Things about humans that would surprise aliens

In My Humble Opinion
1

Suppose that we finally develop interstellar travel, put a small group of humans on a ship, and send them off toward Alpha Centauri, where they encounter intelligent aliens and communicate with them.

This hypothetical taking place in reality, these would be truly alien creatures, products of an entirely different evolutionary tree. These would not be Star Trek-style humans with nose prostheses, or even Gigeresque reptiles which still have all the face components in the right place.
What about humans would surprise them? What would cause them to say “wow, our most imaginative speculative writers would never have come up with that idea. Or if they had, no one would have believed it”.

The first few that I’ve come up with:

-Sleeping Approximately one third of their (humans) entire lives is spent totally unconscious! How could this have evolved? What purpose could it serve? They’re totally helpless against any predator who quietly walks up to them and just eats them, many hours out of every day.

-Genders They’re all one species… but, oddly, there are two different kinds of them. They have notably different body shapes. When one is born, it might randomly be one kind, and might randomly be the other kind! (Yes, I’m aware that sexual vs. asexual reproduction increases genetic diversity… but wouldn’t that work fine without the sexes? As I understand it, the key point is that it takes two individuals to reproduce, who do so by sharing genetic material. There’s no requirement that there be genders. If everyone was a hermaphrodite, and was incapable of self-fertilization, we’d get the same genetic benefits, right?) (My point being that life could do fine without ever having the concept of multiple genders… and to someone growing up thusly, multiple genders would seem incredibly weird)

-Nearly symmetrical bodies It’s like there’s a mirror right down their middle. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have a wider range of different sensory and manipulatory apparatus available? Instead, there’s pointless redundancy

-Inability to regrow stuff If someting is chopped off, it’s just GONE. The weirdest part of this is… there actually are species from their planet which can regrow things. Which obviously is a HUGE evolutionary advantage. But they just don’t have it. What’s next? A species that can’t heal wounds at all?

2

Keeping Pets – the dea of keeping small carnivoires in our homes (and our beds, even) might strike them as completely weird. (Cats and dogs). Keeping snakes, spiders, and the like as pets would be incomprehensible.

Drinking Milk – we drink the infany food of other species, and even use it to make cheese, ice cream, etc. They might also be freaked out by our eating eggs (more infant food, in effect) and honey (bee vomit!)

Human Sexual Practices – heck, some of them seem weird to other people

Tattoos, scarification, Peircing

Clothing – animals don’t wear them, why should aliens?

3

Damn it, I opened this thread just to say “sleeping”. :slight_smile:

Children - Twenty years of raising? They’re born unable to pick their heads up and the parents have to sacrifice half of their adult lives in raising another human who’ll just have to do the same thing? How remarkably inefficient.

And then, it depends on the kind of aliens there are. Ideas that might be foreign to them could include lying, independence, personal relationships, obligation, discreteness, as in there’s an us and a not-us, a distinct boundary of our bodies’ concrete nature, I dunno, all kindsa things. We really have a hard time imagining things that are truly alien and not just a permutation of something we’ve already seen. See: Star Trek aliens who look surprisingly like people with makeup on.

4

Maybe just our senses will be surprising. Perhaps these aliens have adapted to a star with a peak somewhere else in the spectrum, so while they can see “infrared” light just fine, they may be in awe of the colors we can see.

Or maybe they don’t even use light as their primary viewing sense. Maybe they use scents or sonar. Trying to communicate with them might prove to be more than just a language barrier!

5

Our incredible devotion to fantasies and immaginary beings, and remarkable ability to ignore plain facts in favor of said fantasies.

Nothing would perplex them more than our denial of reality.

6

Perhaps the lack of a language common to the entire species.

7

A few other suggestions:

Racism: “Let me get this straight. You make uninformed opinions about other people based on the amount of pigmentation in their epidermis?”

War: “You decide political and economic issues by organized criminal activity?”

Fiction: “You tell lies as a form of entertainment?”

Gambling: “You earn profits and incur losses based on the outcome of random events?”

Sunburn: “You haven’t evolved protection against exposure to your own sun?”

Eye placement: “Explain this ‘behind you’ concept again. You can only see objects in one third of the space around you?”

Tableware: “YOU PUT SPOONS NEXT TO KNIVES? BLASPHEMERS! WE WILL BURN YOUR PLANET!”

8

This thread would not be complete without a link to “They’re Made of Meat.”

9

I think it would be kinda funny if we sent the aliens a ship full of untreated schizophrenics.

Not good, not moral, just funny…in a sick, “Gary Larson” sort of way, that is.

10

Waste elimination: Why don’t their bodies just digest everything they consume? They also seem so highly repulsed by what comes out of their bodies, too; and it’s an endless source of amusement for its children.

Lack of flight: They can’t fly, so they’re vulnerable to all kinds of hazards and they must take all kind of precautons against falling. They have to use special flying machines, called airplanes, which are sort of like spacecraft, except that they’re just for navigating above the surface of their own planet.

Music: Much of their culture is based on how they can organize and arrange various sounds in a specified sequence of tones, many of which are produced by puposely-built devices called instruments. So much of what they call “music” sounds so strange.

Mathematics: They have ten sub-appendages on their two frontal limbs; five on each side, so it stands to reason that this is how their mathematics system is based. Except for their latest technological advances, which use base 16 mathematics, most of their everyday math is rooted in base 10.

Water: Their very existence depends on this highy abundant substance, a transparent fluid called water. It’s so abundant, in fact, that it covers over half of its home planet. Earthly beings of all types require this substance for survival, yet its most advanced life form, the humans, are unable to live in it, thereby restricting their habitat to the relatively few places on their planet where they are not immersed in this liquid. Even many locations where there is “land” they cannot live, at least not without adequate protection, because it is too hot or too cold.

11

Shopping Malls. Some how this is entertaining.

12

How easily and regularly we kill each other.

13

Their use of projectile firearms! We have been using 1920s Style Death Rays for ages!

14

Why assume that aliens will be wise and peaceful? Maybe they’ll be shocked at how rarely we kill each other, and the fact that we’ve managed to have periods of time when large portions of our planet were not at war?

Maybe they never developed weapons comarable to nukes and basically never stopped having world wars.

15

Most of them don’t enjoy anal probes? (Sorry I couldn’t help it :rolleyes: )

16

[QUOTE=MaxTheVool]
Why assume that aliens will be wise and peaceful? QUOTE]

Because the question is entirely hypothetical and I can assume anything I want.

17

Sleep and clothing are very good.

But I’m amazed no-one said “humour” yet. Why do we have it? When does it happen? What would it be like without it? We have no idea.

18

:stuck_out_tongue: :smiley: :stuck_out_tongue: :smiley:

19

That we’d accept a second cup of coffee. We never have a second cup of coffee at home.

20

Sex.

Zex, und Zex und Zex.

As both Dr Freud and Dr. Ruth would say. :slight_smile: