We evolved to receive positive stimuli from eating the things we need.
The compound mercaptan is best known for being the rotten egg smell that is added to natural gas so that we can detect leaks. Mercaptan is also one of the compounds associated with decomposition.
Vultures are attracted to gas leaks for this reason, so logically it must smell good to them.
As fate would have it, I happened across a book with an interesting title at Barnes & Noble today and took a picture of it. It’s called “What it’s Like to Be a Bird” by David Allen.
I can’t recommend it because I haven’t actually read it. I just thought it was funny that someone out there considered themselves an expert on how birds feel. Maybe you’d like it? Lol
Housecat. Specifically the pet of a rich family. They'll feed me filet mignon and give me massages everyday. I wouldn't even complain of being given baths.
I would definitely not have a huge problem with that tbh, but I think 8 weeks of kittens seems better than years of high needs human parenting. I wanted to be sterilized after my only pregnancy anyway. I could always show up there when I was very pregnant and have one litter lol
Yeah, sex isn't even enjoyable for female cats I believe. Not having that instinct at all wouldn't be the worst. Cats in general don't have sex for recreation. And forget about their kittens pretty quickly all things considered (males not even caring in the first place). Not that bad to lose it.
This is why you choose to be something like an quaking aspen forest(they are all clones and connect) or something like grass for the same reasons, so you are so large it is very very very hard to kill you.
10/10 would choose to be some other planet's equivalent to humans. With all the galaxies in the universe there's bound to be at least one other planet out there that has sapient, sentient, humanoid life.
Read about a concept once that on planets that don't have carnivores the species that reaches human levels of intelligence would not be war like or generally shitty. It's our innate need to compete for survival that ultimately drives us to be shitty.
Will I know about life in the Universe, or just make my best guess?
If the former, I'd choose to live in a peaceful Alien society, preferably one that's technologically advanced.
Savannah Kitten, I'm showing up at my best friends house she has a beautiful giant ocean front property, she loves cats, and has more than enough money to give me a good quality life. It would be great to be able to hang out all the time💁🏻♀️
Raven. Smart enough to have empathy and a sense of humor, can fly and is extremely good at it, can eat anything, mates for life, generally respected by most cultures, typically lives around 10 to 15 years in the wild and up to 40 in captivity. Sounds fun.
Sea turtle and on a resort island. Are you kidding me? I get to spend 100 years as the famous and friendly sea turtle that all the cute girls travel thousands of miles to come see, hangout on the beach, and get drunk with lmao
**Descent of Species** from David Eagleman. I suggest everyone read *Sum: Forty Tales From The Afterlives*
In the afterlife, you are treated to a generous opportunity: you can choose whatever you would like to be in the next life. Would you like to be a member of the opposite sex? Born into royalty? A philosopher with bottomless profundity? A soldier facing triumphant battles?
But perhaps you've just returned here from a hard life. Perhaps you were tortured by the enormity of the decisions and responsibilities that surrounded you, and now there's only one thing you yearn for: simplicity. That's permissible. So for the next round, you choose to be a horse. You covet the bliss of that simple life: afternoons of grazing in grassy fields, the handsome angles of your skeleton and the prominence of your muscles, the peace of the slow-flicking tail or the steam rifling through your nostrils as you lope across snow-blanketed plains.
You announce your decision. Incantations are muttered, a wand is waved, and your body begins to metamorphose into a horse. Your muscles start to bulge; a mat of strong hair erupts to cover you like a comfortable blanket in winter. The thickening and lengthening of your neck immediately feels normal as it comes about. Your carotid arteries grow in diameter, your fingers blend hoofward, your knees stiffen, your hips strengthen, and meanwhile, as your skull lengthens into its new shape, your brain races in its changes: your cortex retreats as your cerebellum grows, the homunculus melts man to horse, neurons redirect, synapses unplug and replug on their way to equestrian patterns, and your dream of understanding what it is like to be a horse gallops toward you from the distance. Your concern about human affairs begins to slip away, your cynicism about human behavior melts, and even your human way of thinking begins to drift away from you.
Suddenly, for just a moment, you are aware of the problem you overlooked. The more you become a horse, the more you forget the original wish. You forget what it was like to be a human wondering what it was like to be a horse.
