I am sadly lacking in Atlantean or alien ancestors


Did you know that PEOPLE WITH RH NEGATIVE BLOOD MAY BE DESCENDENTS OF EXTRATERRESTRIALS OR ATLANTEANS? I learned it on a site called Spirit Science, so it must be true. And their logic is impeccable: the Rh- phenotype is rarer than the Rh+ phenotype, therefore it must be specialer, therefore it must have been inserted into the genome by aliens, and implicitly those aliens love sticking things in people, so QED.

There are also some curious assertions.

So, if all mankind evolved from the same ancestor, their blood should be compatible. Do you get what I’m saying? If we had all evolved from the same ancestor, we would all have the same blood.

Continuing with that logic, if we had all evolved from the same ancestor, we would all have the same hair. I have thin, straight, weakly pigmented hair, unlike the majority of humans on this planet, therefore I must be an Atlantean. My beard has been slowly turning grey over the last 20 years, which my wife can use in the divorce proceedings as proof of my ongoing affair with an alien.

Where does this person think all human diversity comes from? Somehow the species has this mad jumble of varying alleles; one hypothesis would be that each difference is the product of a recent coupling between a human and a pure breeding, cross fertile creature from another planet, but it seems to me more likely (and readily demonstrated) that spontaneous mutations within individuals within our species produces variation. Evolution does not predict genetic uniformity.

The author has more “evidence”, though.

We don’t! RH Positive blood can be traced back to the Rhesus monkey and all other primates, but RH negative blood CANNOT. In fact, it cannot be traced anywhere else in nature.

This is simply not true. The author doesn’t understand Rh genetics.

We bear two closely linked, closely related genes, RHD and RHCE. The RHD gene produces the protein antigen D. RHCE has four common alleles that produce the antigens ce, cE, Ce, and CE. Individuals with Rh- blood are lacking the products of the RHD gene.

Get it? Rh- is caused by the absence of a specific antigen on blood cells. It doesn’t even make sense to say that it’s some kind of evidence for your alien hypothesis that Rh factor D isn’t present in some people, and it isn’t present in monkeys. It isn’t present in frogs, either, or in mushrooms or in paramecia. You’d also have to argue that these alien interbreedings weren’t adding a magic Rh factor, they were removing one.

Also, of course the Rh factor can be found elsewhere in nature. It’s present in all primates, as far as I know. Humans carry the results of a gene duplication event — our RHD and RHCE genes are copies of one another, about 92% identical in their coding sequence, and this duplication occurred sometime before the last common ancestor of humans, gorillas, and chimpanzees. I guess the star-man must have showed up about 10 million years ago to screw a monkey, and the shock was so great it duplicated a gene it already had.

It’s just nonsense and errors through and through, but let’s skip even more crap and go straight to the important stuff: the magical properties of being Rh-.

RH Negatives also tend to have strange characteristics about themselves that are uncommon to most other people in society, such as:

  • A feeling of not belonging
  • Truth seekers
  • Sense of a “Mission” in life
  • Empathy & Compassion for Mankind
  • An extra rib or vertebra
  • Higher than average IQ
  • ESP Ability
  • Love of Space & Science
  • More sensitive vision & other senses.
  • Increased of psychic/intuitive abilities
  • Lower body temperature
  • Higher blood pressure (some say lower)
  • Predominantly blue, green, or Hazel eyes
  • Red or reddish tint to hair color
  • Increased sensitivity to heat & sunlight
  • Unexplained Scars
  • Empathetic Illnesses
  • Ability to disrupt electrical devices
  • Experience strange unexplained phenomenon
  • Psychic Dreams
  • Prone to Alien Abductions
  • Cannot be cloned

Well now I’m curious. I have O+ blood, the most common and mundane type, which explains why I’m so easily cloned and why my laptop seems to be working just fine, but it also means I’m missing out on all these supranormal abilities. I’d like to hear from my Rh- readers. So tell me: do you have higher or lower blood pressure? Are your eyes a color other than brown? Are you responsible for the disruptions of world wide web services that occurred yesterday?

