I LOVE this concept! Humanity being tricked and fooled by a species that is bat-sh\*t afraid of them is an amazing idea that you executed very well! May we have some more?
You made me realize who the author was (somehow I didn't connect the dots looking at their comments). It's going to be wild ride in good sense looking at past stories
Oh man, I was really hoping this wasn't a one-shot. I ran to the comments after reading it a second time just to take it in, hoping it was the start of something new!
Because you're an amazing writer and I've binged, and re-read countless times your other works, and the idea of you starting a new series makes me actually giddy.
There's already serious tension just by default this idea, too, because... well, humans' reactions to being tricked doesn't exactly have a good track record of going peacefully.
Yeah, but in this kind of context they'd be more likely to be completely mortified that the people they thought were being friendly were actually utterly terrified for their lives.
Nothing like some good old space racism. It's a classic here and it is always interesting to see how different people expand the predator/prey dynamic to sentient races.
Oh! I hadn't realized they were still dealing with the other predator species too! Well, I can see a fairly easy trope for the author, then...
After discovering that the aliens are all adorable:
Sarah: "Wait?! They **eat** cute **children?!** We have to genocide them."
Noah: "I'm sold. Governor? You just hired a whole species of murder monkeys. Boo yah!"
I think "primate" as a concept is more likely to translate appropriately than "person of no fixed address" in terms of getting the *feeling* across, when paired with the concept "murder[ous]". I mean, not being predators, they probably won't really have a good semiotic equivalent for "feral, unconstrained, and hackle-raising member of my own species", I wouldn't think.
Of course, they probably won't have any equivalents for "friendly predator" *either...* :-/
I mean, reading closely the herbivores were all for genociding any sentient predator species found in the future.
Here, humans are *officially* the second. But how many have *not* been recorded because someone exterminated them before their existence became widely known?
Looking at *Deathworlders* and the whole "no sentient species can evolve on a Deathworld" shtick.
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>Nothing like some good old space racism. It's a classic here and it is always interesting to see how different people expand the predator/prey dynamic to sentient races.
It's funny because even prey/herbivores are opportunistic predators/carnivores. Also, why not add scavengers/omnivores into the formula.
There is a certain logic to racism that doesn't really make sense when it comes to humans but does somewhat more when discussing radically different life-forms.
Actually when you think about us as primitive tribesmen competing for resources, throwing rocks at "those other walking monkeys that look different" which likely devolved to "lets raid that other village and steal their food and women" and thus xenophobia was probably a valid survival instinct at one time. We've never been particularly nice monkeys.
Obviously not talking about extremes, I'm talking averages. Average person vs average monkey, there's several entire species of monkey that have us beat.
Genetic in-group preferences are evolutionarily favoured.
Watch:
Group A, with 100 people has no in group preference. They encounter group B, with 100 people, and in group preference.
There is a lean year, with only enough food for 180 people. Group A would share, and 10 people from each would die. Group B gets violent and nasty, and thus 20 people from group A die, and 0 from group B.
Are people aware of this? Probably not. But When it's my sibling and I vs my cousin, then the three of us vs that other family, then all twenty of us vs that village over the hill, it can spiral. "This country vs that one" "this skin colour vs that one".
It's a genetic leftover. There's lots of stuff that made sense 50 thousand years ago still turning up today.
My point exactly and well explained. It's ingrained into our social loyalty and patern recognition software. Our social and tecnological evolution far outpaces our biological. I joke that the modern era is basically the dumping of a bunch of guns into the monkey cage.
As promised, more new content! It remains to be seen how the humans will react, as they don’t yet realize that their predation is a problem. The Venlil aren’t convinced we come in peace, and have arranged an in-person meeting under false pretenses. To top it all off, the Federation has been summoned via distress signal…what could go wrong?
I actually wrote this back in January, when I was bedridden with COVID, but it’s been under heavy rewrites for awhile. It’s not exactly a secret that Prey is the story that got me into HFY, so this is a venture I’m pretty excited about. The prevalent “deathworlders” trope is cool, but I miss the predators one dearly.
Thank you for reading, as always!
Jonah... Maybe their ship is named after a whale!
Although I've just noticed that apparently **I** was the one that added the "h" to the end of Sara's name, whoops! 🤪
Given that names are the exception to "English Rules" either one is acceptable, and yes I realize English doesnt really follow its onw rules anyway, thats why the quotes :D
I was expecting a "maybe the predators will both want to claim us as a prize and fight each other to the death first, leaving only a weakened victor that we can defend against" train of thought. "If the humans want us too, maybe we can manipulate them into fighting for us and then fight back after they're exhausted."
This works too.
This is an excellent first chapter, I hope we can read more of this soon.
