Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Animorphs Forum Classic => Topic started by: Yarin on August 26, 2009, 10:58:27 PM
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Just wondering what you know about their evolution.
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lol what would they evolve from? you dont get much lower than a Taxxon, they actually seem like de-evolved Hork Bajir
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Are they even sapient?
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yes, they are. their evolution for the most part seems to make sense. most likely, the predetors on their planet are relatively small, so there was a drive for them to be larger, and a large body needs to be sustained, hence the hunger, especially if food on the planet is hard to find. eventually, selection would have favored those intelligent enough to find new sources of food. id say of all species (other than the engineered hork bajir) their evolution makes the most sense, even moreso than humans.
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How is it moreso than humans?
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their form is simple, they are pretty much designed for their purpose: dig to find food. we on the other hand have to use our intelligence to offset the disadvantages evolution handed us.
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i have been thinking about Taxxons all morning, possibly compounded by my assignment due tomorrow on polynesia.
Why did they have to morph snakes, why not pandas or blue whales or any number of critically endangered animals? or better yet given drugs or genetically engineered so they wouldn't want to eat each other all the time.
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Changing nature is hard changing body is easy with morphing also they chose snakes because it's close morohologically to a taxxon form
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i have been thinking about Taxxons all morning, possibly compounded by my assignment due tomorrow on polynesia.
Why did they have to morph snakes, why not pandas or blue whales or any number of critically endangered animals? or better yet given drugs or genetically engineered so they wouldn't want to eat each other all the time.
they didnt have to morph snakes, they chose to. probably because it was fairly close to their natural body, and as jake (or was it arbron) said they dont have much of an imagination.
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yes, they are. their evolution for the most part seems to make sense. most likely, the predetors on their planet are relatively small, so there was a drive for them to be larger, and a large body needs to be sustained, hence the hunger, especially if food on the planet is hard to find. eventually, selection would have favored those intelligent enough to find new sources of food. id say of all species (other than the engineered hork bajir) their evolution makes the most sense, even moreso than humans.
I actually think their evolution makes little or no sense at all.
We don't get much of an indication from the Andalite Chronicles about what natural resources they have on their planet, which is just a giant dust ball, right? So what DO Taxxons eat when they're not running around eating each other?
An entirely cannibalistic species does not seem like it could sustain itself in the long run. And, as far as I can recall, there is never any indication that the Taxxons eat anything but each other. So, unless they like screwing more than they like eating, which would pretty much take up every leftover neuron in their brains, the Taxxons should have died out a long time ago.
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It's quite possible that Planet Taxxon has had other lifeforms in years past. The Taxxons overhunted them and have had to resort to cannibalism since then. It's a common scenario in a food chain - the prey are hunted to extinction, forcing the predators into extinction too.
In fact, this could be why they were so willing to give themselves to the Yeerks (the Taxxon race, as you know, voluntarily entered into an agreement with the Yeerks). Their race might only have had a few years left until it ate itself.
It's things like this that make me wish the Taxxons had more of a backstory. Applegate was going to write the Taxxon Chronicles but just never got around to it.
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That makes a lot of sense.
Maybe Taxxons are a commentary on the current state of industrialized overindulgence and greed.
Or maybe they were just giant worms who ate each other.
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Lol true
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The most bizzare feature of a taxxon is their vulnerability if they are hit by any fast moving object they simply burst and are eaten by their fellow taxxons. In the andalite chronicles their is being called "the living hive" so we can conclude that at one point the taxxons did have some sort of a hive mind. Ants have been known to have extremly cannibalistic tendensies. The point of cannibulism is to conserve resources (I know this sounds rediculous) but if their was a shortage of food then they couldn't afford to waste a dead body. Mice eating some of their babies so they can feed the others etc.) . If some other event had wiped most of the other species out then the taxxons would be more likley to become cannibuls.
Actually I heard about a plane crash in the andes mountains and they were so far from any food source that the only way they could survive was to eat those who had already died (no they didn't start killing each other). Eventually they had to send scouts for help and the rations they took along were made from human meat. I know it sounds gross but they really didn't have any choice.
That may have been what happened to the taxxons just over a longer period of time.
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Omg Alive??? That movie is so intense.
You're right about the baby mice, but the reason it works for them is a) they eat almost anything and b) they breed like...well, like rodents. Short gestation, high-capacity litters. If anything, it proves that the only thing taxxons like doing more than eating each other is **** ing each other.
The only difference, at least that I see, is that taxxons in the books seem exclusively cannibalistic. As I said, that makes no sense from an evolutionary standpoint, so I guess this whole comment is a chance for me to reiterate that I like the idea that the taxxons consumed every last resource on their planet and literally had no other resources left except each other. Which I believe is more than enough motivation to voluntarily submit to the Yeerks.
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It could be some sort of mutation caused by an environmental factor? their are cannibals on earth but this has generally been 'eating people you kill in war' rather 'eating every living thing in sight' and the taxxons have some sort of mental illness rather than run of the mill human cannibalism. they don't seem interested in sex, i mean nobody ever says 'yuck hermaphrodite sex with giant cannibal centipedes in public"
wait no that's Lamarckianism isn't it?
actually their not exclusively cannibals-they eat dirt and well all meat.
