Felinoid stereotypical perception of humans?

The felinoids in my slightly silly space opera setting are in many ways fairly stereotypical bipedal house cats. Fast reflexes, keen senses, claws, copes very well with falls. I've deliberately given them four fingers on each hand, to squash the otherwise reasonable assumption that they're actually uplifted terrestrial cats.

They differ from house cats in that they were the apex predators of their native planet even before they evolved intelligence. The later happened mostly out of sheer boredom, possibly combined with sexual selection. Not as a survival need.

So of course humans see felinoids as risk-taking, impulsive and curious, even mildly hyperactice (there are many jokes about felinoids on a caffeine, glucose or cocaine high, and it is true that when they seek chemical recreation, most of them gravitate towards relaxants such as alcohol, heroin or cannabis, rather than stimulants) and clearly very fast in all sorts of ways, and as climbers and jumpers.

They're nice, helpful and ethical, with a very strong taboo against eating members of intelligent species. But they're also somewhat individualistic, and not always inclined to cooperate. As apex predators, they had a tendency to look for fun ways to get food, because getting food was often boringly easy. That's stayed with them, after they evolved intelligence and became a technology-using species.

I got all that covered.

But how do they see us?

Clearly we're slow (thinking, percieving, moving) and vulnerable (much like their kittens), we're nearly deaf and almost completely anosmic, we can't defend ourselves, we can't catch our own food, and half of the time we're almost completley blind. Our lack of whiskers, and our minimalistic fur also means we're not aware of air currents.

(I still haven't wrapped my head completely around how much air currents mean - or can mean - to felinoids. Obviously they wear few clothes, mostly just to cover the private bits and female nipples, and otherwise a utility belt or sash, but wearing a space suit must be very different for a felinoid compared to how it is for a human).

We eat a lot of grain and fruit, and silliest of all we eat these strange and bitter things called "vegetables". On the other hand, we can travel on and in water easily (we cope better with being wet) so we can supply the felinoids with yummy sea food (some felinoids are underwater hunters, but they're rare and heroic individuals, and they're reliant on industrial-strength blow dryers after each hunt).

Felinoids can't taste sweetness, so they don't really have any kind of "candy", but they do utilize chewing gum, sometimes with meat flavours or complex wine or fruit flavours (they can detect aromas just fine, it's only sweetness itself that's lost on them), but most commonly fish- and other seafood flavours, from a variety of planets (apparently there's something about the kinds of lipids that aquatic animal biochemistries tend to utilize, often polyunsaturateds, that appeals to them, or something caused by those kinds of lipids).

And as aliens go, we're really not all that different from them. We're not very starfishy.

Sometimes they call us "smoothies" (many aliens do that) in reference to our skin, or much more insultingly (although it's true, in relative terms) "slows" or even "slooows". A common curse in felinese translates as raised-by-humans, a reference to how messed up a felinoid kitten will be if adopted and raised by a pair of humans. Humans raised by felinoids also end up dysfunctional, though, although felinoid kittens are slightly more appealing (as in kawaii!) to adult humans than human babies are to adult felinoids.

Humans are more durable than felinoids. They heal from wounds and fractured bones slightly faster (as per terrestrial house cats), and they're much lighter which in some ways protect them from falls and some types of collision, but they cope very badly with being hit by vehicles, or by melee weapons such as clubs, maces, axes or swords. Hitting them with such weapons is non-trivial due to their reflexes, but if hit, bones are likely to snap (they also cope less well with pain than humans do, which makes sense for apex predators).

So in a way, we look like tanks to them. We're slow, and we don't cope well with falls, but we're durable in a way they aren't. We fight by punching and kicking, not by raking with claws, or grappling with intent to rip the other guy's throat out.

It can be said that much human fighting is brute force. Felinoids fight by knowing exactly where to strike. They learn about the vulnerable spots of all known major species, in their equivalent of preschool. Not because they're homicidal (they aren't, although if you give them a reason...), but as a matter of principle.