About the snarl-smile. Maybe we should keep using masks around the world for a long time, so I wonder if the mask becoming ingrained in our culture would make us less self conscious of our faces (because I have certain inclination to snarl and now is out of control)
Thanks! The mask wearing might come in handy with the ETs. I smile out of habit myself, whenever I talk to people. Would not be easy to break years of learned behaviors
Ever since I lost most of my teeth, I have become self conscious of my smile, so I usually go with the close mouth smile, also, I would be seriously disappointed if at some time in the story line the two predators meet and dont get along at all, I know its predictable, but all too often life is predictable anyway, just a thought, its your story, write it how you want it, js Cheers
So were the nuclear explosions they detected from Earth just nuclear testing from the cold war? A nuclear war? Or did they just misread nuclear power plants as explosions?
A nuclear power plant would be exceedingly difficult to mistake for an explosion (or even detect for that matter), but it could have been either nuclear testing or an actual nuclear war at some point.
At this point, I don't know which is more likely. If they did spot nuclear tests, you'd think they'd have noticed those were spaced out over several decades and concentrated in areas with low population, meaning they should have realized it's unlikely the entire species was snuffed out by it.
On the other hand, it said *hundreds* of nuclear explosions. Both the number of nuclear tests and the number of nukes that would be involved in even a limited nuclear exchange are in the thousands.
A non-violent prey species doesn’t have a great understanding of nukes, unfortunately. They never dabbled in “total war” in their evolution…their extinction level weapons were developed in response to the Arxur
I always imagined aliens have already visited earth but since they’re so concentrated on space exploration, the moment they found us splitting atoms and killing each other, they decided it’s probably for the best that they don’t contact us.
>But while we spent decades drafting termination plans, hundreds of nuclear explosions were detected across the planet. Our strategists concluded, with a grim sense of relief, that they had wiped themselves out.
Considering the above paragraph the atmospheric nuclear testing seems a reasonable bet. [Here is a table](https://www.atomicarchive.com/almanac/test-sites/testing-chronology.html) and [here is a time-lapse](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLCF7vPanrY) of what they reasonably could have been seeing.
From the date at the top it would almost have to be cold war testing. Even with the absolute best case scenario it would take more than 125 years to go from bombed into the stone age to visiting other star systems.
Of course an elevated prey species would worry about any upcoming predators! How hard would it be to trust something whose nature you can only assume means exploiting or eating you?
While there is no doubt that modern humans are the apex predators of Earth, this story (which is fantastic, thanks so much OP for continuing to post such wonderful content!) is making me think about when exactly in our evolutionary history did we shift from being fruit and insect eating omnivorous prey-like creatures to being full on hunter-gatherer predators. Does the fact that we are omnivores who consume as much flora as we do fauna temper us in the eyes of a hypothetical Galactic Federation of purely prey sentients?
The fact that we eat other living animals is the issue for them…they think of it the way we think of cannibalism. I honestly don’t know how we transitioned, but we are pretty unusual predators! I mean, look at a lion’s teeth and look at ours
>The fact that we eat other living animals is the issue for them…they think of it the way we think of cannibalism.
I mean, that is fair. What an unusual galaxy that only two carnivorous species developed sentience...
>I honestly don’t know how we transitioned, but we are pretty unusual predators! I mean, look at a lion’s teeth and look at ours
For sure! Most predatory species on Earth seem to be exclusive carnivores... That being said, many plant eating species practice opportunistic meat eating (thinking of deer eating birds on occasion when they get the chance). We are certainly unusual predators! Hopefully the Galactic community gives us the benefit of the doubt!
The thing is, we're not really predators. Not by nature, at least.
But the big trick a large brain lets you pull is that behavior is far less determined by your nature and more by learned ideas. So as a species of omnivorous scavengers and opportunists, for reasons we don't really understand, became smarter and smarter, they gradually figured out tricks to help make their own carcasses instead or relying on luck to find some predator's kill. Tricks which were then passed on and slowly improved on.
Then they figured out that they could use the same tricks on those predators, so they couldn't come for us, our mates, our lairs, or our cubs. Some of the animals we evolved with had the time to learn to stay away from the murder apes. The rest, and those that didn't get the time like the megafauna of most of the rest of the world, aren't around anymore.
But despite long before homo sapiens walked the earth having reached the point where the only real threat to a group of humans is another group of humans, there's still deep inside of us the prey animal expecting danger around every corner. We're the undisputed superpredators of the planet, but unlike other apex predators, deep down we don't quite believe it.
> as a species of omnivorous scavengers and opportunists, for reasons we don't really understand, became smarter and smarter, they gradually figured out tricks to help make their own carcasses instead or relying on luck to find some predator's kill. Tricks which were then passed on and slowly improved on.
The food supply our ancestors relied on declined (maybe even vanished completely) as our environment changed from a rainforest to a savannah, so realistically *we had no other choice* but to either become smart and make tools to emulate and be able to eat what other animals were eating, or become like the grass-eating gelada baboons. Both were tried, only one won. Guess which one.
Since our ancestors became smarter and lost any instinctual notion as to what is food or not, that translated into learning how to process pretty much anything into food, as inedible or hard-to-get in its natural form.
