Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Animorphs Forum Classic => Topic started by: Ferahgo on June 11, 2010, 02:19:57 PM
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As a biologist by education, I've always enjoyed pondering the biology, physiology, and possible evolutionary origins of fictional aliens. And of all the unique and bizarre alien species in the Animorphs series, one of the ones I find least likely to be able to exist in real life are the Yeerks.
It's not hard to imagine that an intelligent parasite could evolve. What's hard to imagine is how one could evolve to occupy hosts in the manner that Yeerks do. The reasons for this are several. In order for anything to evolve a particular way, the selected traits need to simply be beneficial to the organism's rate of reproduction. Yeerks cannot reproduce while in a host, and nor can they feed. In order to do either of these things, the Yeerk needs to exit the host, leaving it in the most vulnerable state possible.
I'm trying to fathom a likely evolutionary precursor to the modern Yeerk. I'm imagining that the earliest Yeerks infested much simpler animals, probably free-swimming ones that cohabited the Pools on the Yeerk home planet. How did the Yeerks keep the host body from killing or consuming the Yeerk once it left the host to reproduce or feed? Before the Yeerks managed to take over more advanced hosts, they would not have been able to "organize" themselves to, say, restrain a host body while the host's Yeerk fed.
The only way I can imagine that the Yeerk mode of parasitism evolved is if the Yeerks had some kind of massively dangerous natural predator in the pools, and the only way to escape or fight against it was to evolve to infest others (or the predator itself, somehow). This still doesn't answer the question of how the Yeerks survived in the early days when needing to exit the host.
(As a slightly-related aside, I don't personally have a moral problem with the Yeerks infesting anything on their home planet, including the semi-sentient Gedds. The relationship the Yeerks had with the Gedds seemed far more similar to the human relationship with cows, an analogy that Karen tried to make in book #19. It was something the Yeerks did not NEED to do to survive, but which strongly enhanced their enjoyment of life [yes, beef strongly enhances my enjoyment of life, damnit]. In other words, anything endemic to the natural ecosystem of the planet would probably have not been avoidable from an evolutionary perspective. It's the flying around the galaxy enslaving other races thing that's problematic.)
Sorry for the ramble, just something that's been on my mind lately.
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they do have a predetor, i forget what it was called, but it was even able to suck a yeerk out of a host. planet wise, or at least for a few species, they are possible, but not for species from a different planet. also, was it ever explicitly stated that they have to leave hosts if they are on their homeworl? cuz their sun would provide the rays, so they might be able to get them without exiting the host all the way. the fact that they cannot reproduce in the host is irrelephant, because it allows them to reach new pools they wouldn't be able to otherwise and thus increases their ability to reproduce. In fact, that was probably the initial ability, simply enter the host's ear, and then exit it some time later in another pool where they can hit on foreign Yeerks. Then, sometime later, the ability control was evolved to better select where the Yeerk would be dropped off, reentering the host was probably unneccessary, it was probably only when they became a true inteligent society that they started keeping their host through multiple feeding cycles.
And if it was discovered that cows are sentient most (though of course not all) people would start objecting to eating them.
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This has been discussed on here before (of course...because we're all uber-nerds XD) but I think you bring it up in a more biological light than the other thread, which focused more on the evolution of Yeerk intelligence than the evolution of Yeerk biology in general.
I think most of your points are pretty logical ways in which a creature like a Yeerk could have evolved; an aquatic host, or semi-aquatic (the Gedds did have webbed feet, if I remember right, and poor walking/mismatched leg sizes) would make the most sense. Earlier hosts could also have drank from the Yeerk pools and the first Yeerks that evolved the sense of infestation could have entered the first hosts this way. Another interesting thing is that it seems really likely that the first few Yeerks who tried to enter a host probably ended up killing the host in the process, and maybe even killing themselves off inadvertently...so the Yeerks who were able to successfully infest a host would survive and pass on something biological, instinctual, that would allow its offspring a chance for the same success. Maybe Yeerks who could infest started preferring to mate and die off with other Yeerks who could infest, and those who couldn't infest were a sort of biological or cultural rival tribe in their "view"? (Hah, Yeerk jokes.) Sort of like early Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis.
I wonder if there was an early precursor to the vanarx in book #2, the "Yeerkbane" that sucked Yeerks out of their hosts? Perhaps that form of the vanarx evolved as Yeerks began to selectively take hosts more often, whereas the earlier form might have either had jaws or just siphoned Yeerks up from the pool instead of sucking them out of hosts (seems like an awful lot of effort to get at a food source that is readily available and totally helpless outside of a host...but whatever, it made for an interesting one shot Yeerk predator :P)
The idea of infesting the predator itself is kind of interesting, the vanarx didn't appear to be infestable (big, purple wormy thing with...no eyes? Ears? Wasn't really described in detail)...but this is an idea similar to one that Stephenie Meyer used in The Host, her novel about alien parasites. If you haven't read it, you might like it, even if you hate Stephenie Meyer (sorry Twifans, but I really think she's awful...except for The Host, which is like "alien parasite 90210" instead of "sparkly vampire 90210". Slightly more bearable, to my Animorphs sensibilities :P)
russianspy brings up a good point about genetic variation--there had to be some way to get around to other pools, but if this was the driving factor for Yeerk infestation evolving, then what about all those other generations/millennia that Yeerks spent in their own pools, presumably separate from other Yeerk pools? I always sort of like to think that because it rained there every night, there must have been channels or tunnels of some sort that would've allowed Yeerks from different pools to comingle with at least some of the local pools. Otherwise how did Yeerks evolve around the entire planet? It's mentioned that the Yeerks who rebel against the Andalites in Seerow's day stopped their stolen ships on the other side of the Yeerk homeworld to pick up other Yeerks from different pools before blasting off again. Maybe the planet was small enough, or the pools were big enough, that intermingling wasn't such a big deal; or, the pool levels could have once been a more elaborate freshwater ocean or whatever. I photoshopped (with Dave's help x3) a planet under Pez's fanart that was supposed to depict my version of the Yeerk homeworld, where the pools were all settled into these big round craters...who knows, but it seemed to make sense at the time? XD
And of course, in the end, we can always say "Crayak did it" ::)
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also, was it ever explicitly stated that they have to leave hosts if they are on their homeworl? cuz their sun would provide the rays, so they might be able to get them without exiting the host all the way. the fact that they cannot reproduce in the host is irrelephant, because it allows them to reach new pools they wouldn't be able to otherwise and thus increases their ability to reproduce. In fact, that was probably the initial ability, simply enter the host's ear, and then exit it some time later in another pool where they can hit on foreign Yeerks. Then, sometime later, the ability control was evolved to better select where the Yeerk would be dropped off, reentering the host was probably unneccessary, it was probably only when they became a true inteligent society that they started keeping their host through multiple feeding cycles.
