Human Super Powers?

[zpox357]

According to Science-fiction movies, humans are reasonably dull. We are like the block of coal at the end of a Christmas stocking, or the most common collectible found in cheap blind bags. Just hanging around so that other lifeforms can whip out their electro-tentacles and laser eyes to mess around with us, such as in Pocket God or Saints Row III.

Surely, we must have something over the rest of life in the universe. What super powers do humans have compared with other Sci-Fi aliens?

Super-Heat resistance?

Photographic memory?

Opposable Thumbs?

Post your ideas

Zpox357

Edited May 19, 2013 by zpox357

[LeonG17]

Greater brain to mass ratio.

[Tex_NL]

The fact we are so dull might be exactly what gave us an edge. We aren't particularly strong or fast, neither do we possess superior senses. Pretty much everything is average making us less dependable on any of them.

If a predator gets injured and loses it's speed it will starve. A prey animal that relies on scent to detect predators can be outsmarted by staying downwind. Humans are all-rounders, adaptability is our superpower.

[Select Few]

Thumbs. You want to know why?

Oh, look at you, mister tough-lion/bear/other-predators-guy! Not so tough when faced by a locked door, are you?!

[Tex_NL]

Ive seen cats and dogs open locked doors.

And if Mr Lion really wanted to come through that door he wouldn't have to unlock it. He would simply come THROUGH the door.

[NASAFanboy]

Our ability to record the knowledge we possess. Animals have knowledge, but that is lost because they fault to record it. However, the knowledge of humanity has been growing, allowing us to perform greater functions, such as....

Spaceflight.

Computers.

Farming.

Engineering.

Blowing Stuff Up.

Killing Each Other With More and More Advanced Weapons.

Bio-Engineering.

Playing God. Sort Of.

And much, much, more.....

[Voidryder]

Our ability to record the knowledge we possess. Animals have knowledge, but that is lost because they fault to record it. However, the knowledge of humanity has been growing, allowing us to perform greater functions, such as....

Spaceflight.

Computers.

Farming.

Engineering.

Blowing Stuff Up.

Killing Each Other With More and More Advanced Weapons.

Bio-Engineering.

Playing God. Sort Of.

And much, much, more.....

Riiiiiiiiiiight....I'll try and keep humankind's superiority in mind next time I'm scooping poop outta of my cat's litter box.

[zpox357]

We all know what humans have over animals,

but what we have over your typical sci-fi Super-being is closer to what I was getting at.

[Voidryder]

We all know what humans have over animals,

but what we have over your typical sci-fi Super-being is closer to what I was getting at.

The fact that humans write those books and movies? We're always gonna win eventually otherwise Star Trek would have been a one episode TV show.

[LaydeeDem]

Relevant: http://bit.ly/O2Yeo5

Humans are pretty awesome.

[Kerbface]

Well we don't know what advantages we have over aliens, even aliens more intelligent than us. Our intelligence and dextrous hands give us the advantage over animals on Earth and they have other advantages we don't have. As for aliens, we may have a larger range of vision or sharper vision or better ability to see in the dark. We may be more mobile than them, we may be stronger than them, we may be able to handle higher levels of gravity, we may reproduce faster than them, we may have better hearing and they may only have unilateral hearing or sight, we may have better immune systems, the list goes on.

In movies, it is usually our ingenuity or our ability for compassion (Happens a lot in cheesy scifi like Doctor Who) which allows us to defeat aliens, probably because making them more capable physically or technologically than humans provides challenge and intelligent solutions are more interesting.

[drakesdoom]

How about our propensity to use any and all technology as a weapon. See the man kzin wars series of books. Space faring cats show up with battleships with laser cannons. We fly straight at them in cargo ships using the engine bell of a fusion torch as a shield and when we get close enough turn it on to burn their ship into a flaming wreck.

[Nikolai]

Back in the heyday of Star Control II, someone made a quick set of rules for converting the different aliens to GURPS characters so people could make and play tabletop RPGs if they so desired. There were a few dozen races in that game. (If you haven't played it, go to sc2.sourceforge.net and download the open-source version, dubbed "The Ur-Quan Masters" because Atari owns the rights to the name "Star Control". Seriously, get it. It's a lot of fun.)

Anyway, one of the things they threw out there was that Humans are relatively small compared to most intelligent species, and we're still pretty closely related to arboreal mammals. Which means that if you need something to clamber up into a tight space, or if you need a task that requires physical dexterity and flexibility, get a Human; we're like little spider monkeys compared to most of them. We're also somewhat frighteningly adept at applying new concepts. We sent murmurs through the sentient races of the galaxy when we went from putting the first Human in space to walking around on the surface of our homeworld's satellite in less than a decade. When we were asked for help out of desperation in an intergalactic war without our even having left the Solar System, the interstellar alliance that asked us for help was shocked to find that we, a relatively primitive technological species, had nuclear weapons. Lots of them.

All of this is empty conjecture, of course, but it's fun to speculate. A co-worker of mine toyed with the idea of trying to write a story about aliens that lacked sense organs that could detect subtle pressure changes in the atmosphere in the form of "sound waves"; the fact that we could communicate with one another without a direct line-of-sight was nothing short of miraculous to them.

Edited May 20, 2013 by Nikolai
Clarified some punctuation and phrasing

[Olha]

Its wrong perception. Human are not dull. All you see fast things around you are develop and control by humans. Human is the best creature in the world. Curiosity is in human nature by God, So curiosity drive human toward the hight of progress and this process will not stop until the end of world.

Photochromic Polarised Sunglasses

Edited May 21, 2013 by Olha