The problem is, we're so deep down this rabbit hole of replacing nature with nurture, *we have no natural diet*. We cannot survive on the diet of our closest cousins because we need more energy-dense food, but that energy-dense food (like grains or meat) is not very edible as it is found in nature, so we're stuck improvising our diet, probably until the end of our existence.
/u/SpacePaladin15 ([wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/wiki/authors/SpacePaladin15)) has posted 52 other stories, including:
* [Beyond the Void 9](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/tzc1i6/beyond_the_void_9/)
* [A Silly Thought... Pt. 4](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/tuphvt/a_silly_thought_pt_4/)
* [A Silly Thought... Pt. 3](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/tpouqp/a_silly_thought_pt_3/)
* [A Silly Thought... Pt. 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/tmlx0h/a_silly_thought_pt_2/)
* [A Silly Thought…](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/tjejdb/a_silly_thought/)
* [The Final Farewell](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/t8rc3x/the_final_farewell/)
* [Beyond the Void 8](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/sypsmt/beyond_the_void_8/)
* [Beyond the Void 7](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/qtu654/beyond_the_void_7/)
* [Beyond the Void 6](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/qcvh44/beyond_the_void_6/)
* [Beyond the Void 5](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/q5b32c/beyond_the_void_5/)
* [Beyond the Void 4](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/px8no0/beyond_the_void_4/)
* [Beyond the Void 3](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/pnhv9e/beyond_the_void_3/)
* [Beyond the Void 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/pl16ni/beyond_the_void_2/)
* [Beyond the Void](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/pjoxw1/beyond_the_void/)
* [Why Humans Avoid War XXVII](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/pj2m28/why_humans_avoid_war_xxvii/)
* [Why Humans Avoid War XXVI](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/peip0f/why_humans_avoid_war_xxvi/)
* [Why Humans Avoid War XXV](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/pc3b2w/why_humans_avoid_war_xxv/)
* [Why Humans Avoid War XXIV](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/p5j544/why_humans_avoid_war_xxiv/)
* [Why Humans Avoid War XXIII](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/ozct1g/why_humans_avoid_war_xxiii/)
* [Why Humans Avoid War XXII](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/ooukjb/why_humans_avoid_war_xxii/)
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After seeing this series pop up on r/all several times, I decided to give it a try. It's a little intimidating that there are 90+ parts now, but I'll do my best to read them, lol.
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You are one of the most "brutal" authors I have ever had the honor to read a story from. The story is addicting to the core and the twist and turns had me stuck to it for almost 12 hours straight. Keep up the good work
This one should be pretty quick updates (at least up to the double digits), since I am just rewriting stuff I already have! Hoping to get at least two parts up a week
Cool take! Have to wonder what's happened to the Arxur to make them like this: after all, if you follow the 'by their nature' thing, then predators are usually naturally cowardly hunters, only taking on fights they're confident they can win without meaningful injury and generally retreating if there's more resistance than expected, since an injury to a predator impacts their ability to predate and can easily lead to a downward spiral to starvation.
"Oh boy, this looks like an interesting little story. I should follow this story, I imagine it would be a fun read."
over one-hundred chapters later
"Jesus fucking Christ."
The thought process of the Federation thinking they can “change” the Arxur reads a lot like something out of a cautionary tale about domestic abuse…and then it falls apart anyways.
I like it already.
Oh hey, a cute little fic about fearful sheep-aliens. I sure hope it doesn't progress into a major series with gripping tragedy and Earth getting bombed into smithereens.
*OH WAIT!*
>!Seriously though, this is a great series. One of my favorites, and one of the first ones I made a fanfic for.!<
I saw a concept similar to this a couple years ago on Tumblr about a human woman meeting fearful, plant bodied aliens. I was so disappointed that they stopped updating the story, because I thought the interactions would be endlessly fascinating. It’s 3:00 am and I’ve finally discovered 70+ chapters of the unique concept I’ve always wanted to see pan out.
Very well written!
https://reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/w54hmh/the_predator_caf%C3%A9_1/
hey! here’s a story i found that also sucked me in, idk if you would be interested in it
So I've been listening to Adastra's narration of this story an OMG THEY'VE ONLY GOTTEN THRU BARELY ANY OF IT!!! There's so much yet to be put into audio form.
I’ll preface this by saying I’m enjoying it so far, but I’ve always found concepts like this funny, given that herbivores with the capacity to be dangerous at all tend to be significantly more dangerous than carnivores.
A carnivore has to weigh the expenditure of energy and risk of injury before attacking because it can only feed itself by killing, whereas an herbivore can burn calories or even take light injuries relatively at will since they can just chill and eat some leaves after scaring off or killing anything that looks like it might be a threat, or even competition for space or resources.
A lion will attack you if it’s hungry. A hippo will kill you just for being there.
