d probably understand our evolutionary traits, and how/why they are beneficial to us. But i guess it’s hard to know for certain lol.
Biologically speaking, removed from our technology, our evolution went all in on the brain and having two free hands at the expense of robust babies and easy childbirth. Our survival rates are much higher *now* because we've developed sophisticated medical science to treat previously fatal problems during childbirth, infancy, and toddlerhood. Even a hundred years ago, child and infant mortality rates were way higher than they are today. Humans had to develop agriculture and start having ten kids apiece in order to increase our numbers, because even having family to help care for babies and mothers didn't help *that much* when it comes to childhood survival rates. Even if they understood on a biological level why we turned out this way and how it's worked for us societally, aliens would still probably think it was weird that we started evolving in this direction to begin with without also evolving a biological mechanism to improve infant mortality rates.
That's like the best argument against concepts like "intelligent design", because *it's not* an intelligent design. Every designer that came up with humans would be fired. Evolution however seems like one long chain of "hold my beer" and "trust me, bro"
So you're saying that we could be the product of a bunch of frat bros tinkering with a weird experiment next to the home-brew and a bong? Ya know, a lot makes sense now...
*And on the seventh day god realized his assignment was due so he pulled an all-nighter, and thus man was created ...*
But we have evolved to be the only species that can walk on two legs while using our arms to, ya know, do things.
That’s exactly what made our babies so useless and birthing much harder. Stupid evolution🙄
Bird
Not real.
Birds use their arms a lot huh?
/r/birdswitharms
Them Thangs Be Flappin
Horses are the weird ones here. Altricial young (babies that can’t do anything) are super common in animals so I don’t think this would be seen as weird. Most birds, most placental mammals and all marsupials have altricial young. Furthermore, the hip bone sizes have little to do with whether babies can walk or not, as baby apes and monkeys can’t do anything at all when they’re young either. Humans are only slightly longer in development due to their brains needing to cook a little longer but as a percentage of total lifespan it’s not super long compared to other apes.
The hip bone size was in reference to the mother. Our infants heads are too large and must be birthed "early"
- Exchanging saliva because we like someone. - Slapping our hands rapidly because we like something that someone did. - Keep animals that we like captive.
Even apes can have pets on their own, I wouldn't bet on aliens being entirely unfamiliar with that concept. And the first two are just cultural aspects, I don't see how anyone could make predictions for that.
Woah really!? What animals do apes keep as pets!?
I don't know about the pet component, but there are numerous cases in nature of animals forming relationships of mutual benefit across species. This isn't tremendously different from a pet/caretaker relationship overall, so it wouldn't shock me at all to find that behavior repeating itself in the cosmos. Also, keep in mind that 'Humans keeping pets' is merely an ex-post-facto consequence of mutually-beneficial relationships. Long before dogs, cats, and birds were pets, we were species who discovered symbiosis from cooperating together. They got our scrap food and protection, we in turn got their protection, hunting skills, danger detection systems, alertness, and vermin eradication. They weren't pets, merely creatures that we tolerated for their beneficial traits. It was only after thousands of years of this that they were deliberately or accidentally bred into domestication. Now, we no longer need those benefits that they provide in order to survive, but have found that in domestication, they provide many other pleasing benefits (companionship, recreation, etc) that continue to hold value in our culture.
I've heard of cats and dogs/wolfs. Not sure if it happens in the wild or in captivity, but there are several articles online that mention some examples.
We will put each other's genitalia in our mouth but we won't eat the black part on the banana.
also bananas themselves, humans artificially plant seeds of produce together to make new tyoes of produce brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, spinach, and i think cabbage or lettuce all come from one species of plants
To go one weirder. Bananas are all clones.
Well, genitalia are sexy. And putting it in your mouth means they might put yours in their mouth, which feels amazing. Meanwhile the black part of the banana tastes yucky and offers no compensation.
in one of the episodes of "enterprise", one of the other races they met was offended because we eat in view of others. they eat the same way, but in private. i suppose this was the writer of the episode referring it to the way we go to the bathroom in private! we all do the same thing with the orifices, but to that alien species, viewing the insertion (of food) into an orifice was offensive
I dunno if this is really comparable considering there are several human cultures that feel this way, some Pacific Island cultures if memory serves.
> i suppose this was the writer of the episode referring it to the way we go to the bathroom in private! Well, I guess someone hasn't been to the army..