And if it was discovered that cows are sentient most (though of course not all) people would start objecting to eating them.
I don't think it's irrelevant, because as soon as the Yeerk exits the host for any reason, the host is no longer under its control. In the case of the host being a predator, it is extremely likely that it will want to consume the Yeerk as soon as the Yeerk leaves. If it's not a predator, it's hard to imagine why the Yeerks would have evolved to infest it in the first place. These things seem a bit contradictory to me, which is one of the things I find confusing about Yeerk evolution. They would have needed an initial evolutionary reason to infest a host, as well as a way to avoid predation when leaving the host.
There are portable Kandronas in some of the books, including very large ones, but the Yeerks still have to leave the host to feed. I think the composition of the Yeerk pools absorb the Kandrona rays and convert it into a form that the Yeerks can absorb in turn, sort of like the way that Earth plants turn sunlight into a form that animals can use as energy. I don't ever remember any mention of Yeerks being able to absorb Kandrona rays directly.
Otherwise, I think you have a very good point about genetic diversity, which is always an important component to evolution. The need for gene-mingling may very well have been one of the impetuses behind early Yeerk evolution.
Also, I think that Gedds were said to be semi-sentient, though I can't remember ever seeing one exhibiting its normal behavior without a Yeerk controlling it. Octopodes are kind of on the verge of semi-sentience and people have no problem eating those...
This has been discussed on here before (of course...because we're all uber-nerds XD) but I think you bring it up in a more biological light than the other thread, which focused more on the evolution of Yeerk intelligence than the evolution of Yeerk biology in general.
Ah, sorry for the thread repeat. I have noticed however that people are much less likely to respond to my posts the older the thread is, though. :P
For the rest of your post - yes, those things do make a lot of sense. Also, I saw your Photoshop version of the Yeerk homeworld, and it looks pretty awesome. :) Love the way you did the Yeerk pools so that it looks like their origin was in asteroids that had scarred the planet with craters. Very cool.
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I said irrelephant, as in has nothing to do with elephants :-P
Anyways, I was talking specifically about not being able to reproduce withing the host, since it helps reproduction indirectly.
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I would think that the yeerks would have been able to infest the creature long before having much control over it. Probably like spy said, using the hosts as "pollinators" allowing them to reach different pools, for both genetic diversity and just to get more room, the books are a vague on these types of things (thankfully) so we have no idea about the carrying capacity of a yeerk pool but it can't be infinite. They could also use the hosts as protection from yeerks natural predators thereby helping them survive to reproduce. Gaining control of the hosts would be benefitial to making sure that the host went to a different pool within a feeding cycle, and would help to capture new hosts for other yeerks as the yeerks became more intelligent. There are actually parasites that exist on earth that alter behavior of the hosts, even to the point of making its host effectively commit suicide in order to help the parasite reproduce, so I don't find the idea too far out there ( i think it'll more likely lead to zombies than yeerks though :) ).
Why would the host be a predator? other than that, would a non sapient species even realize what had happened, or know the yeerk was there (while leaving) considering the numbing agents (consider how many times you've felt a tick burrow into you). and yeah, there are a lot of sentient species on earth, only one (maybe) that's sapient, always annoyed me that the books used sentient as sapient.
yes, beef strongly enhances my enjoyment of life
got that right.
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At times like these, I just repeat to myself "It's just a book, I should really just relax." :)
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Even if it's just a book, don't you like to understand, to guess "what if...?", to imagine...? ;)
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There is a type of frog called Microhylids that live within the burrows of their natural enemy, the tarantula. The presence of a massive, chicken-eating arachnid provides thorough protection from predators to the vulnerable little frog. Puny Kermit also gets to feed off of the ants that would otherwise carry away its bodyguard's eggs. Aside from that, toxins on the frog's skin most likely make it unpalatable to its beefy buddy.
Although a parallel to the Yeerks raises the question of how they could actually be beneficial to their hosts, this example shows they don't need to be. As long as the Yeerks aren't a desired meal to the host, for any reason at all, it's possible the Yeerk uses it simply as a safer home. This provides the crucial first step towards their final evolution.
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Although a parallel to the Yeerks raises the question of how they could actually be beneficial to their hosts, this example shows they don't need to be. As long as the Yeerks aren't a desired meal to the host, for any reason at all, it's possible the Yeerk uses it simply as a safer home. This provides the crucial first step towards their final evolution.
this seems to stick out in my mind since the Gredds are protrayed as stupid apes and the yeerks are the intelligent ones.
one theory could be that the yeerks aren't parasites to the gredds, but rather some sort of co evolutionary process for them. the Yeerks get the brains but lack the other skills while the Gredds provide locomotion and senses.
it's only when the andalites came in and screwed everything up that the yeerks stopped acting like symbotes to the gredds and parasites to the rest of the galaxy.
