Floyd Looney's When The Tardigrades Came

When the aliens came, everyone expected them to be aggressive and take over the planet, but they did not. These aliens are portrayed in Floyd Looney’s “When the Tardigrades Came…” These aliens instead of taking over the planet, did the opposite, they adopted the culture of humans. It took some time for both sides to get more used to each other, but not all the culture of the aliens was lost. This bit of culture not lost, was kept secret from the humans, and when the humans found out, there was an outrage. The difference between the aliens and humans is shown in the cultural differences between them, and the alien’s resistance to fully adopt the culture of humans affects the human’s opinion of them. These aliens are like humans in some ways,
Unlike their earthly counterparts, these tardigrades had to eat, unless they were in “their ‘Tun State’. In their Tun-state they could survive for a decade like being in suspended animation” (Looney). This way of life was fading away though because the tardigrades no longer had to struggle to find food, as food is readily available in most modern human regions. The tardigrades adopted a human behavior over their own behavior when it came to getting food. The narrator first sees this phenomenon when he sees a tardigrade in a super-market, “The female…was shopping and buying normal items like bread and milk” (Looney). At first the adoption of culture was weird for the humans, but over time they got used to it. Unfortunately, however, not all of the adopted culture was good, the tardigrades also embraced negative behavior. There had been many accusations that “almost half the newcomer aliens were welfare bums” (Looney). Proving how willing the tardigrades wanted a different culture, this shows the increasing power humans had over the tardigrades, with many of them on welfare humans could have ended the help they needed at any