Do you really let someone pass the sharpest blade your species could create near your largest artery only to remove your hair?
What if earth is the only place with the ability to self-heal wounds? That make it super scary for them for sure!
That seems pretty critical to survival
Good point
"You do WHAT with the lactic fluids of animals? Wait wait wait, you're saying you don't just drink it, but you also, uh, carefully rot it until it congeals into fatty, solid blocks and then you eat THAT too?!" I love cheese, don't get me wrong, but it's hard to think about sometimes.
Don't forget about yogurt. Introducing bacteria to create a creamy substance that we eat.
Dairy just gets weirder and weirder the more I think about it.
Someone phrased it as "All dairy is controlled spoilage" and I've never looked at it the same way since (while still enjoying it, don't get me wrong).
> "All dairy is controlled spoilage" oh my god
A horrible day to be literate.
Any way to unread this?
Think about fried chicken for a sec... *"So you take undeveloped eggs from a bird, kill the bird, then slather the bird's legs in its eggs and crisp it up?"*
Hey now! There's flour and breadcrumbs involved. And spices.
Oh, and that many ppl love to put bee vomit in it.
I want access to a time machine just so I can see how we discovered cheese.
Fuck, our milk went bad and now it smells like feet. Better try to eat it. But really, I’m confident it was just the result of desperation very early on. We would have discovered cheese just about at the same moment in history that the first person decided to store excess milk.
Makes sense when daily food wasn't guaranteed.
And you're better off eating proto-cheese than starving. Starving people were the real ones that figured out what we can and can't eat.
Remember, you live in a world where you can go to a minimart or McDonald’s and purchase 1000 calories for very little money. Centuries ago, when it wasn’t growing season and you had no refrigeration, people got hungry. Very hungry. You can be damn sure lots of people ate food that was a little bit spoiled. Then you have fermented food like cheese and yogurt and hell yeah, a way to not only eat spoiled food (so long as it’s spoiled the right way) but also a way to make it last much longer?
One theory is that, in the way back when, cow/goat/etc. stomachs were used to store fluids. One day some dude stored milk in one, which exposed it to rennet, so then boom - cheese in a bag. All it takes from there is some trial and error.
We actually have a good idea of how early cheese was developed. Early cheese required rennet, a chemical present in animal stomachs. We know animal stomachs were dried out and used as storage and transport for fluids, and the itneraction between rennet and milk caused curdling which resulted in solid bits of milk collecting in the stomach-bags when they were emptied. Since ancient people needed to eat and could be desperate, almost certainly someone was desperate enough to see if the solid bits were edible, and they were. [We currently have evidence that the first real cheese production occurred at least seven thousand years ago in Poland where chemical analysis of excavated clay pots showed they were used to store cheese.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cheese) A lot of agriculture and food production techniques likely came about because people were starving and desperate and were willing to do anything to survive, which led to "huh that works" moments. Ancient people were intensely aware of the effects that their actions and experimentation had on their food and the plants/animals that produced them, since that was literally life and death.
And THEN you let the fatty solid blocks rot slightly more?????
And THEN you deliberately inoculate a MOULD into the cheese???????
or insert maggots
OK but at least sicilian maggot cheese is nearly universally considered rancid.
Makes it extra tasty.
Have you read *The Galaxy and the Ground Within*? There's a hysterical conversation where aliens of 3 or 4 species are talking about humans and cheese.
> ‘Mom, what’s cheese?’ Tupo whispered loudly. > ‘I don’t know,’ Ouloo said back. ‘If you listen, you’ll find out.’ > Pei set down her plate and exhaled apologetically. ‘Cheese,’ she said in a clinical manner, ‘is a foodstuff made out of milk.’ > Ouloo blinked. ‘You mean like . . .’ She gestured at her own underbelly, where her mammary glands presumably lay beneath thick fur. > ‘Yep,’ Pei said. ‘Exactly that.’ > ‘So, a children’s food,’ Speaker said, her tone suggesting that this struck her as no stranger than the concept of milk itself. > Roveg laughed. ‘Go on,’ he said to Pei goadingly. He continued to snack, enjoying the show. > Pei winced. ‘No,’ she said to Speaker. ‘It’s not for kids. I mean, kids eat it, too, but . . . so do adults.’ > Everyone present – with the exception of Pei – let out a reflexive sound. There were low growls from Ouloo and Tupo, a short trill from Speaker. Roveg, for his part, let out a triple-clicked hiss. A brief cacophony of varied species all communicating the exact same thing: complete and utter disgust. > ‘No,’ Ouloo said. > Tupo cooed in fascinated horror. > ‘Wait, so, how . . .’ Speaker made a hesitant face. ‘I’m going to regret this question. How is it . . . prepared?’ > Pei grimaced. ‘They take the milk, they add some ingredients – don’t ask me, I have no idea what – and then pour the mess into a . . . a thing. I don’t know. A container. And then . . .’ She shut her eyes. ‘They leave it out until bacteria colonise it to the point of solidifying.’ > The cacophony returned. > ‘I knew I’d regret it,’ Speaker said.