I suppose you boring Rh+ positive people could chime in with stories about how you hate the truth and lack ESP and despise science and have a low IQ and have a blood pressure that’s neither higher nor lower (OMG, that’s exactly describing me!), and maybe you’ve had the experience of an alien showing up in your bedroom late at night and saying, “Oooh, ick, not that one.”

Open thread, except every statement must be somehow related to your blood type.

Comments

  1. says

    Hmmm, I match a number of things on the list of magickalness. Including the “ability” to disrupt electrical devices, which is a fucking bane. It’s not an ability, either, just one of those things that happens. It’s not like I can point my finger at your smartphone and kill it.

    It’s seriously not fun to have outlets randomly explode in your face, or wake up to find that no, you did not magically go over a year with a functioning computer.

  2. InitHello says

    PZ@2: Why yes, I share your incredibly boring O+ blood type. It likely won’t surprise you to learn that my mother is Norwegian.

  3. blf says

    The mildly deranged penguin, who claims to have been to Atlantis many times (but insists she is not responsible for all the sinkings), and distinctly remembers playing with baby T. rex‘s there, points out the biggest error in this hypothesis is it fails to mention cheese, MUSHROOMS!, cheese, or moar cheese.

    She doesn’t know of any Altantian blood fetishes, other than the fads for dying it various colours (sparky metallic green was quite popular but tended to drain the batteries quite quickly), and later, for various adaptions to ease the underwater-breathing-thing that was becoming so useful. She never really paid attention to the latter, being a penguin and hence a graceful swimmer and flyer; besides, there were all those yummy cheeses escaping the latest sinking. Cheeses are not, in the main, known for blood, although some, like Horace, do eat mice (for instance). MUSHROOMS!, of course, are quite vicious, but not always mobile.

  4. InitHello says

    Tangentially, I’ve occasionally wished I could grow hemocyanin alongside my hemoglobin. Not only could it make my blood purple, I might be able to tolerate lower temperatures. Of course, in my fantasy world where that’s possible, all the other biological processes are completely independent of temperature.

  5. numerobis says

    “Higher blood pressure (some say lower)” — the best diagnostic ever.

    I actually don’t know my blood type. I had blood drawn recently, probably should ask (they either lost my sample or found nothing alarming so I haven’t gotten the results).

  6. Pilum says

    I do have green eyes (0- blood type), but my blood pressure is well within the normal range. And I was quite uninvolved in yesterday’s disruptions, and not capable of any supernatural feats to my knowledge. :-P

  7. Anne Murphy says

    Hmmm… I am RH- and my blood type is AB-. My mother must be an alien. My eyesight isn’t particularly good, and I don’t have an extra rib, unless I’m REALLY hungry. I do have green eyes, and have generally low blood pressure. I love science, but tend more to earthly subjects such as geology and botany. But all that woo-woo crap? Forget it, and keep it away from me. In fact, I declined to buy some stone jewelry from a vendor I overheard telling somebody what the different minerals “mean.” Ugh.

  8. redwood says

    O- here, finally someone with a negative view of life. Let’s see, I’d say I fit about 7 of the list (haven’t tried cloning myself yet, so don’t know about that one). That’s about 1/3, so where does that put me on the scale of weirdness?

    I do have an Rh- story to tell you. When I started donating blood in Japan a few years ago, I noticed that on the form where we write in our blood type, there was a big box for the letter, followed by a +. I crossed it out and wrote a (-) above it, then asked the nurse about it. She said that in Japan, 99.5% of the people are Rh+ so they figured it would save time and trouble if they went ahead and printed a +. (This might also explain why there are so few alien abductions in Japan, not to mention so few eyes colored other than brown.) So I’m 1 out of 200. I’m also O, which is the universal donor but not recipient. I decided I’d better donate a lot of blood out of self preservation–if I get a transfusion in the future, there’s a good chance the blood will be mine.

