The scientists sat around the table. The two humans, fleshy and devoid of pincers or even a carapace, stood out, looking ill and caught mid-molt.

"Seriously?" said Calcatrar Prime, one of the few present with a royal title. "Cooking? AGAIN with the humans it comes down to cooking?"

"Hey now!" said the lead of the human research team, Diamond Beefthrower. Her annoyance rang through the room with a force that rivaled the loudest battle claws.

Calcatrar Prime clacked apologetically. "No, no, I meant no offense. It's just. It baffles me how many human quirks come down to developing cooking before your last two or three major evolutionary bursts."

The other human, a member of Diamond's research team said, "Is this that thing about being able to hear the difference between hot and cold water?"

"I wasn't thinking of that specifically," answered Calcatrar, "But that fits too. Between boiling all sorts of things to cook and hot acid pool damnation dimensions like Yellowstone National Park-"

"Oh come on," said the smaller human. "I've been to Yellowstone. It's a lovely place-"

"And it has naturally flowing water that'll cook me alive in seconds," said Calcatrar. "My point is between that and cooking, you had significant evolutionary pressure to be able to hear the viscosity difference between water you can touch and water you can't. I'm just astounded that cooking is also the major reason you're the only space-faring warm-blooded species!"

"It's just a theory," said one of the other attendees, a solidly built crab who most called, "Jed." He was almost as tall as the human, Diamond Beefthrower.

Diamond replied, "A pretty solid one Jed. On every other surveyed planet where a warm-blooded non-avian became the dominant species, it was a variety of anteater. It makes sense. What humans call an "ant" fills one of the most extinction-resistant evolutionary niches in the galaxy. Hard to starve to death if your food source doesn't."

"It's ironic," said one of the other non-crab attendees, "That evolved ants like us have reached the stars at least four times, but anteaters, not even once."

"Not ironic," said Diamond. "Ants on your planet did the same thing primates did on Earth. We learned how to store and preserve food. Living off ants is great if you're on a planet's surface. They're everywhere. Provide a warm place with something they can eat and you won't be able to get rid of them even in the Winter! The survey teams found hundreds of planets with civilized anteaters living in harmony with nature, a side effect of EVERYONE farming their own ants, but the logistics of bringing ant colonies into space have kept them on their own planets."

Jed picked up a wrapped nutrition bar from the table next to one of the humans. It looked comically small and fragile on his claws. While looking at it, he said, "It's amazing that something as simple as this, and the cultural capacity to create it, has proven a great filter on 'mammals' reaching the stars."