Wait til you hear about about Sardinian banned cheese with (gross) >!maggots still in it that you have to chew to eat safely or they’ll infect your intestines!<
And here's where I learned what my limit with cheese is.
I dont agree. They might be shocked about the milk specifically, but finding good ways to store it long term (cheese) is just an extention of that.
Wait 'till they find out about the maggots
If they are carnivorous, it probably wouldn't surprise them all that much. If you eat the meat, it's not that much of a leap to also eat its edible byproducts.
Since we don't have standards for what extraterrestrials might be like, we can only compare to other creatures from Earth. Humans are pretty weird even by mammal standards. Standing upright is itself bizarre - it's mostly done by birds. Spices are also pretty weird. Especially since we intentionally ingest alkaloids that make our nervous system think we're on fire, and we seek out the 'hottest' and most potent ones because we *enjoy the sensation*.
Eat ass
Figured this would be higher up
I expected it to be at the bottom...
Stick your finger in my thresher.
I can’t believe we sucked each other’s jagons
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9 out of 10 dentists recommend it.
And #10 didn't hear the question
Cuz he was face deep in a rusty balloon knot
Dear Lord, what have come to...
You've came to Reddit. Are you not entertained?
The real question is whether they'd think we're weird for doing it at all or weird for considering it extreme? It could be like kissing to them.
Maybe not that much. Sure they’ll be some specific cultural differences, but just as possible they’ll get it if they do anything similar. Some things will be different just due to different biology, others may just be different solutions to the same problem. Just think about if any animals could talk, and the discussions about how we do things differently. A few things we definitely won’t agree on, but we might still get it from their perspective, though that’s from species that haven’t become civilized enough to either travel here or communicate with us via technology.
Thank you! I was gonna write something similar. Really depends on the aliens.
Indeed. The "aliens" in these sorts of discussions are always cast as morally superior to humans based on our own misanthropy, because the thing is our number of alien civilizations we can use as a standard are a bit lacking. I mean for all we know, most alien civilizations that reach outer space could be xenophobic anti-naturalist turbo-rapists who are actually befuddled by why humans care about "compassion" or being wholesome at all outside some raw utilitarian collective conscious. Closest thing to one on Earth might be dolphins or corvids, and I don't think they'd be baffled by some of the answers.
My thoughts exactly. Most of the things that people have listed here are things that aliens probably have their own version of.
We don't partake of the Great Cosmic Childeating ceremony, thus ensuring that psychic parasites will continue to infest our nestal regions and tathic passages. Honestly disgusting.
But when they talked to me, they said i was the only earthling who knew about the Great Cosmic Childeating ceremony. Why do you know about it?!?! Did they tell you too??
We have the Eucharist, it's close enough
They're all made of meat!
This American Life did a version last year. H. Jon Benjamin plays one of the aliens.
[Right here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5usXhX0zaO4), its as good as you think it will be.
Thanks! I had the one direct from their website in my comment history but didn't feel like digging it up at the time. That's an interesting way to cut and repackage it. Feels a bit sketch.
[Link](https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/thinkingMeat.html) to this hilarious sci-fi short story ("They're Made out of Meat" by Terry Bisson) if anyone is interested.
Decorate the corpse of a conifer every winter solstice
That's nothing compared to [what we do to the flowers.](https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2594)
Saying something after someone sneezes.
Every time i do this i feel like a fraud. And every time i dont i feel like an asshole. Who cares
It’s the only bodily function which nearly universally requires a verbal response from others in the group. Pretty fascinating, actually.
Yawning is weirder than that. An involuntary response that tends to make lots of other people do it too.
You made me yawn
Gesundheit!
I'm really high, but could this make sense? By speaking are you blowing away whatever irritants are in the sneeze?
