Human machinery in Yeerk pool

[niknik]

I've read references in a few books that the underground Yeerk pool has Caterpillar earthmovers and cranes etc, however I'm sure I've also read that Taxxons are efficient earthmovers, diggers etc all in their own right (I think they were constructing some sort of quarry or something)... so

A) why bother with the human machinery? and
B) how would they even get all that machinery underground in the first place?


(P.S. I'm a total newbie so I'm sorry if this has been brought up before...)

[Chad32]

a Human can use a shovel to dig a hole, but a crane will do it faster. That's like asking why people drive cars or ride bikes when they have a perfectly good set of legs.

Now why they use Human machinery, instead of more advanced machinery? I guess because the Yeerks have a habit of taking technology from other species and using that, instead of making their own.

It shouldn't be hard to imagine how they got the machines down there.

[JFalcon]

In addition, Taxxons could probably have made some nice tunnels but might not have been able to clear the size of cavern they needed for the pool without killing themselves, because of how hard they are to control at the best of times the Yeerks may have chosen not to risk their Taxxon-controlers eating themselves to death.

Possibly anyway, doesnt seem like Visser Three minds killing them just for being annoying, but Visser One, under whose watch the pool was likely constructed was a little more conservative. 

[Darth Revan]

Yeah, it's likely that Taxxons were used to make a tunnel big enough for earthmovers to get in, then the catipillers did the rest.

Also, Bulldozers and cranes can move dirt a lot faster and in greater quantities than Taxxons.

[DinosaurNothlit]

Keep in mind, as well, that earthmovers don't smell as bad as Taxxons do.  Book #43 said that when Taxxons dig, they . . . excrete . . . all the dirt that they move.    To dig out an area the size of the Yeerk pool, that would leave a huge mess, whereas earthmovers would be a lot cleaner.

I wonder, though, why they don't just use Dracons to burn through the dirt?  Dracon beams vaporize most materials, and I would imagine that a big enough beam would be a heck of a lot faster than an earthmover.

[morfowt]

yeah... too good, maybe. they'd just create a big hole in the ground, not a cavern.

[Darth Revan]

Also, a big enough beam would attract attention, and make quite a noise.

[wildweathel]

That and "vaporized" doesn't really mean "out of mind."  As a rule of thumb, vaporizing something generates about a thousand times as much gas (by volume) as the original solid.  Besides, rock contains a lot of silicon dioxide.  Vaporized silicon dioxide turns into glass as soon as it gets cold enough.  Glass craters anyone?

But drop off dirt and crushed rock as fill?  Humans do it all the time.  That's why they have human equipment.  Even if the Taxxons can handle it (so to speak) they don't yet have a good place to dump Taxxon you-know-what-I-mean.

[Darth Revan]

"That's a big pile of ****."
                    -Dr. Ian Malcom

[Hewlett Aldershot III]

Also, given what we read about the taxxons, they're good with dirt, not so much with rock. Remember how Tobias had to use the teeth like drill bits to get through the dome? Would have been nigh-impossible to get through that much rock with taxxons.

[voodooqueen126]

So we agree that taxxons would be impractical due to their feaces  and you would have to use technology to dig a whole.
As to why that technology is human rather than advanced yeerk technology:
answer the yeerks are parasites  and in the same way that humans exhibit 'predatory' behaviour, yeerks exhibit parasitic psychology: they don't really have original ideas,  so they use human creativity/creations, indeed it seems that yeerks take on many of their hosts qualities (although they shouldn't as i have said earlier-the yeerks should do quite well if we gave them undesirable humans) such as feminity (edriss) hubris (esplin),  the sheer slowness of many hork-bajir controllers (as seen the yeerks tendency to gabble words) and in more obvious ways such as Edriss being an awful driver.
The yeerks are a demonstration of the difference between genius and simple intelligence.
Comparably on Earth:
The Japanese, until the Meiji restoration deliberately isolated themselves as their authority could be challenged by outside influences (which is why the last samurai is so stupid=it effectively sided with the Samurai who were a caste who knew that modern weaponry challenged their elite status), when Captain C Perry arrived on the black ships he caused the opening of Japan, the japanese were apparently ashamed at the humiliation of losing to western/foreign technology and realised that they needed to develop Japan into an industrial and military power. So they set their navy training people to study with the English (who had the best navy) their army with the french etc. and when the french lost the franco-prussian war, the japanese withdrew their army training people from France and sent them to Germany, as the they decided that the German army was obviously much better. So the whole of Japan's development was copying off other more advanced (western) nations, they defeated the Russians (the most backward westerners) the first time any Asian nation had defeated a western power (although this pushing the analogy Hork-Bajir=Russia). They then proceeded to lay waste to Asia. At the beginning of WW2 Japan had the most advanced Airforce of any nation,  but cut off from original thinkers and consumed by fascist ideology they had not improved  by the end. Today the Japanese continue on miniaturising, aesthetising, improving and perfecting foreign inventions: Americans invent the car but Japanese cars are smaller, prettier, with more gadgets, fuel efficient and all around better. Likewise the yeerks borrow alien technology (the shredder) and improve it (the dracon beam which is more painful)..
Obviously thirty people will jump on this analogy, and I am aware that I simplify things a lot. but it is something to consider.

[VisserZer0]

Well, the Yeerks use machine guns, helicopters, and the like, so why not use human machinery in the Yeerk pool.