We Are the Predators Too

Writing prompt: “Oh no, we’re predators too. We just live in the same place as a lot of bigger, badder predators, so they lump us in with the prey.”

First contact with another species was stunning to the Earth and humanity. Finally we knew the answer to the question, ‘Were we alone in the universe.’ And the answer was ‘NO we are not alone.’

After the news ran around the globe and the settlements on Mars, Titan and Io, we finally had to deal with the news that we would have to make friends, hopefully, with our new neighbors.

It took a rocky few years to open trading and scientific exchange with the Orilaprinxar, the Ollies as the kids nicknamed them, but it was productive.

They were an explorer species, always looking for something new and a new species was just up their alley. They even had a first contact kit filled with information, translation data and they loved to swap and trade for new information.

Perfect.

Well almost. There was a problem in that we ran across a glitch in how they were asking us how we referred to ourselves. They wanted to know if we were a predator species or a prey species.

How do you explain to someone who didn’t know how to qualify someone as neither predator or prey but both.

They just didn’t have a word for that idea let alone the idea itself.

It was like trying to explain blue to someone born blind from birth. They didn’t have the concept of a species who could be bother prey and predator at the same time.

Finally someone sort of got the idea across that we were surrounded by predators so the Orilaprinxar gave us a label of prey and everyone sort of went with that thinking it wouldn’t make any difference in the wider universe.

We should have spent more time working with them because now we find ourselves in a standoff with a different species who are trying to tell us that as prey species, we need to give them favorable trading rights and now we have to deal with a cute species of bears who are half our size, and so cute and they think we are scared of them because we are not cowering in fear every time we meet.

They think we are so scared we don’t react to them, so now they want their predator conditions to be included in the trade contracts.

How do we explain to these beings that the only reason why we are called prey is because we are surrounded by so many other bigger, badder predators, that it was just easier to put the prey label on us instead of explaining how we were the deadliest species on our planet, to a species who couldn’t understand the concept?