Inspired by various tumblr posts.
Humans quickly get a reputation among the interplanetry alliance and the reputation is this: when going somewhere dangerous, take a human.
Humans are tough. Humans can last days without food. Humans heal so fast they pierce holes in themselves or inject ink for fun. Humans will walk for days on broken bones in order to make it to safety. Humans will literally cut off bits of themselves if trapped by a disaster.
You would be amazed what humans will do to survive. Or to ensure the survival of others they feel responsible for.
That’s the other thing. Humans pack-bond, and they spill their pack-bonding instincts everywhere. Sure it’s weird when they talk sympathetically to broken spaceships or try to pet every lifeform that scans as non-toxic. It’s even a little weird that just existing in the same place as them for long enough seems to make them care about you. But if you’re hurt, if you’re trapped, if you need someone to fetch help?
You really want a human.
you know fantasy dragon soulbonding fic i want more of that where the humans are the dragons, like, we’re huge, we’re old, we’re scrappy as hell, and if you are small and cute enough we would be delighted to carry you around on our back
“One time, I was trapped in an asteroid belt when the main fission compensator blew. Normally it’s no sweat, right? But for no good reason, the backup has failed as well. So the light on the dashboard is saying ‘Abandon Ship’ but we’re in the middle of an asteroid belt, y'know? We’d never make it out alive. So anyway me and the rest of the guys are just like, well, I guess this is our lot in life, we’re done for. At least we have enough power to send transmissions to our broods and go into hibernation and maybe some other group of dumb fucks can find us out here.
But then, right, the human goes crazy! She jumps up on the table and starts shouting about how we’ll never surrender, right? It made no gods damned sense! But somehow, she won us all round and we’re all pumped up.
Then she started marching around the ship, gathering up all the spare cabling, tape, those little paperclip things they always demand to have on board?
So anyway, she goes into a trance, starts building something, and we’re just like, well, even the human has gone nuts, must be because they can’t go into hibernation naturally.
So anyway, after a few minutes she jumps up and starts screaming, screaming at the top of her lungs, takes this bizarre sculpture thing to the engine room and wires it in place of the fission compensator’s tertiary manifold.
And somehow, somehow, it works.
So we limp to the nearest base, and they test this heap of junk, and it should have never worked, there’s no possible way this tangle of cables and bent wire could possibly interface with the engine’s systems, let alone work with them.
But there’s another human at the station and they just look at it and nods, like this is the most natural thing ever.
Apparently, the pile of junk was inhabited by one of their ancient gods, name of Ma Kyver?
And THAT my broodlings is why we take a human with us.”Report from Cultural Researcher Qulix’tch to Home Swarm University:
Re: Human Survival Rates As it Relates To Diet:
Dearest colleges, I am ever grateful for your kind communications and support. I have compiled all collected data and attached it to the overview for your perusal. Let me say first and foremost that the rumors that I was sent to investigate, ie that humans were the first observed truly omnivorous species, have turned out to be a gross understatement.
It is not simply that humans can eat both vegetative flesh and animal flesh, not even that they can eat anything in between but seriously, they eat everything regardless of it’s inherent nutrient value and risk factor. Indeed this increases their odds of survival but from an intercultural interaction standpoint it is a little weird, and creepy, let’s be honest, that it seems like their first thought when encountering something new that isn’t a rock is “Can I eat this?”
Mostly they prefer plant matter as (thank whatever deity you will) they seem to be squeamish about eating sentient beings and the odds favor that plants won’t be. It has also come to my attention that our particular eight-legged and multi-eyed form, added to our chitinous outer membrane is particularly unappetizing to them across their multi-culture. This is reassuring but hardly a firm deterrent as they have an instinct set that drives them to make digestible anything that isn’t inherently.
The nutrients are trapped in an unusable form? No worries, the human just finds something combustible, builds a fire, and heats it till the undigestable fibers or whatever release the nutrients.
Is the edible bit protected by spikes, spines, and thorns they might just grab a rock and beat it until the edible bit is avaliable.
They carry around vats of acid just in case they need to add it to the mix to denature large proteins.
I kid you not they have hundreds, hundreds, of different species of microbes on their skin, in their mouth, in their digestive tract that help them break down what their own systems won’t.
If the nutrients are contaminated with unfriendly microorganisms they count on this friendly micro-fauna, as they call it, to fight them off. Failing that they have developed an entire subculture devoted to brewing poison of just the correct potency that it kills the intruding microorganisms while leaving them alive.
And if there is no plant matter they can eat? They just find a (hopefully) non-sentient species that can break it down for them and wring the proteins and nutrients out of them in ways that don’t bear mentioning. (see appendix Eggs, Milk, and Meat)
It has been reported, if you can believe it (and with humans why not), that on their own planet. In an ocean that is full of fish that they can eat with no processing at all, there is one species that is particularly poisonous to humans. Instead of avoiding it and eating the swarming fish species that are so benign that they can be eaten without even the basic heating, humans pay to have a specialist in food preparation known as a chef go through a complicated ritual to remove the deadly toxin. They will do this even when the non-toxic fish flesh is readily and far more cheaply avaliable.
Then, even when they have enough nutrients they will masticate whatever inorganic substance is at hand in some odd, seemingly unconscious ritual. The humans I encountered seemed to have a preference for writing utensils for this purpose
I hope the information I have gathered will prove useful.
(via windbladess)
