How The Nocturnal Bottleneck And Nipples Make Us Human

How The Nocturnal Bottleneck and Nipples Make Us Human

Almost every post here considers what humans do have, really. It’s a little tiring; realistically every world has its harsh environments and vicious species and a sophont to match. We probably wouldn’t be unique for our adaptability or our persistence or even adrenaline

But our evolution is fucked up as hell, to put it lightly.

Mammals went through what’s been dubbed the nocturnal bottleneck essentially since the start of the mesozoic right up until the Cretaceous ended the archosaur’s exclusive hold over the daylight. We lost a lot of things from every mammal spending most of its time in either a cramped, suffocating burrow or scrounging around in the faint hours of nighttime. Our blood cells lost their nuclei to hold more oxygen while we spent time deep underground, we lost protections against ultraviolet rays in our skin and eyes, we can’t even repair our own DNA using the light of the sun. Most aliens probably wouldn’t have such traits unless their evolution followed a very similar path to ours. They’d be able to see ultraviolet and wouldn’t have to worry about sunburn and all the wonderful privileges essentially all fish, birds, amphibians, and reptiles enjoy as we speak. 

There’s also what we gained from spending so much time in the dark.

Brown fat is only found in mammals, it’s a special type of fat which bear cells with several oil droplets and are utterly jammed with mitochondria. This lets it make heat, a lot of it, fast. We don’t even need to shiver to induce this heat generation from brown adipose tissue - factor in our downright hyperactive mitochondria, and we can warm up quickly. Sure, it doesn’t have too much use in adult humans, but it keeps our infants warm and still provides a little boost the whole run we have in this universe.

Unless aliens also went through a time where their small ancestors had to face cold nights, they’d have to produce heat the old fashioned way when chilled. Aliens might have to shiver the whole time they’re in a cold room while the human watches in confusion, quite literally unshaken, and wonders if the room is a lot colder than the thermostat set to 60 says. The aliens stare at their companion in confusion, it’s just a normal temperature to shiver at after all, how is the human sitting so still?

Our small ancestors spending all their time out foraging at night is also why we have such a good sense of touch, smell, and hearing. They were more important senses than vision (we’re lucky to have even redeveloped basic color vision, frankly) at the time and place and simply ended up continuing to serve us well. Birds and reptiles rarely have acute senses of smell and the latter especially are lucky to have acute hearing, and birds rarely have impeccable hearing themselves either. Our skin is free of scales and honed to sensitivity, and our external ears and complicated ear bones provide an immense range of hearing (from 20 all the way to 17,000 hertz!).

Aliens might not be able to pin down the chirp of a cricket or the light click of a lock being picked. The human might be the only one on board a ship that can pick out the finer sounds of the engine’s constant thrum and know the critical difference between when everything is fine and when something is wrong. The human could probably pick out the sounds of an approaching enemy’s careless footsteps - they’re only as light enough for *them* to stop hearing them, after all - and be the one to see the horrified expression (well, more on that later) on their face when we get the drop on them in spite of their perceived stealth. 

But perhaps the most versatile, convoluted, amazing, and utterly unique trait we have is right on your face this instant. Lips.

Lips in most animals are a simple seal to hold in the mouth’s moisture and protect the teeth, even if they’re supple they’re NEVER muscular except in mammals, and we have only one thing to thank for it; milk and nipples. Lips evolved exclusively to allow babies to suckle, it required a vacuum to be created in the mouth, and with no other animal having anything like a nipple it never happened in other animals. Many animals make milk, to be frank, but no other animal has nipples.

Your cheeks and lips are a marvel among tetrapods, no other animal can suck like mammals can. Aliens wouldn’t have straws or even be able to sip from the edge of a glass, they’d have to have a proboscis or simply tilt the whole thing back. Aliens likely won’t have woodwind instruments or balloons you can blow into. We take so much about our lips for granted. Hell, our muscular faces are vital for expressions, we’re probably absolute facial contortionists among a cast of creatures with mandibles and beaks and expressionless scaly maws. Aliens might find us ridiculously easy to read, if anything, compared to their own kind (all the better to deceive them) - or perhaps they’d find us hard to decipher anyways, with our lack of color-changing skin or erectable crests of bright feathers. Baring teeth might not be seen as a sign of aggression in most of the universe, smiling would be all too distinctly human. 

Perhaps with how infectious we are sometimes, that’s what we’d contribute to the universe; others might have to make do with opening their mouths just enough to show their teeth or splaying their innumerable mouthparts with just the right curve, but perhaps we’d teach the galaxy to smile, one ally at a time. 

Wouldn’t that be amazing?

I think a lot of the "humans are space orcs" stuff really underestimates or misunderstands evolution.

Like yes, there are going to be differences between different organisms and stuff and some will have abilities or tolerances that others don't but... generally speaking nothing about us would be a shock to a spacefaring species.

Any planet that develops life, especially if it has reason to evolve into something smart enough to make a spaceship, is going to have competition over resources and stuff. It's going to have some environmental shit going on probably too.

So it would be more like "oh neat, your species is way better at X than us. We can Y better than you though" rather than "WHAT? Your people can WALK REALLY FAR??!?!!!?!?" which is what a lot of these posts kinda sound like.

Not that there wouldn't be surprises - of course there would be - but they would understand evolution and have lots of different critters on their own world to look to for examples. "Oh, you use use specialized cells to detect wavelengths of energy between certain ranges and you call that 'the visible spectrum'? Neat, yeah, we have tools that can do that and there's a type of flying creature on our world that does that." and we'd be all "Oh cool you can detect electrical fields and use that to communicate and detect each other? Yeah, we have some animals that do that to some extent though it seems like you're way better at it. Very cool, we can probably work together to convert light to electrical signals and vice versa so we can communicate."

The social/cultural stuff, general ways they think, etc. would be the part where everything would be totally alien.

He was good. He was really good.

Oxygen ain't nothing to mess with

Humans live in a highly oxygenated environment. Oxygen is a very potent oxidizer (oxygen, oxidizer. It basically names a whole class of chemicals) we breathe a chemical that can destroy metals. We breathe rocket fuel.

There are a few different ways you could take this.

Human ships are highly prized among the galactic community because they’re basically indestructible. Since human ships have to withstand their caustic breathing mix, the rest of the galaxy sees them as highly armored. Flush human breathing gasses out and replace them, now you have a ship that can handle anything the galaxy can dish out!

Because only humans breathe oxy, they walk around alien stations and ships in complicated pressure suits. They become a faceless bogeyman.

Hydrogen peroxide is another oxidizer (also another rocket fuel) and we use it as a disinfectant.

While oxygen is not explosive itself, it can make other things way more reactive. Aliens could be flabbergasted that we live where things catch fire like, all the time (comparatively)

the way he immediately stopped smiling AUGHHHH STOP STOPP mr perry let your son be happy please