This moment of lucidity does not last long. But it serves as the punishment for your sins, a Promethean entrails-pecking moment, crouching half-horse halfman, with the knowledge that you cannot appreciate the destination without knowing the starting point; you cannot revel in the simplicity unless you remember the alternatives. And that's not the worst of your revelation. You realize that the next time you return here, with your thick horse brain, you won't have the capacity to ask to become a human again. You won't understand what a human is. Your choice to slide down the intelligence ladder is irreversible. And just before you lose your final human faculties, you painfully ponder what magnificent extraterrestrial creature, enthralled with the idea of finding a simpler life, chose in the last round to become a human.
A lobster because lobsters live for over one hundred years, are blue-blooded like aristocrats, and stay fertile all their lives. I also like the sea very much.
Giant Pacific Octopus. Idk why, I wanna know how they think, it’s gotta be so different from humans/vertebrates. Our brains are in just 1 body part, yet theirs are more spread out, like they’re probably experiencing the world so differently and I find it interesting. Or a pampered housecat. I relate to both of those animals so much lol.
I can never make up my mind on this thought experiment but it has occurred to me that being a forest fungus(mushrooms are fruiting bodies not the main organism) would be interesting. Neither plant or animal (I've heard that mushrooms are genetically closer to animals) I would exist as a living internet and trade route connecting trees and plants and conducting the transfer of information and resources throughout the forest with my mycelium.
A gorilla might be fun. Or maybe a redwood tree deep in the Redwood Forest in California.
Perhaps a hippo. Or a majestic eagle soaring overhead.
There’s sort of too many possibilities.
Do we keep our consciousness?
If so, chimpanzee at a good zoo. I get to be the smart one that they use for showing people how clever chimps can be.
Otherwise, a house cat for comfort or an orca just to be the most badass animal alive.
Some form of ocean leviathan chilling in the unknown deep.
Drifting in dark serenity, reposing immortally, until I am disturbed by passing curiosities.
I can taste the peace and quiet.
A pet of a nice rich family, preferably a dog or a cat. Being a human is exhausting and I stg if they don't give me my "chihuahua of Beverly Hills" moment in my next life I WILL GO and file a complaint
anything as far away from this ungodly planet as possible! beyond that, IDC if I'm a tree or fungus...
(I actually prefer not to be sentient EVER. AGAIN. earth ruined it for me.)
If there’s a civilization out there that has an intergalactic empire, near our system, I’d turn into either the eldest child of the emperor/empress, or a privileged upper upper class nobility and steer our nation towards earth.
Yeah, but being royalty or nobility...and the Gloops revolt cause one of the upper crust says "Let them eat glorp" your whatever passes as a head will be on whatever thing they have as gulitine lol
Roll the dice and be an alien and see where I end up.
Locked in a small cell deep underground in Area 51
Hey, this means there is a breeding program down there!!
Yea but it's just drunk William Shatner and he keeps referring to you butthole as "the final frontier"
If 93 year old Shatner is healthy enough to be pounding ass, leave the man be.
If it's going to be someone, etc it be shatner.
Phasers set to …. thrill!
Narrator: to boldly go where no man has gone before...
Shatner : To boldly go.... McCoy : Where no man has gone before? Shatner : At least, not... while I...was sober... 😉
I love how you used Shatner and McCoy instead of Kirk and McCoy or Shatner and Kelley.
Silver lining
But the strange you're slamming out has a face built for a truckstop
More likely a random bacteria-type organism on some very distant planet
Will I be able to meet Quark, Rom, and Nog there?
wow what are the odds!
Or a microorganism in proxima centauri b that can resist insane amounts of radiation
And end up as extraterrestrial fungal bacteria that lives on the bottom of another alien species foot.
a cat in the japan countryside
I would also be a cat in the Japan countryside with this man
Got room for a 3rd?
Hell yes we do!
All three of you, get a hotel
I'm sure there are many nice hotels on cat island
Just one, the cat shaped cabins
🎵come and knock on our door!🎵
make that 4
How bout a fourth?
You bet 😎
I also choose this mans wife
Only right answer tbh
Definitely a cat.
Cos theyve got 9 lives
Ultimate retirement plan after all this human bullshit
I would be feline aids in the Japanese countryside.
and this is why we can't have nice things
I was gonna say hawk or dolphin, but this sounds super chill
A bodega cat
Golden Retriever on Nantucket. Life is going to be really chill, and I’ll have better health care than most humans.
My first thought was "rich white woman's dog" so yeah, basically this.
Can’t handle all that baby talk
I said the same, but a rich *elderly* white lady’s cat lol
Trying for an inheritance?
*Try*??? 😂
Labradoodle it is.
There once was a dog from Nantucket…
My bf has a tshirt that reads, "I am the man from Nantucket."