Felinoids hate parasites. Another reason for them to have evolved intelligence might have been to better be able to reduce paratisism on them (it's obvious to me that apex predator species will tend to suffer from a wide range of parasites), via medicine, first primitive, then increasingly sophisticated. That's also when they go genocidal on other species, on rare occasions, by getting together in a group and voting on whether another species, a severely trouble-making one, qualifies as a fellow intelligent species or as a parasite. They show parsites no mercy, kill them when they must (with biological warfare if necessary), or when they can they gather them in camps or on prison moons, and sterilize them.

Obviously, they've on several occasions come close to declaring humans parasites, but every time the majority opinion of the gathering has been that we are amusing and likeable, and not inherently vile. Their basic concept of other intelligent species is this-one-is-more-fun-alive-than-it-is-good-to-eat. I.e. as a friend or play mate, or on occasion court jester.

Usually they're nice, but if you're their enemy then you're their enemy. Once they cross that border, there is no hesitation, no doubt, no angst. That makes them scary to us.

To them, we humans must look chronically ambivalent. Most of the time, that's good. Felinoids don't like rash decisions about killing others either (like wolves, they're better at handling social aggression than we are). But we *keep* hesitating. Even when faced with overwhelming evidence of the need for a swift violent response. That must really puzzle them.

Human sexual dimorphism also puzzles them. Their females don't differ much from their males. Female pelvic bone structure is quite different but somehow that makes no difference in terms of movement, but otherwise females are maybe 92% or 95% as strong as males (even though strength is severely disregarded by felinoids - they don't need it), and with much more modest curves (although as per a silly space opera setting, the curves are in the exact same places as with humans). They think the human obsession with breasts, in particular, is silly.

A felinoid is first and foremost a felinoid, whereas almost everywhere, almost everywhen, a human is first and foremost a man *or* a woman, and only secondarily a human.

Felinoids aren't hyper-individualistic, but we do look like pack animals to them, in much the same way that introverted humans regard normal humans as pack animal'ish, and see extroverts as addicted to company.

Humans have a lot of endurance (or can have, anyway). The felinoids have a saying that the first human to run a marathon collapsed and died, afterwards, and the same thing has happened to every felinoid who ever tried to run a marathon. They're natural sprinters. Being light and being able to travel light, they can travel good distances on foot, by walking, but they can't build up the kind of stamina as seen in human marathon runners, let alone ultramarathoners. Anatomically, their muscles are more like those of ours that are fast-twitch or "white fibre", rather than our slow-twitch "red fibre" ones.

So... How do they see us? What affectionate or offensive stereotypical views do they have of us humans? Ones that are completely true, ones that are basically true but more or less exaggarated, or ones that are false, caused by misunderstandings but have "gone viral" to become widely believed myths?

I'll come back later when I've had some time to think about this, I've got a similar situation going on.

Domestic cats not being able to taste anything sweet is a side-effect of the domestication process. The amount of in-breeding necessary to produce the species caused a bunch of extra features to show up in the genetic code.

Considering how many cat behaviors are misunderstood by their owners, it wouldn't be hard to believe that cat aliens would see us as "that species of total idiots who can't take a fucking hint."

No, that is incorrect.

It's not just house cats who can't taste sweet, but all cats, including great cats such as tigers and lions and leopards. It's a natural mutation, happened milions or tens of millions of years ago. That's why the entire cat family has become hyper-carnivores. Dogs and other canines are somewhat omnivorous, but cats eat almost exclusively animal protein, because their "gimped" sense of taste does not encourage them to eat vegetable matter.

They'd probably would think of humans as stereotypically klutzy (due to less natural balance than a cat), terrible at any form of stealth without a tool or equipment to assist, and maybe too talkative than needed to get ideas across clearly. Cats use lots of body language, and don't have to be very vocal with each other all the time. Humans are very dependent on misunderstandable words to tell complex things.