  9. komarov says

    Love of Space & Science

    Yes! So I must be an alien half-to-the-nth-power-breed. How do I summon the alien starship that’s just waiting for my signal? I’ve tried concentrating and nothing appeared in the sky above us. Really wanting a giant starship so I can just bungle around space for a few millennia isn’t the the answer either or it would have shown up ages ago.

    More sensitive vision

    More what what? That can’t possibly be true. The evidence against this blatant falsehood is as plain as the glasses on my nose.

    Increased sensitivity to heat & sunlight

    Yeeeeessss, we hates it, hates it! It burns us!!

    Unexplained Scars

    Well, clumsiness isn’t exactly an ‘explanation’ but more of an underlying cause, I suppose.

    Ability to disrupt electrical devices

    Early on in childhood I learned I can disrupt electrical devices, just as they can disrupt me. Other lessons included ‘stove hot’ and ‘scissors sharp’. Very useful stuff with some vivid memories.

    Cannot be cloned

    Nobody wants to clone me. I’ll just assume this is an innate defensive mechanism, just as in animals that are so poisonous nobody wants to eat them.

    Oh right, blood type. Uh, the red one. Liquid. Except when it comes out. Then it turns sticky and dries. I’d check the boiling point but haven’t got a bunsen burner handy. Another time perhaps.

  10. Onamission5 says

    I cannot be cloned! MWUHUHAHAH! Hell of a super power, now what do I do with it? No use at all against clone armies.

    Setting aside the other ludicrousness, I am supposed to be an Atlantean because of my negative rh factor, but my kids are not, because theirs is a plus? I am not a geneticist, but still pretty sure that is not how it works.

  11. johnmarley says

    I’m O-, so…

    RH Negatives also tend to have strange characteristics about themselves that are uncommon to most other people in society, such as:

    A feeling of not belonging this seems vague enough to apply to every person ever
    Truth seekers translation: conspiracy nut. Nope
    Sense of a “Mission” in life again, vague enough to apply to every person ever
    Empathy & Compassion for Mankind again, vague enough to apply to every person ever
    An extra rib or vertebra nope
    Higher than average IQ okay, yeah, but it could just be I’m an arrogant jerk
    ESP Ability BWAHAHAHAHA. No.
    Love of Space & Science yeah, but who doesn’t
    More sensitive vision & other senses. no. all of my senses are below average.
    Increased of psychic/intuitive abilities Didn’t we already do this one?
    Lower body temperature No. This seems like a medical issue
    Higher blood pressure (some say lower) Wait. What? Also, mine is well within the normal healthy range
    Predominantly blue, green, or Hazel eyes Northern European ancestry FTW.
    Red or reddish tint to hair color see above
    Increased sensitivity to heat & sunlight see above
    Unexplained Scars I do have this, because my pain sense is also crappy
    Empathetic Illnesses delusion, at best
    Ability to disrupt electrical devices No. Not just me, but no in general
    Experience strange unexplained phenomenon yet again, vague enough to apply to every person ever
    Psychic Dreams confirmation bias at best. More likely delusion
    Prone to Alien Abductions BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA
    Cannot be cloned how would you even know?

  12. pipefighter says

    Ugh…this sounds like the nonsense a friend of mine used to spout. He called himself a slider because street lights seemed to turn off whenever he was close by. I then pointed out that those same lights turned off all the time and he got all crabby about it. I later found out it was called cycling when lights do that.

  13. knut7777 says

    The only thing being O-negative gets me is endless badgering calls to donate. It is my only experience of popularity.

  14. wzrd1 says

    Let’s see now, O+, brown hair (with a patch with every other known hair color mixed in), brown eyes, multiple colored mustache (from a distance, it actually looked green), I can disrupt electrical devices.
    Typically via spilling liquid into them or my uncanny ability to kick my monitor power cord loose from the outlet.
    Still, I don’t think that Rh factor has anything to do with stretching and hitting a plug or spilling liquids.
    The hair anomalies can be easily explained as common chimerism.

