Humans are Space Orcs: Screaming

madzapan:

What if humanity is the only species that screams when it’s scared? Because honestly, what species in its right mind would make a loud, location-identifying noise when it’s threatened by a danger thing? It terrifies aliens–for them, screaming is only used as a battle cry or something to locate others. It’s rare that a species can do it at all. High-pitched sounds like that are actually unheard of in species without sonar capabilities.

Like, take this example. An alien and a human are walking through some kind of abandoned spacecraft, being stalked by some kind of beast thing. Suddenly, the beast goes running right past them into an adjacent hallway. It doesn’t see them, but it was close.

SCARY THING HAPPENS!
ALIEN: *starts making nervous, quiet clicking noise with its mandibles*
HUMAN: *SHRIEKS*
ALIEN: *jumps and looks over in concern* What… what was that?
HUMAN: What, why did I scream? Uh, it scared me?
ALIEN: Were you trying to scare it off with that… noise?
HUMAN: Uh, no. I was just scared.
ALIEN: But wouldn’t that… didn’t that tell it where we are?
HUMAN: I guess so? I don’t know. Jeez, it just took me off-guard.
ALIEN: But you don’t have sonar, how did you even make that sound?
HUMAN: *shrugs*
ALIEN: …never do that again, please.

Most aliens think that a screaming human is more frightening than any beast.

They don’t like to take humans on missions, because the most common reaction to hearing human scream for the first time is soiling oneself.