Honestly I’ve stumbled on it on YouTube and it’s very engaging. Been awhile since a sci-fi story has been able to drag me into its universe, suspend my disbelief and make me feel like I could actually find myself in this world.
Noticing that it’s still ongoing I keep getting this notion from the “dating system” that an implied coexistence occurs by the end.
This would make an excellent movie, maybe tv show. An interesting take that humanity meets species who are all prey derived and their natural fear of predators edges into the level of xenophobia when met with one.
Well, the humans are going to be lizard killers(and lizard tastes just like chicken) or we’re going to be lizard fornicators. Maybe both, you know…the three F’s.
I look forward to seeing how this plays out. The lining up and shooting children into mass graves video will NOT go over well with humanity.
Thank you wordsmith.
I will be messaging you in 113 years on [**2136-07-12 00:00:00 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2136-07-12%2000:00:00%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/u19xpa/the_nature_of_predators/jq7fr9o/?context=3)
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Coming to this late but reading it reminding me Larry Niven's series on the Man-Kzinti Wars.
Some do-gooder, peaceful, race, long ago, sees a race that aggressively attacks each other and thinks "we could use these entities as soldiers". So they first introduce high technology weapons to one clan on the planet which proceeds to eliminate all there rivals.
That clan is then brought to space by the peaceful race and, in short order, find that *they* are now the prey by the predators, the Kzinti.
After centuries humans and Kzinti cross paths. Humanity has, for centuries, believed that no warlike race would reach space. Suddenly humans are in a fight for their survival as a species.
Found someone who has put this to an audio format with voices for each character on YouTube. And gotta say it’s been awhile since a sci-fi story has had me so enthralled.
If only this could be turned into a miniseries or even a Netflix series, and so long as it stayed to the core of what makes it good…it would be the only thing I’d bother watching. I like stories where I can close my eyes and feel like I’m there.
I LOVE this concept! Humanity being tricked and fooled by a species that is bat-sh\*t afraid of them is an amazing idea that you executed very well! May we have some more?
Thank you! Absolutely, I have the first six parts written. I’ll try to space it out a little so I don’t immediately run out lol
I have also JUST realized that you are the guy who wrote a silly thought... , which is an another one of my favorites. Is that one finished?
Yep, that’s finished! I think it works best as a mini-series
You’ve written 2 of my favorite series so far, and you’re about to add a third one to my list. Thank you venerable wordsmith
It’s my pleasure!
Hey, quick question, is it Arks Zur, or Ar-ser. Settling a debate with a buddy of mine
Ark-sur is my pronunciation 🙏
I'm glad you made this comment. I started following OP for the Why Humans Avoid War story but just binged A Silly Thought. Another good one.
You made me realize who the author was (somehow I didn't connect the dots looking at their comments). It's going to be wild ride in good sense looking at past stories
WHAT YOU ARE HOLDING BACK THE MOAR
Six? I'll take your entire stock!
... 6 parts? Wow, alright then. I guess I'll keep an eye out.
Oh man, I was really hoping this wasn't a one-shot. I ran to the comments after reading it a second time just to take it in, hoping it was the start of something new! Because you're an amazing writer and I've binged, and re-read countless times your other works, and the idea of you starting a new series makes me actually giddy.
There's already serious tension just by default this idea, too, because... well, humans' reactions to being tricked doesn't exactly have a good track record of going peacefully.
Yeah, but in this kind of context they'd be more likely to be completely mortified that the people they thought were being friendly were actually utterly terrified for their lives.
Turns out you were bang on the money with that guess
For some reason I expected no spoilers in the comment section :(
Sorry for that one mate, but I can assure to you, the story is great
No worries, wasn't too bad. I just sorted by top posts of the month and this story was basically all the top 5 so I assume it'll be pretty good lol.
Yep. It is like we surrender:
Nothing like some good old space racism. It's a classic here and it is always interesting to see how different people expand the predator/prey dynamic to sentient races.
i mean, it is understandable given that their first and only experience with predatory species was really, really bad
#*Deleted in protest of reddit's API changes*#
Oh! I hadn't realized they were still dealing with the other predator species too! Well, I can see a fairly easy trope for the author, then... After discovering that the aliens are all adorable: Sarah: "Wait?! They **eat** cute **children?!** We have to genocide them." Noah: "I'm sold. Governor? You just hired a whole species of murder monkeys. Boo yah!"
Are you talking about lamb? Lamb is nice....
DO NOT CALL OUT MY HYPOCRISY THUSLY! 🤪🤪🤪
Veal then?
Nah, screw it. Lamb Shawerma. Let's do this. :D
I dont know which I like better, Murder Hobos, or Murder Monkies
I think "primate" as a concept is more likely to translate appropriately than "person of no fixed address" in terms of getting the *feeling* across, when paired with the concept "murder[ous]". I mean, not being predators, they probably won't really have a good semiotic equivalent for "feral, unconstrained, and hackle-raising member of my own species", I wouldn't think. Of course, they probably won't have any equivalents for "friendly predator" *either...* :-/
I mean, reading closely the herbivores were all for genociding any sentient predator species found in the future. Here, humans are *officially* the second. But how many have *not* been recorded because someone exterminated them before their existence became widely known? Looking at *Deathworlders* and the whole "no sentient species can evolve on a Deathworld" shtick.