    As for cloning, I’m pretty sure that there isn’t anyone stupid enough to even try that, isn’t one of me enough? ;)

  15. gazza says

    I’m B+, which isn’t so boring as there’s only about 8% of us in the UK population (and USA). Bit off topic but got me curious on worldwide distributions of blood types.
    My group has a hotspot in Central Asia, where it hits about 30% of the population; Rh- is very rare in east Asia. But while local populations can be hotspots for some groups it is haphazard around the world. There is just no correlation between group and ‘race’ for example.
    http://anthro.palomar.edu/vary/vary_3.htm

  16. Zeppelin says

    I have low blood pressure, unexplained scars, and mostly come out at night to avoid the sun, but I am also an idiot, have inferior brown hair and eyes, and my computer continues to work fine (by Microsoft standards) no matter how much I will it to catch fire sometimes. Maybe I should find out what my blood type is.

  17. Jake Harban says

    A feeling of not belonging
    Truth seekers

    Check and check.

    Sense of a “Mission” in life

    Err, close enough?

    Empathy & Compassion for Mankind

    Yep. Check on that.

    An extra rib or vertebra

    Yep! I bought it on ebay.

    Higher than average IQ

    Yep. Got that too.

    ESP Ability

    No, but just today I imagined something had happened and just five minutes later, I learned that an unrelated and obvious but conceptually similar thing had happened and that’s basically how ESP works right?

    Love of Space & Science

    Yep. Check.

    More sensitive vision & other senses.

    Oh fuck yes. Sensory overloads are no joke, man.

    Increased of psychic/intuitive abilities

    No. Sorry.

    Lower body temperature

    Lower than what? The core temperature of my body is many orders of magnitude lower than the core temperature of the Sun, so I’ll say that’s true.

    Higher blood pressure (some say lower)

    Higher or lower? Just gonna mark this one as “tautology” and move on.

    Predominantly blue, green, or Hazel eyes

    Yeah, something like that.

    Red or reddish tint to hair color

    No.

    Increased sensitivity to heat & sunlight

    Yes-ish.

    Unexplained Scars

    Yep. I have an unexplained scar.

    I know exactly where and why I got it, but I don’t plan on explaining it.

    Empathetic Illnesses

    Not sure what that means.

    Ability to disrupt electrical devices

    OK, I’ll cop to that one. And here, I thought I was just a walking techbane.

    Experience strange unexplained phenomenon

    Oh that happens all the time.

    Like, just the other day I learned my favorite coffeeshop was closed by the sheriff. What is that about?

    Psychic Dreams

    Yes, I’ve dreamed that I was psychic.

    Prone to Alien Abductions

    Yes, I’ve abducted aliens.

    And that is all I will say without my lawyer present.

    Cannot be cloned

    I don’t see any clones of me, so I’ll give this one a check as well.

    OK, so based on the checklist provided it’s clear that I am enjoying Rh- superpowers! Which is odd, because I was pretty sure I had an O+ blood type.

  18. rq says

    I have bad eyesight and average blood pressure but I’m not sure about my ribs. I hate science, as well as the truth. I do have blue/green eyes and a reddish tint to my hair, as well as the ability to disrupt electrical devices (there’s this cord, when you pull it out of the wall socket…), but nobody has cloned me yet, to my knowledge. I’m pretty sure I’ve had psychic dreams, but it’s true – the aliens have never wanted me.
    (B+. Also the grade I got in fourth year microbiology. Coincidence? I THINK NOT.)

  19. johnmarley says

    @knut7777 (#18)
    I sometimes get those, too. I haven’t been able to donate blood for 20 years. Something about having been stationed in Spain for a couple of years in the mid-90s. Apparently I’m a potential carrier of Mad Cow disease, and the Red Cross won’t accept my blood.