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It's a very interesting theory that Yeerks might have first used the braincase of other animals as a safe "home" rather with the intention to control, and the evolution of control was selected for later. I hadn't considered that angle but it seems sensible.
this seems to stick out in my mind since the Gredds are protrayed as stupid apes and the yeerks are the intelligent ones.
one theory could be that the yeerks aren't parasites to the gredds, but rather some sort of co evolutionary process for them. the Yeerks get the brains but lack the other skills while the Gredds provide locomotion and senses.
it's only when the andalites came in and screwed everything up that the yeerks stopped acting like symbotes to the gredds and parasites to the rest of the galaxy.
I always thought it was a bit weird that the Yeerks taking the Gedds as their first sentient "victim" was such considered such an evil act. It seemed more obvious to me that it was just a natural part of the ecology and evolution of both species. I think it's very likely that the Yeerk infestation of the Gedds drastically benefited the survival of the Gedds.
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I think the answer to the simple 'Could this evolution take place?' question is a yes, if for no other reason than that our knowledge of evolution is still far to limited to say 'No, it could not happen' (assuming, of course, that Yeerk physiology is possible, and it may be interesting to further discuss exactly how it could be plausible). I think this conversion has finally reached the most likely explanation for answering how it could happen. The problem that often hangs people up when thinking about evolution was present in this discussion from the beginning:
In order for anything to evolve a particular way, the selected traits need to simply be beneficial to the organism's rate of reproduction.
This is only true-ish. If a trait is beneficial to surviving long enough to reproduce, then the trait will become more common in further generations; it's what puts the 'selection' in "Natural selection.' But what needs to be accounted for in the long term is that, though a trait will become common faster (in terms of generations) through positive selection, genetic drift allows a trait to spread over time simply due to a lack of negative selection. In other words, for a trait to become common it doesn't need to be beneficial, it just needs to not be detrimental. For example:
Red-headedness is not beneficial to survival or reproduction among humans. If it ever was, it was only in a limited geographical region for a limited period of evolutionary time. The fact that it still exists today isn't because it is beneficial, but just because it isn't detrimental. But, if some catastrophe occurs on that destroys civilization and technology as we know it and shifts the climate to a 'late ice age, far north' climate worldwide; to the point that a red head's ability to produce vitamin D is not only beneficial but almost necessary to survive, then within a few generations the recessive genes that give red headedness may be the only ones to survive before we can rebuilt the nutritional and medical technology to keep people alive without it.
This isn't the perfect comparison, because with the Yeerks we aren't discussing a trait that provides catastrophe insurance against a backwards step for our species, but traits that allow a forward step: intelligence, infestation and host-control.
It isn't necessary for them to infest for a beneficial reason at first, the benefit can come later down the evolutionary time-line. Though Ferahgo initially supposed that the Yeerks would only evolve the infestation ability to infest a predator, whereupon they would only die when they had to leave said predator, she sees now that this doesn't necessarily need to be the case. There are plenty of examples of endosymbiosis on Earth and few, if any, infested to escape the being they infested itself. Anyways, having already evolved all the boneless, sluggy-squishy flexibility, some Yeerks may have gained some last needed trait (maybe the pain-numbing ability) and infested hosts (I.E. Gedds) for brief periods of time simply because they could, not to escape the Gedds as predators. It would have sped things up, evolutionarily speaking, if they were already intelligent enough to use this ability defensively to avoid other predators, but high level intelligence is not necessary at this point. However, a gradual increase in both intelligence and the ability to use their palps for much more specialized electric impulses to control the host (rather than simply using them for magnetic-location) would have to come next: The more sensitive electric control to control the hosts more adeptly over time and the gradually increasing intelligence to guide the host toward better survival than the host would achieve on its own.
Incidentally, since the Gedds and Yeerks evolved symbiotically then being more docile and remaining fairly unintelligent is likely a result form of positive selection on the Gedds' part, counter-intuitive though it may seem. Individual Gedds being somewhat more intelligent than the average Gedd and more defiant by nature could consistently run themselves into danger of other predators and remove itself from the gene pool while a docile and dumb Gedd is kept alive by its Controller.
In The Andalite Chronicles it is clearly stated near the beginning that the Andalites believe that the Yeerks and Gedds evolved symbiotically, however to be more clear for this discussion, I will bring in more precise terminology: Symbiotic is used in the Animorphs books in its most strict sense, where it means that both species are benefiting from the relationship; the books use it to differentiate this relationship from a parasitic one, where one benefits while the other is harmed. However, only some biologists use this strict definition, and it is less useful for discussion purposes. A better use of the term 'symbiotic' is the more general definition (which also happens to be more generally accepted) which only implies that the species coexist and interact in a long-term sense. Then the term 'symbiotic' can be divided into the sub-categories of mutualism, commensalism, and parasitism. Mutualism specifically describes the stricter interpretation of 'symbiotic' that was meant to be communicated when TAC says that the Yeerk/Gedd relationship is 'symbiotic' rather than parasitic. You could say that these two species evolved mutualistically in nature, benefiting each other in the previously described manner, but that the Yeerks, though capable of being biologically mutualistic, then choose to become socially parasitic.
At this point, Ferahgo, as you point out it is illogical to view the Gedd infestation as 'evil.' It was a natural biological process that benefited both species. The Andalites even were concluding it to be as such at the beginning of TAC. It is probably only the 'present' (in the Animorphs series) Andalites' very strong, self-righteous feeling that all Yeerk actions are completely evil that causes them to lump this initial infestation in with the rest of the Yeerks' actions as a growing evil empire.
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Well, I wasn't talking about a trait as innocuous as a hair color or appendage length or anything like that. I'm talking about a much more significant trait, the ability to burrow into someone's brain and take them over. Red-headedness doesn't need to be beneficial to drift, no, but organisms barely ever (if ever at all) evolve something really complex like a behavioral-anatomical process (like burrowing into someone's brain and taking them over) unless it's beneficial to the survival and rate of reproduction. Genes for traits like hair color can drift because the energy put into evolving the trait is not great. But in order for evolutionary processes that do take a lot of energy to evolve at all, yes, it does need a benefit. Otherwise a large energy input without a benefit is a detriment in and of itself.
