Saw someone say that most intelligent alien life forms are likely prey animals, so I wanted to add something after falling down the humans are space orcs rabbit hole for the millionth time.
Humans are predators right? But in our day to day lives we don’t really act like predators very often. Very few of us actually have an experience with hunting, with one exception; bugs. Especially flies or mosquitoes.
Imagine you board a ship and all of your crew mates are life forms from other planets, all of them just so happen to be prey. You’re an engineer and general aren’t seen as very threatening. You’re the first human the crews ever had on board so they have no reason to think you would be. That is until somehow a fly gets onto your ship.
It’s meal time and this fly just will not stop bothering you. No one else seems to be doing anything so you decide to be the one to kill it. You go dead still and track it with your eyes, watching to see where it lands. Once it does you move slowly until your hand is directly above it, holding your breath before slamming your hand down. Finally the pesky bug is gone and you can go back to eating. To you it’s no big deal. I mean it’s just killing one bug right? But when you look up after rubbing the dead fly off the table with your shirt, everyone’s staring at you with a look of shock, horror, or fear.
After a minute or two everyone seems to unfreeze and go back to what they were doing, still nervously glancing over their shoulders at you every minute or so.
After that your crew mates seem to always be slightly on edge around you. Listening to you more often than before, and letting you lead in situations where violence might need to be resorted too. While it’s not technically your job on explorations, you in no way mind being able to protect your crew.
Plz tell me how to tag this is my first time posting something I actually spent time thinking about.