  20. congenital cynic says

    Wife and I both RH negative. Explains why I have always said her ass is “out of this world”. :)

  21. robertmatthews says

    That list is basically a form of cold reading: it’s designed to hit the sweet spot of the gullible people who will read it. There’s another, similar list meant to determine if you are an Earth Angel (http://foreverconscious.com/are-you-an-earth-angel-here-are-21-signs), some of which are:

    – You experienced an awakening very early on and perhaps were always attracted to nature, mythical creatures and the meaning of life
    – Even strangers tend to vent to you their problems and frustrations and you delight in being able to help them
    – You don’t feel called to do any one thing, in fact at times you can struggle with feeling grounded and finding your purpose
    – You are interested in philosophy, alternative methods of healing and the metaphysical
    – You try to align yourself with societal expectations but you have a very hard time doing so, or the pursuit of these things can leave you feeling empty
    – You are highly intuitive and often foresee events before they occur, you are also very in-tune with others needs
    – Your emotions feel deep and heavy at times and can fluctuate from positive to negative; you have an understanding of both the light and dark emotions
    – You may often “space out” or have vivid dreams or daydreams, lucid dream or astral project
    – You have an innate understanding of the potential and magic of the Universe
    – Your life may undergo many radical changes and you may find that you move around a lot
    – You find yourself floating or moving abruptly from one thing to the next as you feel guided or inspired to do so
    – You may not have stability but your basic needs such as money, housing, food etc. always seem to be taken care of

    Basically, a character description of a bored, lonely, mystic-minded, probably poorly educated white woman who needs to feel that she has a purpose in life. I can’t even get angry about this sort of thing: it’s mostly just sad.

  22. Michael says

    B-
    But before I get into that, I had a question on immuno-incompatibility. The way the immune response is taught in high school, is that a foreign antigen must be recognized so that the body can learn how to make antibodies to it, then remembers that antigen so that it can quickly make antibodies to future exposures. So it takes a week to 10 days for your body to develop antibodies to the latest cold virus, etc. and then on future exposures your body can rapidly respond, and you are effectively immune to the same virus for years. A similar process occurs for allergies, so you don’t react on the first exposure, but respond on the second (which fools many parents regarding food allergies and their toddlers).

    However that doesn’t hold for blood types. If you mix incompatible blood types on a slide, they will start to clump together, so if a person is given a transfusion of the wrong blood type, it will clot inside their blood vessels resulting in a nasty death. My question is why does this happen? If it is an immune response like I described above, how would you have been exposed to the wrong blood types previously, so that your body could initiate a rapid response? (It’s not like I go around getting exposed to A and O+ blood) Obviously something else is going on, so perhaps PZ could enlighten us.

    As for traits: no extra rib/vertebra, more indifferent to temperature than most people (I may not notice it being too cold or too hot in a room until someone complains), no effect on devices, and none of the last three. I’ll use coincidence or remembering the hits and not the misses for the strange unexplained phenomena and psychic stuff. Standard cold reading stuff.

  23. Rich Woods says

    I first gave blood when I was 20 years old (not out of altruism but because my girlfriend asked me to do it as a birthday present to her, and also partly to try to overcome my phobia of needles). I was told by the nurse who typed my blood that I was A-, which meant that if I gave blood to anyone who wasn’t in a certain 0.5% of the population it could kill them. Whoohoo, that’s my superpower!

    Higher than average IQ
    Love of Space & Science

    If I can only score 2 out of 22, that makes me a piss-poor excuse for an extraterrestrial. Can I be an Atlantean, please?

    Predominantly blue, green, or Hazel eyes

    Borderline. My eyes are a mix of colours and the colour anyone says they are (including me when I look in a mirror) depends entirely on the light level and therefore how small or large my pupils happen to be at that moment. I’ve never known how best to describe my eye colour. I have written ‘variable’ on forms.

  24. says

    A+ here, so of course, none of those apply to me. But, funny thing happened the other day.

    I cut myself making supper and a drop of blood fell on a hot burner. The drop screamed and ran away to hide under the table. Hmmmm… maybe I should get that checked out.