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Well. What do we know about the the living hive? Maybe. MAYBE, the living hive actually produces Taxxons specifically bred to be eaten... that would be such an interesting evolutionary path. Maybe its some sort of religion (like that one race in Ellimist Chronicles that caused them to kill upwards of more than 75% of their children or something like that).
If I remember, the living hive was against the Taxxons going to the Yeerk side.
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Well. What do we know about the the living hive? Maybe. MAYBE, the living hive actually produces Taxxons specifically bred to be eaten... that would be such an interesting evolutionary path. Maybe its some sort of religion (like that one race in Ellimist Chronicles that caused them to kill upwards of more than 75% of their children or something like that).
Az, that is a bloody good point right there...
i actually never thought of it like that until just now. but i agree. also like it's been stated before (numerous times) KA didn't really digress on the taxxons... i wish she had, cos they are pretty cool
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I think somewhere it's theorised in the books that the reason Taxxons are such voracious eaters is because they're afraid of starving to death. Their sentience drives their cannibalism.
I think someone on this forum said the living hive may be a collection of Taxxons, and in TAC it can shut off a Taxxon's hunger. So the ones around the hive are quite tame.
Taxxons are said to be good swimmers in book 4, so I doubt the entire taxxon world is a big desert. Like Tantooine in Star Wars.
Ok, that's all I've got.
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the Taxxon home planet is a watery world with very few creatures in it other than the Taxxons also how can sentience drive cannibalism wont that make them smart enough to know that eating themselves is an evolutionary dead end.
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yeah but elfangor goes there in TAC and he describes as being a complete desert.
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Maybe that was just the parts he saw
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maybe they can swim because of underground caves, or pools of bug juice...
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under ground caves sounds feasible.
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maybe they're vast underground caves. that sounds kewl.
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Taxxon evolution is something I've often wondered about, so here's my two cents on the topic.
First of all, Taxxons cannot be purely cannibalistic. If Taxxons ate nothing except other Taxxons, the law of conservation of mass and energy says that the entire population would slowly convert all their mass into energy and then go extinct when they ran out of mass. You cannot have enough babies to offset that trend, because babies do not come from nowhere. So Taxxons might be cannibals, but they are not pure cannibals.
Secondly, book #43 mentions that, while Taxxons are diggers, if they eat nothing but dirt they would starve to death because the dirt doesn't have enough nutrition for them. HOWEVER, the book also says that a Taxxon can lose control and then dig until it starves. This seems like a phenomenally stupid adaptation, since it would mean that Taxxons would be digging themselves to death left and right. Which leads me to believe that it must only be earth's dirt that has so little nutrients that they can starve to death while eating it. Planet Taxxon must have some kind of super-nutrient-rich dirt just so the Taxxons would be able to dig as much as they do without all of them starving to death. And my theory to explain the Taxxon world's "super-dirt" is that the 'scruffy little plants' that Elfangor described in TAC might actually have extensive root systems under the surface, which might enrich the dirt far beyond the levels of nutrients found in earth's dirt.
So, from all this I think I can conclude that the bulk of their diet consists of Taxxon world super-dirt, and that they're hungry all the time because, super-dirt or not, they still need to eat a freaking lot of it to survive. Thus their constant, insatiable hunger is adaptive, since it drives them to eat all the dirt they can. And their cannibalism and hunger for meat is adaptive too, since meat would have even more of the nutrients they need, and thus would be vastly preferred over dirt.
And as far as the hive goes, I believe that it might be the adult form of any Taxxon that actually manages to live long enough to get to that phase, and that the rest of the Taxxons might just be larval forms. Thus why it creates more Taxxons.
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I think we can maybe marry your theory and the Living Hive theory from above.
The Taxxon super dirt theory is interesting. I've never read 43, which makes me feel like a doofus, but if there is nutrient rich dirt on their planet and that seems to be the only resource, maybe Taxxons themselves are contrived from that very dirt. Maybe they don't reproduce conventionally--maybe it is the job of the Living Hive, whatever that means, to produce Taxxon individuals from the very nutrient-rich dirt from whence they come! Then the living hive would be exactly that-something that lives by producing new worker drones when it wants to grow, using the energy of the very earth
it is comprised of.
I think this would also explain why taxxons not only have voracious appetites, but turn to cannibalism--if digging is their nature, and they dig not only as instinct but for sustenance, then it must be a pretty strong compulsion. So when they're not digging, they want to dig. And I'm assuming they dig with their mouths, and if they're made from dirt, then taxxons probably taste like the dirt they dig. So when they're not digging, either because they're on the surface or off-planet, their compulsion points them to the nearest alternative to fresh, taxxon-grade dirt--namely, other Taxxons.
I think that actually makes sense.
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but they eat anything and everything, not just taxxons.
