New Orbit Magazine Issue 08; Feb 2020, The Future of Animals

calorie, seeing as we can’t absorb it), and only
a tiny number of Earth organisms would ever
be able to metabolise it. Luckily for us, it
didn't have any significant side effects that we
were aware of.
This isn't true of all chirality problems.
Famously, the chirality of thalidomide, a
drug formulated in the 1950s, had some
tragic effects as mankind discovered that,
while one form of the molecule cured the
symptoms of morning sickness, the other
created significant birth defects within
human pregnancies. Both chiralities were
unknowingly included in the medication,
and prescribed to tens of thousands of
pregnant women, resulting in as many as
20,000 victims of what came to be called
“thalidomide poisoning”.
If the molecules of nutrients, proteins, and
acids in the bodies of alien animals weren’t
formulated in the same chirality that we
humans are evolved to metabolise, not only
would consuming the meat harbour no
nutritional effect for us, but it could have
untold physical side effects on the human
body. Perhaps it would reconstruct our gut
bacteria, or help us to adapt to the new
surroundings, or do nothing except taste
good (or bad). Else, and probably more likely,
it could create dangerous mutations, even
shut down metabolic processes entirely – and
that's assuming the best-case scenario, that
these animals are made from the same
fundamental building blocks as we are.
If life evolved purely independent of the
origin of life on Earth, sans Panspermia, then
the alien game we discover would be so
unfamiliar to us that we’d be lucky to survive
taking a bite, let alone deriving any kind of
sustenance. The human body is proficient at
dealing with substances which occur in our
familiar niches on Earth. Our bodies can
tolerate relatively massive fluctuations in
nutrient intake, balance hormones, and
moderate digestive function based on the
food we ingest that we have evolved to
consume – even the historical diets of our
mothers, and our mothers’ mothers’ can have
effects on our finely tuned gut machine. On
the other hand, we tend to be very intolerant
of things we haven't encountered much
across the span of our evolution – to the
point that even trace amounts can be very
harmful or even fatal. Humans can become
incredibly sick simply being in the presence
of lead or mercury in sufficient amounts, let
alone eating them. If the planet we happen
upon is one whose life has evolved from a
lead or mercury-based ancestor, rather than a
carbon one, every creature in their food
chain would be capable of surviving,
digesting, and metabolising these molecules
that would immediately kill us. Considering
the amount of organic matter that evolved
right alongside us here on Earth that is still
poisonous to humans and all animal life,
there is a major chance that any alien
foodstuffs – even if they were more familiar
than not – would simply poison us all at first
bite.
Alongside this, given the fact that many
earth animals – humans included – have
developed the sense of taste largely to alert us
to when we consume something we shouldn’t
eat, it is more than likely that these alien
foodstuffs would be wholly unappealing. Our
sense of taste often kicks in when we eat
something that is poisonous, unripe, or
nutritionally void. We usually taste these
traits as bitterness or sourness, and most
people with instinctively put down whatever