  25. Leo T. says

    I’m O+, but I get unexplained scars all the time.

    Mind you, I suspect that has more to do with being a cat owner than anything else.

  26. prae says

    Oh yeah, spirit science. I have it in my “lol” bookmark folder for months, right next to cracked and imgur. They also have an article about “Morse Code Messages Have Been Discovered in the Dunes of Mars!!1”, which apparently translate to “NEE NED ZB 6TNN DEIBEDH SIEFI EBEEE SSIEI ESEE SEEE !!”

    They keep using the word “science”, but I doubt they know what it means.

  27. blf says

    “NEE NED ZB 6TNN DEIBEDH SIEFI EBEEE SSIEI ESEE SEEE !!”

    Now we’ll have to disappear you.

  28. Azkyroth, B*Cos[F(u)]==Y says

    Proof positive (Rh positive?) that the correct order is “science, THEN spirits.”

  29. frankb says

    Comment # 28.
    If a person is given ABO incompatible red cells the transfused cells will not clump but rapidly hemolyze. This clogs the kidneys with antigen-antibody complexes and increases the viscosity of the blood. You are right about it being fatal. A tablespoon of blood can be fatal.
    My blood type is O+ and I am C+, E+, c+, and e+. This makes me very boring indeed.

  30. frankb says

    Comment # 29
    A neg blood can be given to A+, A-, AB+, and AB- people, which is about 40% or so of the population. AB blood can only be given to AB patients but that is still about 10%. So the 0.5% is a mystery.

  31. blf says

    *puts on tinfoil hat*
    NOW YOU CAN’T SEE ME!

    We can hear you.
    Smell you.
    We control the vertical.
    And the horizontal.
    We know where your USB ports are.
    Pathetic human scum, infecting the planet’s surface, hallucinating Rh matters…

  32. neuroturtle says

    I guess I’ve got 13 of those? Right down to 92/60 BP at last check and wild hypnogogic hallucinations. (I used to see all sorts of detailed, brightly colored things, but for the past few years it’s been mostly dead people.)
    But I have the best blood type: A+!
    Maybe I’m only like 1/4 Atlantean.

  33. opposablethumbs says

    Mine is blue. I am a very aristocratic horseshoe crab.

    Back on dry land it’s (probably, I can’t remember for sure) Universal Recipient. I think. Maybe. So I am the most useless of donors.

  34. frog says

    My mom is Rh-, my dad Rh+, and I was the second child. I AM SUPER SPECIAL BECAUSE I SURVIVED!

    And even though I’m Rh+, am I still part alien on Mom’s side? Can I pretend to be a Real Human™ because I’m +, but really I’ll be a 5th column infiltrator for the coming invasion?

  35. Lyn M: Totally Knows What This Nym Means says

    OK, A+ here. I bite.
    A feeling of not belonging — HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!! Surrre, NO one but a part alien has ever, ever felt like that!
    Truth seekers — OK. That’s two.
    Sense of a “Mission” in life — Yeah, try to reduce the number of websites spouting this crap.
    Empathy & Compassion for Mankind — Except the website part, see above.
    An extra rib or vertebra — Certainly in barbecue season. Five
    Higher than average IQ — But, isn’t everyone above average? I read that somewhere.
    ESP Ability — Pretty sure not.
    Love of Space & Science — OK, that makes seven.
    More sensitive vision & other senses. — Absolutely, and exceptionally good taste, too. Eight.
    Increased of psychic/intuitive abilities — Nope. Missed that one.
    Lower body temperature — Yep. So Nine.
    Higher blood pressure (some say lower) — Since tomayto tomahto wins, that’s Ten.
    Predominantly blue, green, or Hazel eyes — Right. So rare. Eleven.
    Red or reddish tint to hair color — Unless I can’t get the L’Oreal I prefer.
    Increased sensitivity to heat & sunlight — Not sure increased over what, but OK, I’m in. Thirteen.
    Unexplained Scars — And they’re going to stay that way, so just back off! Fourteen.
    Empathetic Illnesses — *Googles that one.* Guessing no on this one.
    Ability to disrupt electrical devices — Yep. Got the hammer right here. Fifteen.
    Experience strange unexplained phenomenon — often associated with having to talk to strange people at bus stops and other unfortunately public places. Sixteen.
    Psychic Dreams — Why not? One day I may be able to fly or I will get to be someone I’m not, so sure! Seventeen
    Prone to Alien Abductions — If we can count school administrators, yep. Wednesday mornings, pretty much. Eighteen.
    Cannot be cloned — Assuming someone wants to try, jury still out on this one. But my delicate senses tell me I’m likely safe on this one. Nineteen.
    Now come on! RH+, yes, but clearly 19/22, I’m 86% alien here, if you can handle the truth! And can you? Well?