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Does that men that Taxxons are silicon based life forms.
Jimmy Neutron.
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but they eat anything and everything, not just taxxons.
yeah, but they sure seem to prefer other Taxxons, don't they? If you're super hungry, you'll take what you can get.
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Does that men that Taxxons are silicon based life forms.
Jimmy Neutron.
Not necessarily. Earthworms eat dirt, after all, and they aren't silicon-based. The fact that Taxxons' DNA can be acquired leads me to believe that they have a chemical make-up similar to that of earth creatures. Interesting idea, though.
Anijen, the way you've phrased it made it sound like Taxxons are made of dirt, which we can be pretty sure isn't the case, since their anatomy seems to consist of a lot of slime and internal fluids. And anyway, most things aren't actually composed of what they eat, since their bodies rearrange those compounds into more useful ones to release energy and build proteins. Koalas are not made of eucalyptus leaves, for instance.
But although Taxxons probably wouldn't actually taste like dirt, your points are still valid ones. Taxxons do actually eat the dirt that they dig, so it makes sense that they'd want to eat anything they could find if they were prevented from digging. And as far as the Living Hive making new drones out of dirt, that's probably not literrally true, but the Living Hive probably eats dirt, too, and could use that matter that it consumed to produce new Taxxons, which sort of amounts to the same thing.
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I was being a little facetious, saying the Taxxons are comprised of dirt, sort of like saying a sailor is made of the surf or...never mind I really don't want to defend that.
And yeah, if you ate a koala it wouldn't taste like eucalyptus leaves, and I don't know if any cannibals frequent this forum but certainly humans don't taste like chocolate and hamburgers and potato chips. But what the things we eat themselves eat is often a matter of concern and quality. Corn-fed beef, for instance. But I guess what I was thinking of was more along the lines of growing a garden and irrigating it with well water--when you eat the vegetables, they taste like iron. And the Taxxons just happen to be a race whose main, if not only, source of sustenance tastes like iron, are addicted to iron, and have evolved not only to eat it but to eat it constantly as a source of their instinctual urge to dig. So if, by some magical, soft sci-fi process, "The Living Hive" contrives Taxxons from the magically nutrient-enriched Taxxon earth, maybe they will taste like dirt. And would be delicious to a Taxxon. It's as good a theory in any, imho, because I agree that the law of conservation of matter and energy pretty much dictates that the Taxxon race will die out if they are exclusively cannibalistic.
I hope this makes sense. Now I want to write a fic about the process by which the Living Hive spawns Taxxons...
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hehe. i've never been so fascinated by Taxxons.
but yeah , i read up a little on cannibalism on wikipedia, here are some interesting points
"Cannibalism seems to be especially prevalent in aquatic communities, in which up to ~90% of the organisms engage in cannibalism at some point of the life cycle.
Cannibalism is also not restricted to carnivorous species, but is commonly found in herbivores and detritivores."
The aquatic part is interesting in tying in with Taxxons because they can swim on a desert world. Also, dentritivores are creatures that get their nutrients from decomposing organic matter. makes sense.
"Another common form of cannibalism is filial cannibalism (a form of infanticide) where adults eat the young of their own species (sometimes even their own immediate offspring). "
that kinda fits in with what we've been thinking. Maybe Taxxons are actually just a lower stage of Taxxon growth, and the Living Hive produces axxons to be eaten. It could be an extreme version of cannibalistic infanticide. Crazy huh?
this is the article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannibalism_(zoology)
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people taste like pork... in a lot of polynesian languages the word for human/food is 'long pig'. Also my brother in law who was in Iraq and Afghanistan noted that burning people smell like bacon, even though people in those countries don't eat pork. He still eats bacon.(imagine one of those faux motivational posters which shows a burnt iraqi/child and a caption that reads 'Those children smell delicious')
Conversely the reason crocodile tastes like fish chicken is thought to be because captive crocodiles bred to be eaten eat fish and chicken. So perhaps you taste like your food only applies to lower life forms...
If the living hive is an adult taxxon then wouldn't the yeerks screw the taxxons reproductive cycle?
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you mean wouldn't they want to mess with it? or wouldn't they have messed it up?
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(see Steven Pinker, Chomsky and Konrad Kottak are idiots: informal language does affect ones ability to communicate ideas clearly)
I meant that if the living hive is the adult taxxon, then the yeerks taking a huge number of Taxxons off world would have serious negative effects on the reproductive cycle of Taxxons which would have been harmful to both the Taxxons and the yeerks (because their hosts would've eventually died out) because the yeerks were preventing the Taxxons from developing into adults, much like some parasites wasps and others, do to their catipillar or crab hosts on purpose the yeerks would've done by accident.
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Well. I think they would have done their research....and then went ahead and did it anyway. More so because the Taxxons were volunteer hosts.
maybe the Yeerks enslaved the living hive and forced it to reproduce mass quantities.
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Remember the living hive doesn't like the yeerks.
but perhaps she is like a brooding ant queen and can't stop herself from producing more babies.