It looks like it happened in the lifetime of the MC.
The war has been ongoing her entire life. For centuries, the Feds have been slowly losing; parsec by parsec. Planet by planet
Good thing rock chuckin’ monke has arrived!
Now upgraded to **rocket** chuckin' monke, specially for your enemies' dismay!
I mean, *technically* uranium is a rock. Whether in the form of a fission core or an orbital rod. So hype for this story!
!remind me 1 week
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>Nothing like some good old space racism. It's a classic here and it is always interesting to see how different people expand the predator/prey dynamic to sentient races. It's funny because even prey/herbivores are opportunistic predators/carnivores. Also, why not add scavengers/omnivores into the formula.
There is a certain logic to racism that doesn't really make sense when it comes to humans but does somewhat more when discussing radically different life-forms.
Actually when you think about us as primitive tribesmen competing for resources, throwing rocks at "those other walking monkeys that look different" which likely devolved to "lets raid that other village and steal their food and women" and thus xenophobia was probably a valid survival instinct at one time. We've never been particularly nice monkeys.
comparatively speaking we're angels, there's some real demonic monkey species out there
I doubt if many of them ever weaponized smallpox
Obviously not talking about extremes, I'm talking averages. Average person vs average monkey, there's several entire species of monkey that have us beat.
I would rather deal with Cannibal Chimps, at least then I know exactly what Im dealing with
I'm sure chimps would if capable. It's not a question of willingness really.
The nice monkeys didn't survive us either. We ate them. Just look at our closest relatives; chimps are assholes.
Genetic in-group preferences are evolutionarily favoured. Watch: Group A, with 100 people has no in group preference. They encounter group B, with 100 people, and in group preference. There is a lean year, with only enough food for 180 people. Group A would share, and 10 people from each would die. Group B gets violent and nasty, and thus 20 people from group A die, and 0 from group B. Are people aware of this? Probably not. But When it's my sibling and I vs my cousin, then the three of us vs that other family, then all twenty of us vs that village over the hill, it can spiral. "This country vs that one" "this skin colour vs that one". It's a genetic leftover. There's lots of stuff that made sense 50 thousand years ago still turning up today.
People don't realize how quickly they will become tribalistic when their life is on the line.
They would if they had studied history (or even, sadly, current affairs).
Evolution can be a real bitch
My point exactly and well explained. It's ingrained into our social loyalty and patern recognition software. Our social and tecnological evolution far outpaces our biological. I joke that the modern era is basically the dumping of a bunch of guns into the monkey cage.
As promised, more new content! It remains to be seen how the humans will react, as they don’t yet realize that their predation is a problem. The Venlil aren’t convinced we come in peace, and have arranged an in-person meeting under false pretenses. To top it all off, the Federation has been summoned via distress signal…what could go wrong? I actually wrote this back in January, when I was bedridden with COVID, but it’s been under heavy rewrites for awhile. It’s not exactly a secret that Prey is the story that got me into HFY, so this is a venture I’m pretty excited about. The prevalent “deathworlders” trope is cool, but I miss the predators one dearly. Thank you for reading, as always!
Well, I think it's a great start! I'd love to read more about the adventures of Sarah and Noah! (Do their kids all have names that end in "h", too?)
Happy cake day! Thanks for the kind words. I can’t think of too many other names that end in h. Zach, Savannah, and Hannah?
Elijah, Rebekah, Zillah... basically just check out a list of biblical era Hebrew names. 🤪
Jonah... Maybe their ship is named after a whale! Although I've just noticed that apparently **I** was the one that added the "h" to the end of Sara's name, whoops! 🤪
Given that names are the exception to "English Rules" either one is acceptable, and yes I realize English doesnt really follow its onw rules anyway, thats why the quotes :D
Happy cake day!
I was expecting a "maybe the predators will both want to claim us as a prize and fight each other to the death first, leaving only a weakened victor that we can defend against" train of thought. "If the humans want us too, maybe we can manipulate them into fighting for us and then fight back after they're exhausted." This works too.
This is an excellent first chapter, I hope we can read more of this soon. About the snarl-smile. Maybe we should keep using masks around the world for a long time, so I wonder if the mask becoming ingrained in our culture would make us less self conscious of our faces (because I have certain inclination to snarl and now is out of control)
Thanks! The mask wearing might come in handy with the ETs. I smile out of habit myself, whenever I talk to people. Would not be easy to break years of learned behaviors
Ever since I lost most of my teeth, I have become self conscious of my smile, so I usually go with the close mouth smile, also, I would be seriously disappointed if at some time in the story line the two predators meet and dont get along at all, I know its predictable, but all too often life is predictable anyway, just a thought, its your story, write it how you want it, js Cheers
Ah, Prey. I remember that one, and this did make me think of it. I'm curious to see where this goes.