  36. David Eriksen says

    Re: Michael @28

    First of all, not all transfusion reactions are fatal. There is a lot more to complete blood typing than just ABO Rh.

    What I was taught many years ago, was that the antigens of the ABO system are extremely similar to polysaccharides expressed by E. coli. When your immune system is learning self recognition, it stops making antibodies to E. coli that would cross react with your own blood. However, if you are A type and receive B blood, those antibodies are there to ruin your day.

    Rh incompatibility is different. If you are Rh negative, you aren’t likely to have a severe reaction to an Rh+ donation (or fetus if you’re a pregnant woman) the first time. In fact, the hospital blood bank where I most recently worked used O+ blood for emergency transfusions in men and women of non-breeding age because the first one probably won’t kill you and O- can be difficult to stock. In an emergency, we will risk seroconverting you. After all, you’re dead if we don’t.

    Re: OP
    O- here. Ignoring the obvious ones that apply to pretty much everyone,
    Extra rib: no
    ESP: of course not
    More sensitive vision/other senses: not remotely
    psychic: still no
    lower body temp: nope, I tend to run high
    high bp: it’s getting that way
    blue eyes: despite my Norwegian name, mine are a very dark brown
    hair: same story as the eyes
    increased sensitivity to heat/sunlight: does photic sneezing count?
    unexplained scars: there’s a perfectly good explanation for every one

    I think that’s enough. I’m clearly not an alien.

  37. CHARLES says

    So, if all mankind evolved from the same ancestor, their blood should be compatible. Do you get what I’m saying? If we had all evolved from the same ancestor, we would all have the same blood.

    Funny, universal donors have blood type O neg,

  38. wzrd1 says

    @Charles, that’s actually only a starting point. There are other antigens as well, where if one sensitized previously, would cause major problems.
    That’s most frequently found in hemolytic disease of the newborn.
    A lack of the Duffy antigen also confers immunity to P. vivax and P. knowlesi, but can predispose one for other diseases.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_blood_group_systems

    For other animals (well, a short grouping list),
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_type_%28non-human%29

    It’s all bloody complicated!
    Put that wet trout down.

  39. dianne says

    I’m not only Rh-, I’m the only Rh- person in my family. I’m also the only blue eyed person. Gasp! I must be an alien!

    No one’s ever tried to clone me*, though, so I can’t say whether that one’s true or not. I thought human or maybe primate cloning was difficult to impossible anyway because of some weird thing that primate chromosomes do on mitosis (sorry, can’t remember the details, much less whether it’s legit or not), but if so, isn’t can’t be cloned a commonality, not a difference.

    *That I know of (ominous music.)

  40. dianne says

    Also, re devices: Yep, devices hate me. But only one specific kind of device: devices designed to identify you by your hand characteristics. Seriously. Fingerprinting me takes forever and usually involves mashing my finger against the screen to get a reading. Palm scanners (the type that read veins in your palm) don’t seem to even know I’m there–I mostly have to have an attendant override if I need to get into some place with a palm scan verification system. Most bizarrely (to me), ink fingerprinting works very poorly on me. I have totally normal, undamaged fingers. No surgery, no damage to them, no capcitadine ingestion, nothing. I’m just oddly invisible to anything that identifies people by their hand characteristics. Weird, but more likely related to OCD-ish over washing than alien ancestry.