But yeah, I do agree it would have been possible for the control aspect to come later, and the shelter aspect to come first.
As you pointed out, the only way to fathom the evolution of such a complex idea is to break the process down into tiny discrete steps and then hypothesize how each individual step would have been beneficial (or at least not detrimental).
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Indeed, the red-head analogy was certainly imperfect, it only illustrates how genetic drift can create a diversity that is unnecessary but may later be useful. I think it, coupled with the handful of clues the books offer, and the ideas presented in this thread has allowed us to illuminate a not only possible, but probable evolutionary path for the Yeerks (Probable, at least, given our limited knowledge of evolution in general and particularly our very limited knowledge of the evolution of intelligence; and of course there is still a lot to be thought of in precisely how the host controlling is done physiologically speaking).
In any case, as Dameg alludes, it is very satisfying to not merely have to suspend your disbelief (with the "It's just a book" chant) but to treat it as a belief and find that it can stand in its own right.
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I don't see how they could really evolve, because like it was stated before, as soon as they left the host, the host would probably attack them or escape. But I don't know much about evolutionary theories, so I'm just going to say:
I blame Crayak. :| It's just the kind of thing he'd do.
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I don't see how they could really evolve, because like it was stated before, as soon as they left the host, the host would probably attack them or escape. But I don't know much about evolutionary theories, so I'm just going to say:
I blame Crayak. :| It's just the kind of thing he'd do.
Well, we already discussed a lot more of the plausible suggestions in more detail in this thread, but a short answer is no, the host wouldn't necessarily attack the Yeerk. If the Yeerk was in no way attractive as a source of food and was at an early point in the evolution the host wasn't even intelligent enough to understand infestation it could easily ignore the Yeerk that left its body entirely; and if the infestation mutually benefited both species, Gedds would evolve toward being more willing to accept infestation in exchange for more intelligent guidance as a survival trait.
There are plenty of examples in our nature of animals being perfectly comfortable with smaller creatures crawling around, on or even in them, it's not an evolutionarily unusual thing. And besides, "Ellimist/Crayak did it" takes all the fun and imagination out of looking over this series.
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My big question is: Yeerks appear to be photosynthetic organisms, or at least chemosynthetic autotrophs, sort of like multicellular algae or protists. The benefit of infesting a host and removing yourself from access to critically vital sustenance would have to outweigh the risk, at least more often than not.
Also, a Yeerk would have to be able to infest a number of evolutionarily diverse hosts while not killing the host or itself. Whatever else the Yeerk excretes besides painkillers would have to be some kind of sterilization agent, and it would have to regulate its body temperature to match that of its host.
The idea of a Yeerk burrowing under all those cerebral membranes and the cerebrospinal fluid cushion to wrap around the brain itself, without damaging it or creating deadly pressure, in a matter of minutes--that would imply that the Yeerks could really frigging move quickly while infesting, almost at a fluid level, before coagulating back into their sluggy form.
Just throwing these ideas out there.
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I'm trying to think of what they said about yeerk reproduction, was it like 3 fuse together and produce a thousand offsrping? If so that means that if only 1/100 survive to reproduce it would still have a growth rate of over 3x per generation so alot of the slugs could get killed without it being a problem
yeah, the mechanics of the yeerk infesting a host without injuring it would be the hard part in all this. you're right, it would need some kind of antiseptic now that I think about it, and the puncture it made in the white matter would have to be small enough to heal rapidly. I'm thinking the yeerks would have to be very thin when they surround the brain, just to keep the brain alive by moving nutrients through. I think the yeerk would have to absorb at least some the csf to keep from putting too much pressure on the brain, or maybe the csf could escape through the hole the yeerk came through, although the brain can hold a lot of csf, at least in comparison to the volume of slugs (how big are yeerks?)
I never thought of the yeerk having to match temperature with the host brain, but yeah it'd kill the host if it didn't, the easiest way I can think of to solve this is that the yeerks are prolly cold blooded
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My big question is: Yeerks appear to be photosynthetic organisms, or at least chemosynthetic autotrophs, sort of like multicellular algae or protists. The benefit of infesting a host and removing yourself from access to critically vital sustenance would have to outweigh the risk, at least more often than not.
Well, just to clarify, I would point out that they are not actually photosynthetic oranisms; that is to say they do not actually using energy from light to produce organic compounds for their bodies. Though the Anis frequently refer to the process with quips and phrases like "soaking up rays" it is explicitly stated that they are actually absorbing nutrients. Obviously the original sun of the Yeerk home planet, what the Kandronas simulate, can not possibly radiate nutrients through the vacuum of space yet its rays are necessary for the nutrients to be present in the pools, so even though it is expanding on explicit canon the only reasonable supposition is that some form of small (perhaps even microbial) life is present in the water-based mixture that makes up the Yeerk pool 'sludge' and it produces organic compounds from Yeerk homeworld sunlight that is useful to the Yeerks, but when out of the present of that light the compounds are stored in a form that is not useful to the Yeerks.
The reason this distinction is important is because in order to gain enough energy from photosynthesis an organism like the Yeerks would need to spend many hours a day in the Kandrona rays, but on the other hand if they are swimming over an area of millions of small plant or bacterial organisms that are all preforming the actual photosynthesis and feeding off of these organisms (in a manner not too different from one of our Mysticeti Cetaceans, what you would most likely think of simply as 'whales', feeding off of millions of small plankton) then they need not spend the vast majority of their time in the rays but only need to feed a couple of hours over a few days (as we see in the Yeerks). This being the case, it is certainly possible for their to be circumstances on the home planet where the risk of temporarily removing yourself from the medium you feed in is very worth-while, in order to take shelter from natural predators for example; this is basically how amphibian creatures originated, during the Devonian Period they evolved the ability to flee water temporarily but had to return to feed and eventually mate and lay eggs, it was only in later periods that they gained the ability to feed on bugs from land move up the food-chain somewhat.