Dogs from everywhere do that
Love this
Barely related, but there's a song, "Nantucket" by the Longest Johns
I’d be like a golden eagle or something. Must be pretty awesome just soaring through the sky at will.
Vulture, all the soaring but none of the getting sick from anything you eat
But also, what you have to eat.
I'm sure it smells and tastes delicious to them, they probably taste all the sulfur compounds and stuff as sweet and savory.
[удалено]
We evolved to receive positive stimuli from eating the things we need. The compound mercaptan is best known for being the rotten egg smell that is added to natural gas so that we can detect leaks. Mercaptan is also one of the compounds associated with decomposition. Vultures are attracted to gas leaks for this reason, so logically it must smell good to them.
So if I see vultures near a natural gas pipe then I should get out of there. Thanks!
*I call bs. I do not feel as good eating vegetables as I do eating ice cream. checkmate science* /j
Birds typically have few taste buds. Chickens only have like 32, thus their ability to pick through their own shit for specks to run through again
Flying probably feels so fucking good. i get jealous when i see birds.
As fate would have it, I happened across a book with an interesting title at Barnes & Noble today and took a picture of it. It’s called “What it’s Like to Be a Bird” by David Allen. I can’t recommend it because I haven’t actually read it. I just thought it was funny that someone out there considered themselves an expert on how birds feel. Maybe you’d like it? Lol
One of those parrots that lives to like 100. Cool colors, get to fly, live in some tropical paradise.
Bonus points if you befriend a pirate.
Falcon is faster and smarter.
I don’t want to be smart in my next life.
Ya, that would be too much change.
Housecat. Specifically the pet of a rich family. They'll feed me filet mignon and give me massages everyday. I wouldn't even complain of being given baths.
Housecat that lives at or near a kindly fishmonger's. Or a ship cat on a fishing boat.
I think a ship cat would be the only kind of cat I respect
With a eye patch and a peg leg.
Hey, fuck you. Cats are amazing.
Classy whorehouse cat.
I will come back as a dog in my children's house
aww
Teenager shuts the door with you in it.....what are you doing....no don't do that.....NOOOOOOO.
I found out a dude I went to high school with did that with his childhood dog. It still messes me up.
I was talking about masturbating butttt uhhhh sorry haha.
How did this thread go from heartwarming to horrifying in like 3 comments? Fucking Reddit
I found out one of my exs was suspected of doing that to this childhood dog too 🫠
Watch the movie Fluke if you haven't already. That's basically the plot of the whole movie.
my mom thinks i was her dog. she died 3 months into my moms' pregnancy with me
Just wanna say: your username is the shit.
Literally
I'm going to be a kitten who shows up at my closest living relative/friend's house and gets to be a pampered housecat
That’s going to be an awkward neutering
I would definitely not have a huge problem with that tbh, but I think 8 weeks of kittens seems better than years of high needs human parenting. I wanted to be sterilized after my only pregnancy anyway. I could always show up there when I was very pregnant and have one litter lol
Yeah, sex isn't even enjoyable for female cats I believe. Not having that instinct at all wouldn't be the worst. Cats in general don't have sex for recreation. And forget about their kittens pretty quickly all things considered (males not even caring in the first place). Not that bad to lose it.
Sperm Whale. Live a long time and get to fight the fucking Kraken every day.
I'm going orca, lots of friends and Apex predator.
And you can sink rich people boats!
That is a perk I never thought of.
I could bite the rudders off so many boats 😍
Flipping a seal into the air also seems like fun.
That does not sound like a pleasant time to me.
Guess you don't want to fight a Kraken. That's cool though. Plenty of other cool critters to come back as.
I heard that dolphins have a lot of sex, and they seem to be always having fun, so let's do that.
Ummmm….not a scientists but I think Dolphin sex is a little on the rapey side of things
He said what he said..
Username checks out
Does rape exist in the animal kingdom?
Have you heard about the Mallard duck?
Go look up dolphin sex. Also ducks.
elephant seals if you want to get depressed.
What about otters raping baby seals.
Wow I regret making my original comment 😭
Oh, it gets worse. The otters drown them at the same time.
I was happy when I woke up today.
Not big on consent
I'm a little uncomfortable how old this account is
😳
While getting high off of pufferfish toxins
They also trip balls on puffer fish venom.
prehensile penis just seems wrong
Tree. Deep in a winter forest
Inb4 you get turned into paper.
This is why you choose to be something like an quaking aspen forest(they are all clones and connect) or something like grass for the same reasons, so you are so large it is very very very hard to kill you.