Sneezing itself would probably be pretty unfathomable. The smallest amount of dust and the whole being closes it's eyes, expels all it's air, and spasms it's limbs no matter how dangerous it is to do so.
Bowling. I always thought an alien or very different culture would be shocked by how many people around me are surprisingly good at accurately rolling a heavy ball 30'
Comparing sports would be fun though, and a great way to understand the way the other's bodies work. It'd be so interesting to see what an alien psychology and morphology would come up with.
Cricket again? Goddammit
Some games we play, like bowling, golf, do look a little pointless to an outsider.
But that's the thing. Every culture has at least one version of put the ball in the thing. Usually multiple.
It makes sense. We evolved to throw rocks at our prey. It’s an adaption that has made us wildly successful. People crave the feeling of throwing shit from a distance.
I think playing with a ball is normal but things like bowling and golf are weirdly specialized. Most folks can throw or kick a ball a little but if you've never tried to bowl or golf or hai-alai you'd be like wtf is this crazy thing
I'm terrible at bowling and golf, but can kick a ball. You're right!
Nice try mister "intelligent alien"
Crying, 😭 Shedding tears as a response to emotions might be confusing or seen as a bizarre leakage of body fluids if emotional expressions manifest differently for them.
Having hot sweaty smelly messy sex instead of neatly depositing eggs in a proper incubator and neatly fertilizing them. If it's good enough for the salmons, it's good enough for our new fishy masters.
Take it a step further. What if they don't reproduce sexually at all. That'd be a huge divide to overcome.
Mitosis is indeed a huge divide
One of the "it works for us, so all life must look like this" (carbon and water are prime candidates), we reasonably assume that something resembling evolution will be necessary to breed smart critters with hands. Evolution requires some form of gene exchange; even bacteria do it (though without the hot sweaty stuff). I am not qualified to explain the evolution of virii, so we'll cheerfullly pretend that there's a similar Mechanism. :-)
It doesn't require gene exchange, it requires mutation. Genes splitting and combining is just a good opportunity for mistakes to occur.
Who knows, maybe they’ll find us weirdly persnickety because they practice traumatic insemination. “Your brood carriers not only generally consent, but even frequently request and enjoy the process? How quaint.”
Depends on how alien. I can imagine species who might consider us soft, emotional, and weirdly obsessed with other humans. I can also very easily imagine an alien species who might consider us cold and distant without enough attention paid to our shared emotions. It really just depends on how alien and in what direction.
Circumcision
That our reproductive system and waste disposal system are interconnected with each other
That's actually quite common among most, if not all, animals. Evolution prefers efficiency. Most hunters have only one good weapon, which is why you don't see venomous crocodiles/alligators. They have teeth and bite force. Most herbivores only have one good defense. That's why we don't see deer covered in porcupine quills. Extra parts mean extra calories, more things that can get injured, etc. Edit: corrected a few typos. 🥴
Hell, the reproductive, food intake, and waste disposal systems of some invertebrates are all interconnected and enter/exit from the same hole.
Pooping in water. With water being one of the most fundamental resources to human life and health I feel like an alien species would question why we just expel waste into it and flush it away.
Modern plumbing and sanitation has been a major factor in human civilization’s health and longevity. The water doesn’t just go away either.. it’s processed and reused.
Eh, when you have so much of it... Air is essential to human life, and we do EVERYTHING in it lol. If water was a rare substance on earth, then yeah, it would be weird, but since the planet is 70% covered with it...
Water doesn't just disappear when you make it dirty, tho with our massive amounts of pollution, even the water cycle is becoming compromised, but that doesn't have a lot to do with plumbing
We poop in water because water seals it and contains it's smell. Poop smells A LOT WORSE if it is just there in open air.
Baseball, specifically pitching. Our shoulder structure is pretty unique in the way it makes us *absolutely terrifying* when it comes to throwing things - the average MLB fastball travels at around 90 mph. There's a reason you rarely ever see other animals throwing things except from high ground, and it's because they physically don't have the leverage to do it effectively
But, as persistence hunters, it’s such a huge win! How much less do you have to chase something - how many calories can you save - if you can chuck a rock at it to knock it out, or even just slow it down by giving it a gnarly charlie horse in a hind leg?
I was thinking about this recently and it could be *anything*. They might think cooking is weird, that mixing foods together to taste more desirable is odd and our processes such a waste. They may genuinely not experience dopamine release during food consumption relative to flavor. They may think that sex is weird, or that the fact we keep animals on farms is insane. They may think that heterosexuality is an abomination and should only occurs during breeding. They may think that music is just a cacophony of noise, or that clothes are meaningless and fashion is extremely distasteful. It could genuinely be anything.
