I wondered if "slender man" was this. An unnaturally tall and thin figure, it doesn't have hands, but some sort of tentacles growing from its back. It doesn't strike at you, you're just likely to feel a sudden, crippling pain if you catch its attention and it comes too close, followed by your certain death. It does not move quickly, but it is relentless - you thought you had outrun it, and then it's suddenly right behind you again.

It occurred to me that this could be how a savanna predator views a human hunter. Our hands wouldn't register as hands (forepaws) for them, they would be some sort of super-flexible grasping thing, like a tentacle. Standing upright we would seem impossibly tall and thin. The animal doesn't understand throwing, let alone guns, all it knows is that getting the attention of this creature is related to sudden pain and death at a distance. Endurance hunting is pure horror - you thought you had outrun it, but there it is again.

Not fiction but I love this part in Feynman’s The Pleasure of Finding Things Out:

“When he was very small we used to rock him to bed … and tell him stories, and I’d make up a story about little people … they lived in the ventilator; and they’d go through these woods which had great big long tall blue things like trees, but without leaves and only one stalk, and they had to walk between them and so on; and he’d gradually catch on [that] that was the rug, the nap of the rug, the blue rug …”

I can recommend "The Bees by Laline Paull". It attempts to show the world from a bee's perspective. It is terrifying, confusing, and horrific. An excellent story.

I can't recall a whole story or genre that plays with this concept to such an extent, but I've seen it pop up from time to time in all kinds of fiction.

First example that pops to mind: If you read that completely enthralling and wonderful novel Watership Down by Richard Adams, its told entirely from the perspective of Rabbits, and beautifully so. There are several scenes, especially one featuring their first encounter with a colossal freight train and its engine, described completely from their perspective, with no knowledge of what these man-made machines are. It's right up the alley of the horror concept you mention.

Terry Pratchett had some books kind of like this.

The Carpet People has characters that live in the fibers of a living room carpet and are subject to mysterious phenomena they don't understand (such as a vacuum cleaner).

The Bromeliad Trilogy is similar, although the characters are a few inches high and at least have a concept of full-sized humans. They have to move their tribe from a department store that's closing down to somewhere else, which means they have to learn about the outside world.

you may also enjoy

"Same mama, different species" - "Iberian harvester ant queens clone males of a different species in a never-before-seen case of reproduction and domestication. "

https://www.404media.co/the-biological-rulebook-was-just-rew...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junji_Ito%27s_Cat_Diary:_Yon...

Junjie itonhas a funny one about cats

There are youtube channels like Latest Sightings that show nature in its rawest form and it is very disturbing. Like male zebras killing foals that er not his and seeing the mother desperately defending her foal.

Not quite the same, but in anthropology this is known as Nacirema. "Body Rituals of the Nacirema" was the first example.

starmaker is a nice scifi which dives quite deep on the topic of other species becoming sentient and what that might look like. its not quite whats said here ofc but the line of thought kinda reminded me of its descriptions of certain types of life

So many great suggestions here! Thanks!

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They have excellent smell. Not only foraging for plants but hive smells and pheromones which are socially important. I’m sure that would be enough to get them to follow the smell inside a building.

"Bob's over by the entrance. He's sweaty and agitated. He's furiously pointing to a place in the field near our home."

What would any social creature do?

Don’t you find cold stowaways hiding between the frames the next day? I have in the past, when I’ve missed one or two.

Basically protecting their strage from the real robbers, from their perspective.

A swarm is actually a reproductive process. It looks like a mass of bees, but it has a specific purpose and composition.

(Although maybe you’re right colloquially)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarming_(honey_bee)

A load of bees engaged in robbing behaves entirely differently from a swarm, which is a magical thing to interact with.

Ironic coming from someone named "mead"!

If you'd seen the movie, you'd realize that it couldn't have been more ridiculous even if that had been the title.

And soldiers who use bees in battle are called the apilry

This is a bad take on the farming of an invasive species.

Bees don't make more honey than they can use. They make what they can and have reserves for Winter and growing in the Spring. Do you pay your landlord everything you'd otherwise save?

I've never seen a bee colony "worry" about finding food. They'll travel within a one mile radius for foraging, and four to five miles for water. Colonies will also leave a hive, or swarm (split into 2 colonies) if there is not enough resources for them.

It's not a deal. They don't understand what's happening. If you're going to take their honey, at least don't make up some weird fantasy where they're happy about it.

> Bees make way more than they can use.

When in captivity. In the wild they make what they'll need to abscond or swarm when the time comes, and they do really take all of it with them in those cases.

The “good” bees are the ones we bred not to mind.

Multiplayer version where the bee side is in a cutesy bubble primary colors bright animation style. And the apiarist side is grimdark raining gothic horror style. Release it as two separate games, tie the back ends together, never actually tell the players that the other side isn't AI.