Can confirm, the Prey series is excellent.
So were the nuclear explosions they detected from Earth just nuclear testing from the cold war? A nuclear war? Or did they just misread nuclear power plants as explosions?
A nuclear power plant would be exceedingly difficult to mistake for an explosion (or even detect for that matter), but it could have been either nuclear testing or an actual nuclear war at some point. At this point, I don't know which is more likely. If they did spot nuclear tests, you'd think they'd have noticed those were spaced out over several decades and concentrated in areas with low population, meaning they should have realized it's unlikely the entire species was snuffed out by it. On the other hand, it said *hundreds* of nuclear explosions. Both the number of nuclear tests and the number of nukes that would be involved in even a limited nuclear exchange are in the thousands.
A non-violent prey species doesn’t have a great understanding of nukes, unfortunately. They never dabbled in “total war” in their evolution…their extinction level weapons were developed in response to the Arxur
I always imagined aliens have already visited earth but since they’re so concentrated on space exploration, the moment they found us splitting atoms and killing each other, they decided it’s probably for the best that they don’t contact us.
So far over 2000 nukes have been detonated. https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/nucleartesttally
from WW3 some years in the future
depending on our luck, not very far away... *glances at a rabid, cancer ridden Putin*
"In the not so distant future..."
That was my guess. They saw the testing and then the halt of explosions from the test treaty, and assumed we annihilated ourselves.
>But while we spent decades drafting termination plans, hundreds of nuclear explosions were detected across the planet. Our strategists concluded, with a grim sense of relief, that they had wiped themselves out. Considering the above paragraph the atmospheric nuclear testing seems a reasonable bet. [Here is a table](https://www.atomicarchive.com/almanac/test-sites/testing-chronology.html) and [here is a time-lapse](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLCF7vPanrY) of what they reasonably could have been seeing.
It will be explained much later, but it was just testing (well…mostly)
From the date at the top it would almost have to be cold war testing. Even with the absolute best case scenario it would take more than 125 years to go from bombed into the stone age to visiting other star systems.
Would love some more of this one.
Coming soon! I’ll release part 2 Wednesday 🙏
BOOYAH!!
it will be on Wednesday my dudes
Of course an elevated prey species would worry about any upcoming predators! How hard would it be to trust something whose nature you can only assume means exploiting or eating you?
While there is no doubt that modern humans are the apex predators of Earth, this story (which is fantastic, thanks so much OP for continuing to post such wonderful content!) is making me think about when exactly in our evolutionary history did we shift from being fruit and insect eating omnivorous prey-like creatures to being full on hunter-gatherer predators. Does the fact that we are omnivores who consume as much flora as we do fauna temper us in the eyes of a hypothetical Galactic Federation of purely prey sentients?
The fact that we eat other living animals is the issue for them…they think of it the way we think of cannibalism. I honestly don’t know how we transitioned, but we are pretty unusual predators! I mean, look at a lion’s teeth and look at ours
>The fact that we eat other living animals is the issue for them…they think of it the way we think of cannibalism. I mean, that is fair. What an unusual galaxy that only two carnivorous species developed sentience... >I honestly don’t know how we transitioned, but we are pretty unusual predators! I mean, look at a lion’s teeth and look at ours For sure! Most predatory species on Earth seem to be exclusive carnivores... That being said, many plant eating species practice opportunistic meat eating (thinking of deer eating birds on occasion when they get the chance). We are certainly unusual predators! Hopefully the Galactic community gives us the benefit of the doubt!
The thing is, we're not really predators. Not by nature, at least. But the big trick a large brain lets you pull is that behavior is far less determined by your nature and more by learned ideas. So as a species of omnivorous scavengers and opportunists, for reasons we don't really understand, became smarter and smarter, they gradually figured out tricks to help make their own carcasses instead or relying on luck to find some predator's kill. Tricks which were then passed on and slowly improved on. Then they figured out that they could use the same tricks on those predators, so they couldn't come for us, our mates, our lairs, or our cubs. Some of the animals we evolved with had the time to learn to stay away from the murder apes. The rest, and those that didn't get the time like the megafauna of most of the rest of the world, aren't around anymore. But despite long before homo sapiens walked the earth having reached the point where the only real threat to a group of humans is another group of humans, there's still deep inside of us the prey animal expecting danger around every corner. We're the undisputed superpredators of the planet, but unlike other apex predators, deep down we don't quite believe it.
Beautiful comment reply. One of the many contradictions of humanity: the undisputed apex predators that deep down feel like prey.