On the other hand, your points on being able to infest such a large variety of hosts is a very valid one in what makes the Yeerks seem much more improbable, particularly that they creatures from completely foreign planets turn out to be physiologically similar that they are just as controllable. However, many other incredibly 'unlikely' similarities between creatures from completely different planets (land creatures are capable of breathing in each other's atmopheres, Andalites can eat other planets' grass and Hork-Bajir can eat bark of other planets' trees without them turning out to be completely different in organic makeup, and perhaps most notably the morphing technology works on animals from any planet) forces one to assume that, for reasons beyond our incredibly limited knowledge of how life forms, life isn't just as likely to form off of many different bases and for some reason a carbon base and the early history of life on this planet is basically the only way life can form and therefore lifeforms on different planets are quite likely to be capable of biological interaction.
The intra-cranial pressure is one big issue that hasn't come up much yet, but in order for it to work the Yeerks would have to actually have remarkably little mass of their own. Though it is never noted in the series, perhaps the 'slime' that they are coated in is actually filling a great amount of them so that, if stuck away from a pool and outside of a host for a period of a few hours they are able to gradually secret enough of this slime from their stores to keep themselves moist on the surface while they try to reach a moist place or a host (it has been noted they can survive outside of their own 'sludge' in relatively moist areas for a few hours, but will gradually shrivel up). This being the case, they could squeeze out all the extra 'slime' stores as they prepare to enter the host and only actually being an extremely small mass inside of the infested host. This would explain what we see in the series, that they can only infest a host of sufficiently large cranial capacity but in such a case they can do it without causing undue damage to the host (except in the case of the modified Arn, who deliberately can not survive with even a slight increase in cranial pressure).
And yes, I would agree with donut's hypothesis that the Yeerks are likely cold 'blood'ed and capable of surviving in a decent range of temperatures rather than needing to needing to regulate their own internal temperatures.
I'm trying to think of what they said about yeerk reproduction, was it like 3 fuse together and produce a thousand offsrping? If so that means that if only 1/100 survive to reproduce it would still have a growth rate of over 3x per generation so alot of the slugs could get killed without it being a problem
Well, it is hard to say, because the books are never actually specify on this issue. They usually only specify that 'many' grubs are produced from the biological parental tripartite, which has lead readers to visualize anywhere from a couple dozen to thousands. Esplin 9466 refers to the ofspring as 'several hundred' however, meaning the number will potentially reach into the low thousands, but not necessarily reach several thousand. The Yeerks named/numbered in the series are often only in the hundreds (remember, Esplin 9466 isn't nine-thousand, four-hundred and sixty-six, it is nine-four-double-six, meaning that the 946th grub split to form two twins). In #41, The Familiar, there are Yeerks with incredibly high numbers, but either the naming/numbering system could have changed in the future or it could have simply been one of the 'incorrect' details that was inserted into the odd dream-vision that Jake had that revealed it to not be the true future.
In any case. you are correct that about a thousand offspring per tripartite which, along with their aggressive nature, would imply that earlier in the Yeerk evolutionary history the Yeerks were hunted in large numbers by some form of larger prey and selected toward a high amount of competitive offspring in order to make very low survival rates acceptable; but when the Yeerks became the dominant life-form on the planet and gained a fairly high survival rate this would result in a population explosion and continued exponential growth; hence the need for an expanding Empire form of society.
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Interesting points on the Yeerks being more like mysticete whales (don't worry, you're talking to a biology major and a grad student in museum studies in paleontology, here--woot for bio-nerds! :))--however my issue with the Yeerks being able to absorb microbial life is that there is very little to suggest the Yeerks had a method of doing so. The Yeerks are described as having 'osmosis nodes', which are the equivalent of a "mouth" according to Ax; however their name suggests that they aren't phagocytizing or engulfing whole organisms with their very fluid cells. Rather, the term osmosis makes me think that they are allowing a concentration of chemical nutrients and water to be absorbed by their hungry cells. You can certainly draw any conclusions you want from this, feel free to make the Yeerks whatever you imagine them to be---but my opinion based on this description is that the Yeerks were simply absorbing amino acids or vitamin nutrients along with water to replenish their bodies. I always just figured that while the nutrients in the pool are important, the one thing that Yeerks really needed to survive was Kandrona, interacting directly with their bodies, and not indirectly through facultative cyanobacteria or something similar.
Also, practically speaking, how would Yeerks create portable pools when they needed not only a portable Kandrona generator, but also the microorganisms from their homeworld? Is it ever stated that they needed a petri dish of fresh organisms to install in a portable pool? No, which doesn't rule out the idea, but I think it's a little far fetched given how critical Kandrona is described as being to the Yeerks' lives, and not necessarily the nutrients themselves.
My defense for the Yeerks being autotrophic (again, in my opinion) is that firstly, these are aliens. They may need only a small amount of time under the energy of what is described as a "Kandrona wave/particle generator" (light is both a wave and a particle) in order to replenish their cellular protein store, aided by the nutrients in their pool which I believe are secondary to their survival. After all, wave-particles do indeed travel through the vacuum of space, evidenced by...well, all life on Earth depending on the photons from the sun exciting the chloroplast electrons in plants. I figure that the Kandrona wave/particles have a radically different wavelength (or optimum wavelength reception inside Yeerk chloroplasts) than that of Earth sunlight, and that their "strange sun" is so unique in this production of its wavelengths that it is rarely found anywhere else but produced by the Kandrona itself, or the Kandrona wave/particle generators. Just my two cents, and since I have plenty of Yeerk characters in RPs I had to figure out some nerdy way to consolidate their biological need for Kandrona :)
I'd forgotten about the Arn's self-destruction when there's a slight increase in cranial pressure! That's awesome, it means that K.A./Michael Grant were thinking about this stuff at least a little, bwahaha. Yes I agree that a particular suspension of disbelief and a reasonable assumption that life around the galaxy is more carbon-based than not are useful tools when discussing the biology of fictional alien species.