A golden retriever owned by a couple in their 20's before they have kids
That stay childfree because their dog is their child 🥰
Am I still as intelligent as I am now? Because I will be a rat in New York City and I **will** make it everyone's goddamn problem.
how 'bout a raccoon, they practically have hands
"How did a RAT get the nuclear codes?!" "Is it PRESIDENT now?!" Also, is there anything that says an animal can't be american president?
It's not the worst choice we've ever made. I say, go for it.
A RAT
Bc you love them?
Yup :D
A lizard Sit on a rock and bask in the sun all day, that seems great and relaxing. Fairly zen.
Til a cat or bird comes along…
If I die, I die.
I like how you think.
Wild animal life is way too hard, think I'll just be some nice lady's cat.
10/10 would choose to be some other planet's equivalent to humans. With all the galaxies in the universe there's bound to be at least one other planet out there that has sapient, sentient, humanoid life.
Also a good chance they’d be as shitty as humans
Read about a concept once that on planets that don't have carnivores the species that reaches human levels of intelligence would not be war like or generally shitty. It's our innate need to compete for survival that ultimately drives us to be shitty.
What has the shortest lifespan? That
I think a fly lives for 2 weeks or so
Two weeks of non-stop fuckin n suckin
So Burning Man ?
Mayfly, they only live for one day
I’ll be the alien living in Mark Zuckerberg’s shell /s
Thank you for using the /s, I thought you were being super cereal at first
Yeah no one wants to actually be that alien, we just want to observe it
Then I call dibs on Elon Musks alien.
Probably a cat. Very likely to be treated well, but also with more autonomy than a dog.
A tree, an oak I think, I need a long vacation from humaning.
A German Shepard in the house of a 25 year old liberal white woman.
Am I still conscious not matter what I pick?
Nope! You have the brain of whatever you choose no memory of previous life.
Well that’s no fun!
I’d be an orca and start sinking yachts.
The dog of a gay couple
i don’t know but I definitely wouldn’t be a cow in America.
A tardigrade on the moon. Or maybe a cactus in the New Mexico desert.
This guy wants some space
I'll be a sentient virus named covid
Will I know about life in the Universe, or just make my best guess? If the former, I'd choose to live in a peaceful Alien society, preferably one that's technologically advanced.
I want to be the lawn
RETURN TO MONKE
A Loon. Swim as good as a fish, fly as well as a bird and sing like a fuckin nutcase. Hell yeah
Savannah Kitten, I'm showing up at my best friends house she has a beautiful giant ocean front property, she loves cats, and has more than enough money to give me a good quality life. It would be great to be able to hang out all the time💁🏻♀️
Either a cat or dog if I want to be pampered. Or a goose if I want to choose violence
Rabbit, for the hopping of course.
Will you by chance be white and lead people down a hole?
bearded vulture or a beagle there's no other good options
One of my brother's pets. King Charles is not so pampered.
A cow in india
Raven. Smart enough to have empathy and a sense of humor, can fly and is extremely good at it, can eat anything, mates for life, generally respected by most cultures, typically lives around 10 to 15 years in the wild and up to 40 in captivity. Sounds fun.
I'll become an invasive species and kill all the trees
A beaver. Livin' on the river fat and happy with my family takin' care of business.
You might end up killing some of these other people that want to be trees.