> as a species of omnivorous scavengers and opportunists, for reasons we don't really understand, became smarter and smarter, they gradually figured out tricks to help make their own carcasses instead or relying on luck to find some predator's kill. Tricks which were then passed on and slowly improved on. The food supply our ancestors relied on declined (maybe even vanished completely) as our environment changed from a rainforest to a savannah, so realistically *we had no other choice* but to either become smart and make tools to emulate and be able to eat what other animals were eating, or become like the grass-eating gelada baboons. Both were tried, only one won. Guess which one. Since our ancestors became smarter and lost any instinctual notion as to what is food or not, that translated into learning how to process pretty much anything into food, as inedible or hard-to-get in its natural form. The problem is, we're so deep down this rabbit hole of replacing nature with nurture, *we have no natural diet*. We cannot survive on the diet of our closest cousins because we need more energy-dense food, but that energy-dense food (like grains or meat) is not very edible as it is found in nature, so we're stuck improvising our diet, probably until the end of our existence.
So it began...
Please moarrrr
Your wish is my command!
I was going to request continuation. Glad you have at least 5 more parts to follow!
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After seeing this series pop up on r/all several times, I decided to give it a try. It's a little intimidating that there are 90+ parts now, but I'll do my best to read them, lol.
Hello
Hello! 👋 hope you’re having a lovely day!
And I hope you have a wonderful day
Curious, have you given any thought to writing a book?
Yeah, I have! Maybe one day 🙂
New mini-series? Nice. Looking forward to read this one.
Mini
aged like milcc
Wait... this series isn't even a year old yet?!?
It is now!
“ Predators didn’t do “peaceful exploration.” They trampled everything in their path and then burned it for good measure.” This aged great
Oh, are the Arxur going to be in for a surprise.
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Aw yeah
This promises to be amongst the masterpieces, I hope more comes soon and such quality holds up.
Thank you! I hope the rest will live up to the hype 🙏
Why did I read this, now I want more.
You won’t have to wait long; dropping Chapter 2 on Wednesday!
Just so I can find it again.
If you press the bell icon up top, you are subscribed to the story and will get a notification when a new one comes out.
You are one of the most "brutal" authors I have ever had the honor to read a story from. The story is addicting to the core and the twist and turns had me stuck to it for almost 12 hours straight. Keep up the good work
Thank you!!
This was posted 238 days ago? Jesus time is passing fast
Found this story on YouTube, and had to make the comment that it is an INCREDIBLE series. My hats off to you and your incredible writing.
Thank you for the kind words! Happy YouTube led you to the story 😅
If you have one I was wondering if you could tell us the schedule planned for this after you've released the other parts as you've made ?
This one should be pretty quick updates (at least up to the double digits), since I am just rewriting stuff I already have! Hoping to get at least two parts up a week
MOAR!!!!!!!!
This is a great story so far I enjoyed reading this and look forward to reading more Great job wordsmith
Cool take! Have to wonder what's happened to the Arxur to make them like this: after all, if you follow the 'by their nature' thing, then predators are usually naturally cowardly hunters, only taking on fights they're confident they can win without meaningful injury and generally retreating if there's more resistance than expected, since an injury to a predator impacts their ability to predate and can easily lead to a downward spiral to starvation.
>Hundreds of nuclear explosions Goddamn, I should stop passing up series like this because of a generic name lol
!N You know it's good when I read 36 consecutive parts in one long sitting!
ironically, predators are often less agressive than herbivores since they don't tend to be hunted, and therefore are less on edge
Thanks to NetNarrator I found this golden gem and now that I see that little Next button? \*Squee!!!\*
I am very tired but apparently i’m about to spend the rest of the day reading this series
"Oh boy, this looks like an interesting little story. I should follow this story, I imagine it would be a fun read." over one-hundred chapters later "Jesus fucking Christ."
Just found out about this, haven’t had such fun reading in a while
Love it looking forward to seeing more.
Thanks!
Just show us the video of the space puppies being shot. They won't be a problem within a decade
Part two?
Coming soon!
:D
Yo where's part 2?
Wednesday morning, as promised!
I love where this is going, but fuck the Arxur. I hope the murder apes take them down.
So the plan us just smile and fake it 😁😄
I have no doubt the moment the human discover some race eat children, things are going to go down.
Reminds me of what happened with Japan, Africa, and China. Uplifted them all. I'm sure someone had said "What could go wrong?"
The thought process of the Federation thinking they can “change” the Arxur reads a lot like something out of a cautionary tale about domestic abuse…and then it falls apart anyways. I like it already.
This saga is worth a read I'm currently on chapter 46 and it only gets better 👍
!Nominate
Hey, thanks!! 🙏
Of course, if any series that's still going deserves to be nominated it's Nature of Predators
Subscribeme!
This is wonderful!! Can’t wait for more!!
Just leaving a comment so I can find this later. This is absolutely great. Can’t wait for more.
