The first alien contact between the Polity and another intelligent race is with the crab-like carnivores race named Prador, who first appear in Neal Asher's Prador Moon. This signals the start of the devastating war between both races. The Prador not only consider rotting human flesh a delicacy, they also enslave them by coring out brains and thralling them with spider-like units linked to a controlling Prador adult thus making humans into mindless blanks and easy for them to control.