hear me out…
The Earth is a Tastebud
The Five Factor Model illustrates the Big 5 Personality Traits that psychologists use to describe an individual's character: Conscientiousness, Extrovertedness, Agreeableness, Openness to experience, and Neuroticism.
We apply a similar model to our sense of taste, breaking this perception down to five elements: salty, sour, bitter, sweet, and umami. Coincidence? I think not.
As we age, our tastebuds change, and we go through phases of enjoying particular tastes more than others. When we are sick, our sense of taste is often skewed or muted altogether. The earth's current state of climate change has caused a crisis because we cannot determine wether the Earth has a bad case of strep throat or is merely going through a spicy phase.
Traditional science tells us that there are miles and lightyears between our planet and its neighbors and we perceive this distance as the vastest limits of our imagination, however we forget that size is relative. Tastebuds on a tongue or other organ are pockets of neurons that we typically picture squished up next to eachother, but they are in fact spread sparsely across the universe they inhabit.
Each tastebud a celetial body in their own Milky Way. Or Salty Way, depending on their type of reception.
The amount of tastebuds a creature has is directly linked to that creature's impact on the universe. Humans have 10,000 tastebuds, and have physically changed the landscape of their world, devastating the well-being of their roommates, such as the chicken.
Chickens only have 24 tastebuds. The entire species has been enslaved by the (unpicky) appetite of humans and devolved from a wild birds that formed their own communities, to vegetables that maintain no abilities except for that to feel pain.
Perhaps if they had a few more tastebuds, they would gain a taste for revenge.
Taste is arguably the pickiest sense we have, and we avoid tasting anything we don't like to sometimes dangerous degrees. We humans are extremely lucky we only have tastebuds in our mouth, or day-to-day tasks would be much less convenient. The catfish has 100,000 tastebuds, 10 times MORE than humans, and they are ALL OVER its body, and most sensitive in its whiskers. You may not want to believe this whiskered water-worm is more influential than you are, but consider this.
Catfish live in muddy, murky waters that we cannot possibly explore without proper equipment, and even those instruments do not present us with the full picture of what's really going on down there.
Catfish are able to taste food from a mile away,
taste PH change in their environment,
and even taste whether another catfish is a good candidate for mating. This talent alone places them far above humans on the intelligence scale.
Undoubtedly, the catfish we have consumed are martyrs for their people, allowing themselves to be "caught" as covert operations to infiltrate our culture from the inside out.
The humans who have digested the persuasive flesh of the Catfish have been dosed with an alternative reality serum…
…that infected our species with the false idea that HUMANS ARE THE BEST and live on their own special planet in with their own special language and turn other creatures into their own special snacks.
Little do most realize that the Earth is merely a tastebud, and we have all been Catfished.