My felinoids are quite talkative too, but maybe not almost-always, the way we humans are (as Ford Prefect remarks upon in the first "Hitchhiker's" novel). I also think there are limits to how complex concepts you can get across using just body languge, so after a certain point you do need words, but the felinoids do have some benefits: They have raiseable fur and ears they can flatten (even though those are very binary signals), and they have very mobile tails.

I also already know that some felinoids have picked up the habit of forming their tails into an approximation of a human-style question mark (as per the "Anglish" alphabet and language, widely used in many parts of the galaxy) when they'd like something repeated or clarified. I think that may be a regional thing (only some felinoids do it, and only some other members of other species know it well enough to recognize a flash-tail-gesture lasting for 1/4 second), but other felinoids elsewhere can use other tail gestures.

Also, they sometimes feint with their tails in melee combat, often multiple times to try to confuse the opponent, before they strike.

Well, most of them. Leopardus and Otocolobus might be able to taste sweetness.(There is no citation on for it on wikipedia Felidae#Senses...)

On a similar note, cats have a really bad sense of taste in general. Human have something like 9000 tastebuds. Lions, tigers and house cats have something like 470-500^note haven't found numbers for other cats.. That way they miss a lot of that rotting meat taste(+ the bitter/sour tasting critters inside) when they eat rotting meat.

While the missing sense of sweetness and being obligate carnivores is corralated, it isn't really possible to say that one caused the other. Eating none or very little food that tasted sweet meant there was no evolutionary advantage of being able to taste sweetness, so there where noting preventing the mutation from spreading. On the other hand, cats with this mutation ate even less sweet food.

On a third hand, not being able to taste Umami etc wouldn't prevent cats from eating meat. They could still smell the food, get the mouthfeel, fill the stomach/not feel hungry, hear the cracking of bones and so on. Anyway, some(most?) fruits and 'veggies' taste bitter, sour or even umami.(But that's no sign of energy content...)

edited 27th Oct '13 1:25:04 AM by m8e

Interesting info, m8e. But I'll maintain that cats aren't the product of selective breeding. They were never domesticated to the same degree as dogs or horses. They're much more a spcies that live in close proximity to us himans, than they're a species that lives *with* us humans.

Unclean incubation sites. Though humans are always decided not to be a parasite per se, the overwhelming popular opinion, taught in school even, is that 90% of the native Earth population houses a parasite of some kind. Those with more biological leanings would think this slightly exaggerated but humans still have a much more open view on "mutualism" and "commensalism", which causes them to tolerate what their stellar counterparts are disgusted by. (they would never let something like the Argentine ant infestation happen as they would have eradicated it on the suggestion it was using them to expand its residences and they would not keep pets that served no practical purpose)

Kittens, due to the human tendency to drink milk well after maturation. In truth, 4/5ths of humanity is lactose intolerant but popularity of commercial products such as ice cream and milk's importance the major world religions (Judaism with its land of milk&honey-Christianity&Islam by extension, Hinduism with the sacred cow) makes them see humans as childish in their choice of diet. (farming for milk could also be part of the parasitism debate, both for cows and humans, while the "love" milk could factor into their "theories" on breast attraction)

The milk angle is interesting, although my initial idea was to go in the opposite direction and have felinoids have a noted fondness for kumiss and other fermented alcoholic milk products, as a more silly setting element.

With regards to parasites, they're only opposed to non-consensual or hostile paratisism, not cooperation and mutualism and so forth (and they certainly wouldn't see cows or grains as being parasites on humans).

They've never needed pet animals or domesticaed animals such as horses, dogs or cats (merely corralled and controlled prey animals, to allow fo higher population densities), so the notion of taming and training an unintelligent animal may be somewhat alien to them. Also, when first encountering humans, many interegnums ago, it's possible that it was unclear to the felinoids that the four-legged creatures accompanying the humans weren't as intelligent as the humans. And the issue may have been muddied further if those quadropeds, probably dogs, had in fact been genetically uplifted, and so were more intelligent than current terrestrial dogs.