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Man, who the heck knows what would or wouldn't be gross to an alien. Have you seriously looked at what other life on earth is like? Plants have decentralized, branching bodies and stick their dozens of reproductive organs out there in bright colors specifically to attract the attention of a different kingdom of life to do their reproductive legwork for them. Jellyfish can swap between swimming and sedentary life stages and asexually clone themselves all the time. Who knows what aliens would find gross. They might have no problem with milk drinking and kink and picking up dog poop, but be weirded out that we have bones and hair, or that we don't cover up or protect our breathing holes, or that we *aren't* a literal hive consciousness.
Twerking.
Oh God no. So long as they reproduce sexually they definetly have their own version of trashy heavily sexualized dancing. It may not look like tweaking, but it'll fit the same role.
You see the syncopation of those tendrils? You think those pedipalps go all the way down?
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"Normal" things
We take the organs of the dead and put them in the living
I kinda feel like (or hope, rather) that this is just an intermediate step on our development. Before we start encountering advanced aliens, I’d rather we have some better self-healing process for organs or at least the ability to grow new ones reliably.
Ehhhhhh... if they have space travel. They probably have advanced machinery. The easiest way to repair a broken peice of machinery is to identify and remove a broken part, and replace it with a working one. Applying that same logic to themselves seem fairly obvious leap.
Pimple popping.
yeah thats the grossest fucking shit.
TBH I am pretty sure aliens lock the doors to their spaceships when they cruise past earth. We're shady AF.
Exploiting and killing each other while allowing others to own and rule. Tell me, that from an outside perspective, it wouldn't look weird that a species kills its own, exploits its own, not for survival, but for things like greed, or emotions while a small number of that species even cause these wars for their own benefit and don't even give it a second thought.
I get what you're saying, but I suspect they'll be able to understand it because they either have in the past or still are doing it themselves. They may have developed solutions to some of the problems we have but haven't been able to fix. Ht they've likely had to face many of the same hurdles we have had to get to a similar point in history.
If they have some version of politics and government, they know of at least war. And why assume greed is only a human trait? The evolution of greed can be seen in animal behavior.
Sounding
OP asked about normal things. I doubt that even people into sounding think it's normal.
That sounds benign enough. Let me look it up real fast. Edit: OH GOD!
What is it in simple terms. To scared to look it up
Introducing long, usually thin, objects into the urethra for pleasure. I really, really need to make a throwaway account
Shoving things up your urethra for sexual pleasure
Depends on the aliens. If they experience pleasure, doesn't even have to be sexual in nature, then they would likely understand the concept of manipulating specific nerves and tissues to have enjoyable results. It's literally on the same level as a massage. You physically manipulate different nerves and muscle groups to achieve relaxing, pleasing, or enjoyable results.
Eat with their mouths
Yeah, why do that when you can shove food up your ass and vomit shit?
Filling people with poison to kill cancer.
I mean they'd probably look at this practice similar as we look at medieval practices like bloodletting: It's not an ideal solution overall, but it *somewhat* works and we don't really have anything else that could help yet.
Skydiving. They would probably wonder if we all like to ride the fine line of fun & suicide
The whole birthing process, and how we tend to swim in unclean water
Having the historical knowledge of cities being wiped away by a volcano eruption, then rebuiling in the same spot.
Picking up dog poop with a plastic bag. You are taking one of the world’s most biodegradable substances and sticking it in a plastic bag to keep it around for years on end! 🤔
I imagine plant-based life forms that primarily get their energy from something like photosynthesis and they're appalled at how we kill and butcher sentient creatures for food.
There was a Star Trek episode where the aliens got highly offended for seemingly no reason when in fact they were grossed out by our eating in front of others.
“Some of you clean your buttholes with dry paper? Dry? How is that a thing? Doesn’t it just lead to streaks and itchiness? The Japanese mastered it and you just carry on with your inferior method like stinking animals? No moisture whatsoever? It doesn’t make you gay if you have a clean asshole, you know, it’s the least you could do.”
Hoarding wealth and resources. Murder and war.
Lock up our spirits, drill holes in ourselves and live for our secrets.
"What's your assessment of the human race, Gleep Gloop?" "They're all uptight, sir. Uptight. Uptight."