Another note that kind of throws the topic of "bloodedness" into question is that when Cassie morphs into Illim in #29, her heart stops beating, then shrivels up and disappears. I always took that to mean that Yeerks didn't have a circulatory system, at least not one that is anything like we know. Perhaps the slime that they're so dependent upon is the same makeup as their cytoplasm, and the fluidity with which their bodies can change and flatten both rules out a need for a circulatory system and protects the host brain from any conflicting movement or additional pressure from blood pumping and coursing in a tissue-thin Yeerk wrapped around it.
So...maybe they had their own version of cold-bloodedness, or perhaps they were able to adapt to any host body temperature (within reason--they still couldn't survive the heat of a jacuzzi) by having no need for internal circulatory temperature regulation within a certain buffer zone.
Interesting note, too, with the #41 mistake (?) or number change. That always could've had something to do with there being a vast number of hosts to control, but I tend to think it was some kind of mistake by the puppetmaster behind Jake's vision...
I'd argue against the Yeerk's aggressive nature, however. Yeerks describe themselves as peaceful by nature on their homeworld (Temrash, Aftran, even Edriss says they had only fought a handful of conflicts--possibly only after leaving their homeworld), only infesting what they were born to infest, and only after creating an Empire and being basically given the shaft by the Andalites ("look, stars! No, you can't have them.") did the Imperialist and aggressive nature (power hungry, sadistic, and a little bit crazy bananas) of a few (but not all) Yeerks come to the surface. Even the hierarchy of Yeerks wasn't nearly as competitive until ranks like Visser and Sub-visser came around, evidenced by the young Esplin 9466 in his newfound pride at having a title beyond his birth rank. The Council always existed, but it seems as though social competition really ramped up after the Yeerks left the homeworld. So, I guess I don't think the Empire form of society was necessary, but it was certainly desirable for many Yeerks who saw a way to be as dominant as the Andalites in the galaxy, in the only way they knew how--controlling other species.
Nevertheless, their biological need for exponential growth really does indicate they were preyed upon pretty severely over the millennia. There is that good old Yeerkbane/Vanarx in the series, after all :)
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It certainly is interesting to look at completely different approaches to explanations, without canonical evidence there is enough room for assumptions and various diverse conclusions. I agree that the descriptions in the book, though again never explicit, sounds more autotrophic, I avoided it myself though because of the idea that photosynthesis doesn't allow for enough energy for a creature of that size to sustain itself through the conversion of inorganic molecules; but now that you bring it up, it is certainly possible that the waves/particles that make up what we know as Kandrona waves may be supplied in a sufficiently intensity and be more efficiently absorb-able by the Yeerks than we are used to in plants here on Earth; so there is certainly plenty more plausibility to that interpretation than I gave it credit for initially.
As far as the portable pools from my interpretation goes, I assumed that either the small organisms could survive in the water/sludge in an inert form for long periods of time before portable generator is activated and used, or they were simply stored in an inert form (kinda like Baker's yeast :)) and were released into the sludge as part of the process of activating the portable Kandrona. Again, there's certainly no details that indicate the the portable Kandrona function like this, but there really aren't details on how the portable Kandrona work in general; this is simply how they would function if the Yeerks feed in the method I previously described.
I also think that the Baker's Yeast organisms are supported by the "single use" portable Kandrona V1 had, if they simply didn't have enough energy stored to continue powering them then her survival wouldn't be limited to 'less than ten days' with three porta-pools if she could find an alternate energy source to power the generators but with only three supplies sets of an organism that is also necessary for the process then she really had only that much time before she could get back into an accepted place in the Yeerk Empire (I'm referring to the situation in #30, The Reunion). Her and her partner earlier in her time-line, as told in Visser could also have stayed on Earth indefinitely without rejoining the Yeerk Empire if they had the knowledge to repair their Kandrona generators or build new ones, but again if they had stores of organisms that they could use a limited number of times but could not create an environment to further produce them then that could be an explanation for why they 'ran out of uses' of their more long term Kandrona generators.
Again, just an explanation built off of assumptions with limited details, but worthwhile; with the thoughts you provided your perspective is just as plausible as well. In any case, the only actual relevant point that this made in the earlier post is what we actually do know: The Yeerks can survive for long periods of time outside of their feeding medium with only a little time in it, making infestation evolutionarily viable.
Interesting note, too, with the #41 mistake (?) or number change. That always could've had something to do with there being a vast number of hosts to control, but I tend to think it was some kind of mistake by the puppetmaster behind Jake's vision...
Yeah, it could go either way, but I tended toward that assumption being more likely as well.
And yes, you are correct about the Yeerks not being explicitly aggressive by nature, now that I think about it I was certainly incorrect there; they are not necessarily so, at least not any more than humans are by nature; it is much more their current government/social situation and the drive to gain all the senses they lack in their natural form that produces their current aggressive behavior.
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Interesting idea with the Baker's yeast, I have my characters carry around packets of minerals but packets of some kind of inert fungus/bacterium could work. I still think that Kandrona was the main source of energy for the Yeerks, simply because it's made out to be so important to the Yeerks. I always took the situation with the Kandrona running out in Visser to be a miscalculation on Essam and Edriss' part, or a faulty generator. The single use generators, to me, just meant that the generators weren't powerful enough to last for more than one full feeding cycle.