  41. wzrd1 says

    @dianne, yeah, I run into trouble with capacitive touch screens. Nothing alienish about that, for me, it’s Raynaud’s and I’ve been exposed to cold.
    Beside the inconvenience with those screens, grabbing a frozen chicken at the supermarket is an exercise in agony. It literally feels like my hands were driven over by a truck.
    Fortunately, that’s as far as it progresses. Others actually experience ulceration.

  42. says

    Same as frog I got to wonder whether I am a descendent of my mother. Yes, I’m also the second Rh+ child of a Rh- mother. Now, we haven’t had our kids tested, but if they are o- or A-, does that mean that they descended from aliens just like my mother but didn’t descend from me who birthed them?
    I turned on the TV some time ago by walking past it, does that make me alien enough to be my mother’s daughter and my children’s mother?

  43. wzrd1 says

    @Giliell, from what I’ve read online about the various genealogy sites DNA testing quality, I suspect that if I sent in two samples from myself, they might tell me that I’m not related to myself.

  44. David Eriksen says

    Re: Gileill @51,

    Presumably your father was Rh+ making you heterozygous for D (Rh- is recessive). If your partner is Rh-, then your kids each have a 50% chance of being Rh-. If your partner is homozygous Rh+ and your kids are Rh-, some sort of alien was definitely involved.

  45. David Eriksen says

    Re: my own last comment

    Sorry for misspelling your name Giliell. I hate it when people do that to me so it’s inexcusable.

  46. David Eriksen says

    Re: opposablethumbs @42

    If you’re a universal recipient then you are AB+. Please consider donating plasma. You are unlikely to have any of the common antibodies that cause transfusion reactions. With RBC transfusions, any reaction is a result of host versus graft disease. With plasma, it’s the other way around. For plasma, AB+ is the universal donor. Even if you have one of the rare antibodies, you could probably make a bit of cash for it.

  47. auntbenjy says

    Another O+ here. Almost 100% Scots, with some Orkney viking in the mix. Apparently I’m easily cloned, but I’m not sure why you’d want to.

    Not quite a universal donor, but I donated platelets for 3 years until my veins got too scarred. They liked me, as I was CMV-, and I got called in to donate almost every month for a while. Not even sure why I did it, because as an RH+, I obviously have no empathy for mankind… :P

  48. wzrd1 says

    @auntbenjy, why I’m pleased to “meet you”! I’ve never managed to meet anyone who was negative for CMV. My generation shares the same percentage that 80 year olds do, 90% seropositive.
    Damned shame about the veins, you’re a national treasure.

  49. Bryan Kilian says

    I am A-, and I do indeed have higher or lower blood pressure. Sometimes it’s higher, and sometimes it’s lower. And OMG, when I stand up after sitting for a while it drops precipitously low and makes me dizzy, so I have to be an alien. Or I could be completely normal. One or the other.

  50. Dark Jaguar says

    It happened, science finally proved the existence of the soul via the discovery of spirit particles. Duelists were right all along. It was only by their discovery that consciousness could be explained.

    Now, decades later, the study of spirit particles is in it’s prime. They’ve been broken down, combined with other particles, and used in modern devices for all sorts of things. However, the philosophers have been unsatisfied. At base level, how exactly does the spirit particle explain consciousness? It isn’t enough to explain away problems, and with growing concern, they’ve realized the current situation no better explains the existence of consciousness than just neurology did before.

    A brave new philosopher has come forward to suggest that there must be something more to spirit particles, something that fully explains it. This person has dubbed this concept the “super spirit”, which imbues spirit particles with their amazing properties. This idea has also come with a warning. Let no one ever discover super spirit particles, or their ability to explain consciousness will vanish, and hyper spirit will need to be invented.