The implication would be humans being parasites to cows because they take there milk but I suppose that could be considered mutual too (cow populations are not exactly shrinking due to farming).

Another thing. The idea isn't to set up a hostile interspecies relationship. The idea is to set up widespread stereotypes that are then gradually "disproven" throughout the story, either shot down entirely, or else shown to be grossly exaggarated.

I mean, I think dogs are pretty dumb, because of all their instincts. But that doesn't mean I'm hostile to dogs. I think they're admirable creatures in many ways, in particular due to their capacity for pack loyalty (towards other dogs, or their puppies, or their human owners).

Forgive me please if this has already been mentioned, but are your felinoids as prone to toxins as the cats of Earth? If so, they might see humans as incredibly resilient to toxins and poisons, often consuming more-than-lethal levels of horrible substances (chocolate, for example).

They are very much biologically like terrestrial house cats, in spite of being the result of evolution on another planet (they have 4 fingers per limb, not 5, and their genetic code is not stored in DNA, but in something that ends in B for "base"), and so it would make sense that chocolate is toxic to them.

They're not stupid, however, and they understand that other species are different from them. Nor are they envious about chocolate in particular, although some humans assume that felinoids are envious of human ability to taste sweet in general. They're not, though, since they don't know what they're missing out on. But some felinoids will still gulp down some candy or sugary drink just to get a blood sugar high (much like some consume coffee or cocaine, although their general trned is to seek relaxants, not stimulants), and some also enjoy human-style candies with complex aromas, but never the cheap pure-sugar-with-no-true-natural-ingredients crap that is available in most places.

So no, they don't see humans as poison-eaters, any more than they see the prey animals of their native planet as eaters of toxin-containing leaves and grasses. They understand ecology in an instinctive way that we don't, not because they are a superior species, but because they are much more predators than we are, combined with having human-equivalent intelligence.

A few might see humans as giving toxic candies like chocolate (especially theobromine-rich 70% and 80% brands) on their kittens, with intent to poison, but that's pretty much an urban legend. Given how personally dangerous a felinoid is (as in hobby assassinations), you'd be stupid to try to poison or otherwise harm its kitten.

They're very nice, but then suddenly if provoked severely they completely *stop* being nice, in a sudden and abrupt way, free of hesitation, that is markedly different from how humans and most other non-carnivore species behave. So, you wouldn't want to risk getting on a felinoid's death list, by poisoning one of its kittens. Ultimately, it can murder you, then flee out into the wilds and live in the forest for the rest of its life, virtually impossible to track and catch by law enforcement, raising its kittens there. They don't need to live in civilization, the same way we do. It's *boring* out in the forest, alone with just some kittens, but it's eminently survivable, very much unlike for a randomly chosen human, who would most likely starve or freeze to death within weeks.

These felinoids might be confused by the human ability to work with an enemy to achieve a common goal. It sounds like they see things in black and white, friend or enemy, with no in-between. As far as stereotypes go, that (as well as the fact that human loyalties can change) could translate into the idea that humans are totally unpredictable and untrustworthy.

On another note, they might think we have an overdeveloped sense of vengeance. When a new male tries to take over a pride of lions, the first thing he does is try to kill the former pride leader's cubs. The female will defend her cubs to the best of her ability, but once they're dead she stops viewing the interloper as an enemy and will often mate with him shortly thereafter. The felinoids might be the same way - kill a human's family and the human will make it his or her goal to hunt you down and kill you. A felinoid might not go the the same lengths to exact their revenge. So the humans might see the cats as coldhearted, while the cats might see us as relentlessly vengeful.

They are terrified of us. As they are more individualistic, they don't form large groups. They have prides, WE HAVE ARMIES! They engage in hunts, WE WAGE WAR! And then, paradoxically, we're nice! This makes us totally unpredictable and therefore terrifying.

edited 2nd Nov '13 1:01:16 PM by NeuroGlide