I've seen a couple posts around about doing 'humans are space orcs' stuff with PHM, and i realized eridians have the upper hand on humans on quite a few things. climbing prowess, raw strength, sturdiness, thinking power and speed, sleep schedules. we're kind of stacked against the odds here.
so here's a few things humans are particularly good at for all your 'being human is pretty cool actually' needs!
humans can climb pretty okay, but eridians have more limbs than us and their muscles are steam-powered! they can hold on for longer, and they can do so more easily with more points of contact. what they DON'T have are clavicles and rotation support on their shoulders or lower limbs. see, primates are capable of swinging under the branch, called brachiation, and it's a pretty unique locomotion style!
so imagine them being on centrifuge but the settings are off so things are all kind of upside down. Rocky watches Grace monkey bar over to the right controls and fix it, and is kind of baffled he did that at all. or just Grace somehow turning on a hanging bar, that's pretty impressive!
so we know apes and specifically hominids have some really specialized hands for fine motor control. but did you know humans have a special adaptation on the wrist just for throwing things like a spear? other apes can only throw things by big arches of the whole arm, they can't direct throws or make them go as far as a human can. we are superbly good at throwing!
now when it comes to eridians, they have a lot of raw strength on their limbs. again, steam-powered muscles. but how can they aim throws when they can't even rotate their forearms, much less have wrists at all?
I can just imagine Rocky's surprise at Grace somehow aiming a paper ball throw from across the lab, why bother yknow? but then the thing sails and just barely misses?? how?!?!
sure, humans aren't lyre birds, but our ability to produce and mimic sounds is pretty damn impressive. we can not only mimic each other, but we can also figure out ways to mimic animals and even inorganic noises. Eridians are described in the book as using a similar system as whales, pulling air back and forth through their vocal chords instead of just one way. them not having lips and - i assume - a tongue would also limit them quite a bit.
not saying that Grace will be a very good mimic, it's a skill to be trained like any other after all, but I think Rocky will be pretty amused at whistling, and then beatboxing and imitation competitions.
as i mentioned above, eridians don't have teeth! they manually tear up their food as much as they can and pop those suckers in right away. if you wanna stretch the whole 'exotic eating habits bit', you can have Rocky be very put out by the concept of a mouth with weird boney protusions.
not only that, but the oral fixation humans have must be rather absurd. what do you mean they just, stick random shit on their mouth and chew on it just because?? no Grace put the pen down stop slobbering on it, it's been all over! and what do you mean human mouths are full of harmful bacteria if they bite each other and break skin??
that's freaky stop that!!
5. horrifying immune system
we know Erid has single-cell life, and it's not a stretch to think there are illness inducing bacteria out there. jury's still out if they have stuff like viruses but whatever. Eridians use their hot system as a way to sterilize their own food when they eat, so i imagine their immune systems are a little handicapped when it comes to biological attacks.
meanwhile humans are leaky space blobs that easily coexist in symbiosis with unrelated bacteria for stuff like digestion, and you could say humanity has domesticated bacteria responsible for fermentation. we eat rotting stuff all the damn time! bread, pickles, aged meats, kimchi, beer, we can't get enough of it. no wonder Rocky thinks humans eating is gross!
also um, don't tell him about autoimmune diseases where our own immune system freaks out and attacks our own very healthy tissues, and we just. Live With That.
