Meat Allergy

It was disgusting to watch. They were literally eating a species that was so closely related to them. Xiy’io turned away from the console which showed information about the planet they had discovered several centuries ago.

As soon as they had been able to travel through deep space, his species had sent out probes to discover new planets. There had been high hopes to discover other developed sentient species but so far, they had only discovered this weird looking, carbon based life form that called themselves humans. And they were barely evolved enough to visit their own moon.

The fact that these creatures were carbon and not silicon based had already come as a shock to his people. It had been less expected than the fact that they looked completely different from Xiy’io’s species. Only two eyes! Four appendages! Who needed four appendages? Three were more than enough.

But what finally stopped them from contacting the humans had been their appetite for meat, sourced from other creatures that shared most of their genetic code. Humans classified themselves as mammals but didn’t consider eating other mammals a crime.

Xiy’io shuddered. He’d never consider eating another Z’zapi, regardless of that individual’s personal development.

For hundreds of years they had waited and watched. For a short time, they had hoped that the humans would stop eating other mammals, but the vegetarian and vegan movement just didn’t spread through the whole population.

Finally, the great council made a decision: They would take the human’s fate into their own hands and keep them from ever eating mammalian meat again. They would make them unable to eat it.

Using a tiny organism native on earth, called a tick, as the carrier, they created a way to make humans have an allergic reaction to mammalian meat. A disaccharide named Alpha-Gal was slightly modified so that the human body would immediately start producing antibodies against it. If the human then ate meat, he’d have a severe allergic reaction.

Xiy’io looked at the tiny insect for a while.

”This will do”, he said. ”As soon as the humans have stopped their barbaric behavior, they might be able to evolve further. And one day, we might forge an alliance with them. And then, we won’t be alone in the universe anymore.”

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Sources:

Meat allergy associated with α-Gal
What's eating you? lone star tick (Amblyomma americanum)
A Tick Bite Could Make You Allergic to Meat—and It's Spreading
Tick-induced allergies: mammalian meat allergy, tick anaphylaxis and their significance

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A big Thank You to @saywha who suggested the Alien perspective

Disclaimer: I’m neither vegetarian nor vegan, any statement about how meat is disgusting was purely for storytelling.

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_{Picture taken from pixabay.com, does not show a lone star tick.}