Oh there's at least 60 pages worth 👍 Enjoy~
Oh hey, a cute little fic about fearful sheep-aliens. I sure hope it doesn't progress into a major series with gripping tragedy and Earth getting bombed into smithereens. *OH WAIT!* >!Seriously though, this is a great series. One of my favorites, and one of the first ones I made a fanfic for.!<
I saw a concept similar to this a couple years ago on Tumblr about a human woman meeting fearful, plant bodied aliens. I was so disappointed that they stopped updating the story, because I thought the interactions would be endlessly fascinating. It’s 3:00 am and I’ve finally discovered 70+ chapters of the unique concept I’ve always wanted to see pan out. Very well written!
it’s amazing! I myself got sucked into reading this for 12 hours straight *i dont i will ever recover*
https://reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/w54hmh/the_predator_caf%C3%A9_1/ hey! here’s a story i found that also sucked me in, idk if you would be interested in it
Just read the first chapter, it’s really cool! I’ll read the whole thing :) Thanks
yeah! no worries
Cool concept. Love how she feared smiling, in nature, showing teeth is always a sign of violence
This has developed so fucking well this last year
Just discovered this series and I cannot get enough
You are in for a ride, my friend.
So I've been listening to Adastra's narration of this story an OMG THEY'VE ONLY GOTTEN THRU BARELY ANY OF IT!!! There's so much yet to be put into audio form.
I’ll preface this by saying I’m enjoying it so far, but I’ve always found concepts like this funny, given that herbivores with the capacity to be dangerous at all tend to be significantly more dangerous than carnivores. A carnivore has to weigh the expenditure of energy and risk of injury before attacking because it can only feed itself by killing, whereas an herbivore can burn calories or even take light injuries relatively at will since they can just chill and eat some leaves after scaring off or killing anything that looks like it might be a threat, or even competition for space or resources. A lion will attack you if it’s hungry. A hippo will kill you just for being there.
Don’t worry, this gets in depth on that later (though mainly in the patreon side sorties).
HIPPOBOT 9000 v 3.1 FOUND A HIPPO. 843,167,070 COMMENTS SEARCHED. 18,396 HIPPOS FOUND. YOUR COMMENT CONTAINS THE WORD HIPPO.
Honestly I’ve stumbled on it on YouTube and it’s very engaging. Been awhile since a sci-fi story has been able to drag me into its universe, suspend my disbelief and make me feel like I could actually find myself in this world. Noticing that it’s still ongoing I keep getting this notion from the “dating system” that an implied coexistence occurs by the end. This would make an excellent movie, maybe tv show. An interesting take that humanity meets species who are all prey derived and their natural fear of predators edges into the level of xenophobia when met with one.
#MOAR!
Well, the humans are going to be lizard killers(and lizard tastes just like chicken) or we’re going to be lizard fornicators. Maybe both, you know…the three F’s.
Fire, Flammable, or Fryable?
Moar
Hell yeah!
I look forward to seeing how this plays out. The lining up and shooting children into mass graves video will NOT go over well with humanity. Thank you wordsmith.
Wonder how long it takes them to realize we are omnivores that can choose to eat almost entirely meat or plant.
I really do hope that this planetary governor doesn’t do something that makes Humanity start thinking of Geneva
They have to end up attempting to use the predators to destroy the predators, hoping to have one of the predators weakened enough to exterminate them.
Please tell me you’re going to continue this story as I love the the concept
Yep! Next chapter drops around 10 AM EST tomorrow 🙂
Yes!! Thank you
>hundreds of nuclear explosions were detected across the planet. Concentrated in Nevada hopefully, and at least they stopped?
I like it! Remind me David Weber novel Out of the Dark and Barbarians from RR.
These are brill, ten points for you!!
Dude! I like it!
I was like reading the title: WAAITTT A SECOND!!?!?!?!?! oh.
Got here through agro squirrel love the story
Thanks! Glad Agro pointed you over here 🙏
How are there so few comments here?
!subscribeme
!N
amazing story well done :D
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I just discovered this yesterday and cant's stop reading. I'm at like part 30. It's awesome.
Amazing work
Coming to this late but reading it reminding me Larry Niven's series on the Man-Kzinti Wars. Some do-gooder, peaceful, race, long ago, sees a race that aggressively attacks each other and thinks "we could use these entities as soldiers". So they first introduce high technology weapons to one clan on the planet which proceeds to eliminate all there rivals. That clan is then brought to space by the peaceful race and, in short order, find that *they* are now the prey by the predators, the Kzinti. After centuries humans and Kzinti cross paths. Humanity has, for centuries, believed that no warlike race would reach space. Suddenly humans are in a fight for their survival as a species.
Found someone who has put this to an audio format with voices for each character on YouTube. And gotta say it’s been awhile since a sci-fi story has had me so enthralled. If only this could be turned into a miniseries or even a Netflix series, and so long as it stayed to the core of what makes it good…it would be the only thing I’d bother watching. I like stories where I can close my eyes and feel like I’m there.
Part 2 please 👀
NOTE: this story has 184 chapters and will take you dozens of hours to read. Worth it.