I always wondered what Yeerk society would have been like in its earliest days. How did Yeerks develop their ultrasonic language, and how did it spread to all the pools? Were there Yeerk dialects? What did Yeerks teach the young just-out-of-grubhood Yeerks in training? It seems based on Seerow's observations that the Yeerks were smart enough to grasp concepts far beyond their limited knowledge of the universe, and it seems likely that they had basic concepts of mathematics and perhaps physics based on their circular pools and currents. This is just an assumption, however, because the Yeerks didn't have written language until the Andalites came along, so they'd have to do all the calculations in their heads.
Then again, maybe Yeerks are just big squishy brains without much else to impede direct contact between their neurons and the host's neurons, and this intellectual development helped aid their evolutionary development of infestation?
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:wow:
wow, I just got finished reading that book you guys wrote, interesting discussion.
for some reason a carbon base
We do have some idea of why this is, it certainly isn't concrete and I wouldn't be surprised if we eventually found exceptions to it. Carbon is really the only atom that has the necessary properties to be useable as the basis of life. I can't quite remember what the reason that silicon probably wouldn't work but I think it was because of silicon's, what-was-the-term, squishiness(?) to be used. It's too large, it distributes charge too well and so it becomes too unreactive. Again, I can't quite recall but I think that's at least part of it. Boron and Nitrogen are also alternatives, like silicon I can't remember but I don't think they form enough complicated molecules to be suitable, plus with boron it carries a charge with a filled octet, I don't know but I'm guessing that this would be a significant problem in macromolecules to have thousands of positively charged atoms in every, whatever the equivalent of DNA is, molecule and protein in the organism. Just remembered, one of the reasons nitrogen prolly isn't viable is that N2 has too high of bond strength. That and anything nitrogen based would have to have an extremely cold environment, so even if they existed in the series they wouldn't be mentioned since they wouldn't appear anywhere the anis could survive at.
land creatures are capable of breathing in each other's atmopheres
I'm thinking that all the creatures had nearly identical atmospheres on their homeworlds, since as you said they all can breathe on other planets, and they all see visible light. I think this might be fairly likely if they're carbon based, since except for a very recently discovered exception which uses hydrogen, all known multicellular lifeforms use oxygen for respiration. I really have no idea if there's a reason other elements can't be used or not, maybe myitt knows if there's one or not. At vey least if they're carbon based they'd need a significant amount of oxygen available to make the various organic molecules important to life (maybe even if they weren't carbon based). So I think that it's plausible that complex carbon based life would need an atmosphere similar to ours to develop.
I also thought it odd that the physiology was so similar between the species, more examples to show this: toxins are universally effective and thought speak works with all species suggesting that not only is the physiology of the neurons similar, but the way brains process and store information would have to be similar, unfortunately we know so little about how the human brain stores information that I can't make any guesses one way or the other as to whether this is plausible.
I guess a general and admittedly weak argument that all life would be similar or rather that the chemistry of all life would be similar is that chemical reactions have a tendency to form the lowest energy products (not precisely accurate, but close enough for our purposes, and the argument still holds either way) so it makes sense that on a basic level life would be similar because it is likely that the way we know life is the lowest energy way to have life. Although it could be argued that it's only the lowest energy way to have life here.
Now about the kandrona rays, I'm also thinking they're autotrophs. Partly because they don't have the kandrona on constantly in the smaller pools, I would think that'd starve the microbes. The yeast idea is interesting though, but they never mention having to replace anything other than the kandrona generators. I think the sludge of the yeerk pool is necessary to the yeerks survival since they always use the sludge rather than water or any other liquid. I'm guessing that the sludge in the pools acts as some sort of catalyst for the kandrona rays to be able to be used by the yeerks since they're always concerned with running out of kandrona and not the sludge itself, perhaps the kandrona also converts the waste products of the yeerks back into the sludge. I think the generators would need some sort of special material to produce the kandrona rays, like making light at different frequencies than is normally produced at the temperature the source of light is at, and that the single use kandrona generators prolly consume this material in the process.
I'd actually be interested in hearing a possible explanation for how the yeerk's "brain" works since to be able to be squished and stretched like it was it'd have to be something completely different in structure than anything we know of, but to be able to interact with our brains they'd have to be similar in the chemistry to our brains.
:facepalm: ok, so there's my chapter in the book
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:facepalm: ok, so there's my chapter in the book
I hope that that facepalm isn't meant to imply that you're afraid your post is too long, because I am very much of the opinion that size restrictions in popular mediums of sharing information (like time-slots on shows or word-length restrictions in magazine articles) has caused our society to become concerned with restricting size in a manner that restricts the information. The feeling seems to be that "Any important issue can be summed up in a 7-minute segment on the news. Three minutes for one side of the argument, three minutes for the other (notice that there can only be two sides to an issue) and a minute to summarize it." If you can't fit the information into this, then it "must be extraneous or irrelevant information." Such thoughts, conscious or unconscious, restricts the sharing of information and ideas as well as any progress that may be made as a result of them; so talk on donut, as long and drawn out as you feel is necessary to share and support your thoughts (you've doubtless noticed that I don't hesitate to do so :)).
And yes, you are totally right about a lot of the findings that we have about why carbon-based life works so well, that it and only a handful (less than a dozen) different atoms makes up life as we know it is nothing short of astounding. We can study these basic building blocks and see each has specific properties of how they interact with each other and that this set of reactions applied in boundless different combinations creates an incredible diversity to what we know as life with only a few different individual parts; like a beautiful symphony with a handful of different instruments creating harmonies together that are much more than the sum of their parts.
Anyways, I appreciate your elucidating on why our 'carbon based' set of atoms works so well for life, but I can't help but be fascinated with wondering whether it is the only set that will work for life (which is certainly possible, but we are ridiculously far from knowing enough to prove that it is the case) or whether, as you say, there may be exceptions, that is other sets of atoms and interactions that can make up other forms of life; it may be that in our study of carbon-based life and having millions of examples of it we have become far to familiar with it as the basis of life that it will take a great leap of thought to be able to think outside of that box and find another way that works. I just think it would speak volumes for human intelligence and knowledge of life if we could predict or even artificially create examples of other possible forms of life and then discover a naturally occurring example of it in our universe.
