If I could choose any super power, it would be the ability to let cats know that I just want to pet them. When I see a cat in my neighborhood and I try to approach it, it runs away in terror like I’m some super predator. I was thinking about that as I was sulking the last time this happened when I realized “Wait. I am a super predator.”

As much as we think of ourselves as the protagonists of our world, fighting against the oppressive forces that challenge us, from another perspective, we’re dangerous as hell. A bunch of imaginative people on Tumblr started running with this idea in a collection put together by Imgur user StevenBlueShirt.

Part 1: “They’re Made of Meat”

User bogleech set the whole thing in motion with their boredum at how mild humans always are in sci-fi stories.

Imagine the stories aliens would be telling each other around the campfire about the terrifying “hoo-mans” and their bizarre predilections.

But even when you get down to nitty-gritty facts, we are a crazy resilient species, which would be terrifying to anyone trying to be rid of us.

Plus, you can make anything sound intense as hell with the right wording.

At this point I’m starting to wonder if my pudgy self is a super being.

And of course the thing that actually makes us the dominant species of Earth: our intimidating intelligence.

Part 2, Chapter One: Humans on Board

Now that the ground work has been laid, it’s time to pitch a story.

Another user took that pitch and absolutely ran with it in a short story:

Part 2, Chapter Two

Part 2, Chapter Three

Part 2, Chapter Four

Part 2, Chapter Five

Part 2, Chapter Six

Part 2, Chapter Seven

Part 2, Chapter Eight

Part 2, Chapter Nine

Part 3, Chapter One: “To Be Treated With Caution”

One final short(er) story to wrap it up: putting our entire confusing and horrifying history into the frame of being viewed by gentler beings of a more benevolent universe at large. It’s a good read.

Part 3, Chapter Two

Part 3, Chapter Three

Part 3, Chapter Four

It reminds me of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in which Ford Prefect is sent to Earth to revise the Guide’s entry on the planet, which just reads “harmless.”

After much research, he changes it to “mostly harmless.”

What’s the most terrifying thing about humans in your opinion?

Freak us out in the comments.