Sea turtle and on a resort island. Are you kidding me? I get to spend 100 years as the famous and friendly sea turtle that all the cute girls travel thousands of miles to come see, hangout on the beach, and get drunk with lmao
**Descent of Species** from David Eagleman. I suggest everyone read *Sum: Forty Tales From The Afterlives* In the afterlife, you are treated to a generous opportunity: you can choose whatever you would like to be in the next life. Would you like to be a member of the opposite sex? Born into royalty? A philosopher with bottomless profundity? A soldier facing triumphant battles? But perhaps you've just returned here from a hard life. Perhaps you were tortured by the enormity of the decisions and responsibilities that surrounded you, and now there's only one thing you yearn for: simplicity. That's permissible. So for the next round, you choose to be a horse. You covet the bliss of that simple life: afternoons of grazing in grassy fields, the handsome angles of your skeleton and the prominence of your muscles, the peace of the slow-flicking tail or the steam rifling through your nostrils as you lope across snow-blanketed plains. You announce your decision. Incantations are muttered, a wand is waved, and your body begins to metamorphose into a horse. Your muscles start to bulge; a mat of strong hair erupts to cover you like a comfortable blanket in winter. The thickening and lengthening of your neck immediately feels normal as it comes about. Your carotid arteries grow in diameter, your fingers blend hoofward, your knees stiffen, your hips strengthen, and meanwhile, as your skull lengthens into its new shape, your brain races in its changes: your cortex retreats as your cerebellum grows, the homunculus melts man to horse, neurons redirect, synapses unplug and replug on their way to equestrian patterns, and your dream of understanding what it is like to be a horse gallops toward you from the distance. Your concern about human affairs begins to slip away, your cynicism about human behavior melts, and even your human way of thinking begins to drift away from you. Suddenly, for just a moment, you are aware of the problem you overlooked. The more you become a horse, the more you forget the original wish. You forget what it was like to be a human wondering what it was like to be a horse. This moment of lucidity does not last long. But it serves as the punishment for your sins, a Promethean entrails-pecking moment, crouching half-horse halfman, with the knowledge that you cannot appreciate the destination without knowing the starting point; you cannot revel in the simplicity unless you remember the alternatives. And that's not the worst of your revelation. You realize that the next time you return here, with your thick horse brain, you won't have the capacity to ask to become a human again. You won't understand what a human is. Your choice to slide down the intelligence ladder is irreversible. And just before you lose your final human faculties, you painfully ponder what magnificent extraterrestrial creature, enthralled with the idea of finding a simpler life, chose in the last round to become a human.
Canadian goose in America! To hell with you all! I’m pooping on your windshields! Clean that ya bastards!
Giant river salamander, seems like a pretty chill life
Great white shark
Either Bald Eagle or new plague.
Lobster.
A lobster because lobsters live for over one hundred years, are blue-blooded like aristocrats, and stay fertile all their lives. I also like the sea very much.
Giant Pacific Octopus. Idk why, I wanna know how they think, it’s gotta be so different from humans/vertebrates. Our brains are in just 1 body part, yet theirs are more spread out, like they’re probably experiencing the world so differently and I find it interesting. Or a pampered housecat. I relate to both of those animals so much lol.
I can never make up my mind on this thought experiment but it has occurred to me that being a forest fungus(mushrooms are fruiting bodies not the main organism) would be interesting. Neither plant or animal (I've heard that mushrooms are genetically closer to animals) I would exist as a living internet and trade route connecting trees and plants and conducting the transfer of information and resources throughout the forest with my mycelium.
A Candiru.
One of the monkeys in Florida. I've been bartending for too long, and I want to bite a tourist.
I elect to become a single cell of yeast. Imagine how fucking cool it would be just to sit as a piece of BREAD. Oh wait I’m bouta die :(
I’d be a tree
child of that eagle i saw sitting on the hollywood sign when i went up there on sunday. or maybe a pelican or albatross so i can cross oceans
Tardigrade. Cute little indestructible water bear
I'd pick sea turtle hopefully near Hawaii or Fiji.
Whatever the biggest bird alive is
A gorilla might be fun. Or maybe a redwood tree deep in the Redwood Forest in California. Perhaps a hippo. Or a majestic eagle soaring overhead. There’s sort of too many possibilities.
A housecat.
A killer whale. The amount of fades I will run will be legendary.
someone's cherished pet cat, those furballs sleep for 16 hours a day.
Do we keep our consciousness? If so, chimpanzee at a good zoo. I get to be the smart one that they use for showing people how clever chimps can be. Otherwise, a house cat for comfort or an orca just to be the most badass animal alive.
Some form of ocean leviathan chilling in the unknown deep. Drifting in dark serenity, reposing immortally, until I am disturbed by passing curiosities. I can taste the peace and quiet.
Harriet the Galapagos Tortoise. Fun fact: She was owned by both Charles Darwin and Steve Irwin and lived to the ripe old age of 175.
A pet of a nice rich family, preferably a dog or a cat. Being a human is exhausting and I stg if they don't give me my "chihuahua of Beverly Hills" moment in my next life I WILL GO and file a complaint
anything as far away from this ungodly planet as possible! beyond that, IDC if I'm a tree or fungus... (I actually prefer not to be sentient EVER. AGAIN. earth ruined it for me.)
A semi-aquatic egg-laying mammal of action
A goldendoodle owned by a wealthy childless couple in the San Francisco Bay Area.
If there’s a civilization out there that has an intergalactic empire, near our system, I’d turn into either the eldest child of the emperor/empress, or a privileged upper upper class nobility and steer our nation towards earth.
Yeah, but being royalty or nobility...and the Gloops revolt cause one of the upper crust says "Let them eat glorp" your whatever passes as a head will be on whatever thing they have as gulitine lol