As far as the Ani-verse goes, as I alluded to here and elaborated on in in the http://animorphsforum.com/forum/index.php?topic=4222.30 thread, in order for its universe to make sense you have to assume that within it either:
A. carbon-based life is the only life that will work
B. carbon-based life is much more probable to work, and therefore when traveling to new planets it is unsurprising to find that they are all made up of life that has carbon-based DNA. That is to say, that given a universe with energy in different forms and matter in different forms all interacting at random, different types of life will form according to different probabilities, but carbon-based life will form with a greater probability than others so these carbon-based lifeforms encountering each other is not unlikely.
OR
C. carbon-based life isn't necessarily more likely than other possible forms of life, and all of these different forms of inter-planetary life meeting each other due to relative proximity and turning out to all be carbon-based is just an extreme coincidence.
Then, you have to take either A or B further (or just go all out with the coincidence theory) and suppose that within the Animorphs universe not only life, but also intelligent life either has to form within very specific parameters or is just most likely to form within these parameters and less likely exceptions are possible but do not make the encounters we see unlikely. (donut, am I correct in my understanding that B. is what you mean when you refer to 'lowest energy' forming of life, that this type of life is assumed in this universe to be the 'easiest' way for life to randomly form, that is to say it has with the greatest probability of forming?)
And yes, my version of possible Yeerk life is admittedly speculation without support, it is possible but there certainly aren't details providing that it has to be this way. Still, the way that it works in fictional universes like this is you can't really subscribe to believing it doesn't work in a way until details are provided; if in the first handful of books you were to suppose how the morphing technology works you could make a lot of reasonable guesses about the stored DNA being used as a set of blueprints to 'grow' a replication of the animal, but based on the descriptions the person is always entirely changing into the animal with no addressing of how that is happening physically, there is no hint at mass being shifted into Z-space and a mental link between the person in Z-space and the animal brain; that is later established (there is still no canonical establishing of where extra mass comes from for larger morphs, only speculations). With the vague details provided of 'absorbing nutrients' the autotrophic route is in itself a speculation; because just as there is no mention of replacing lifeforms they also don't have any mention of needing to replace inorganic molecules in the artificial pools to simulate a natural cycle on their home planet; Ax does specify that the 'sludge' is mostly water, but what the remainder is that makes it fit that molten-lead description is left entirely to speculation. If they don't have to simulate an environment artificially other than providing energy from the rays then at least one another life-form creating a cycle is reasonable (although I'll admit that my earlier phrase of it being the "only reasonable supposition" is an exaggeration).
Man, wouldn't a canonical expanded universe be great if for no other reason than to satisfy all of us nerds who like to wonder about how it all works?
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Personally, I think I'd go with theory B, because I'm also fascinated with the idea that life can be built on other base molecules like silicon or something wildly different from carbon. In order to make the Yeerks' spread across the universe plausible, and the fact that DNA is so common within the Animorphs universe, I like to think that carbon-based lifeforms with a deoxyribose helix of nucleic acids just happens to be one of the more common, evolutionarily feasible ways for life to develop around the universe. It's good that there are a few examples of creatures that couldn't be infested by the Yeerks: the Ongachics (I think?), whose brains were spread out in nodes around their bodies; the Skrit Na, who need to metamorphose as a part of their life cycle; and even Edriss mentions that it would do no good if Earth-based life survived by breathing methane, so even the atmospheric makeup of Yeerk-controlled planets had to be similar enough for each species to survive on each invaded planet.
As for Yeerk brains, I always just pictured them as having a brain stem of some sort (described in #17) but that their brains themselves were spread out across their whole bodies, just a big network of memory and motor/sensory neurons able to spread paper-thin. It would make sense then that Yeerks are so greatly intelligent, if their encephalization quotient (the E.Q., or body-to-brain ratio) is great enough to make them almost all brain power and almost complete direct connection between their brain neurons and their hosts'. They are described as having "few nerve endings" (#29 by Aftran) but they did have other senses. Perhaps their senses of smell and hearing and echolocation were greatly enhanced by being in their natural liquid medium (sonar and sound travel better and faster through water than air), or these organs were so compact and fluid that they could also stretch cell-thin inside their hosts. Basically it seems like the Yeerks had evolutionarily been stripped of everything but the most useful adaptations for high intelligence in such a small body, plus direct connection with their neural network to that of their hosts'.
A long time ago I actually made a diagram of Yeerk anatomy, but again take it with a grain of salt--I imagined them to be autotrophs and also had a lot of free time during the summers while I was a bio undergrad XD
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OK... I don't normally do much in the way of emoting beyond a basic smiley, but...
:wow:
So totally awesome Myitt!
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Haha, thanks, I told you I had too much free time! XD Now if only we could make something similar for the other species...hmm....ou r own sort of Animorphs field guide :P Dave/Pez001 has suggested a small anthology of short stories that explain the unknown (both biological and story-wise) in the series...but a visual representation of the biological stuff would also be kinda fun!
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Wow.....um....yeesh .
Okay, bear with me. I'm no bio major, and I haven't even had a biology class since I was a freshman in college, which was some time ago. What I do know is Animorphs, though, and I can find a couple of examples that, to me at least, help support Kotetsu's Theory B.
We see at least two examples of lifeforms that may not be entirely carbon based. The first is the Venber. We do not ever actually see a true Venber, but merely a cross-mutation of Venber and humans. Based on what we know of their physiology and home planet it may stand to reason that they come from a Nitrogen based world. The primary reasoning here is that they come from a planet that is incredibly cold (Ax says it is on average -200 degrees Fahrenheit). I do not know how the Yeerks would have been able to successfully mix carbon and nitrogen based lifeforms together to get one that could live in Earth's polar atmosphere, but I suppose that is a debate for a different topic. Regardless, here is a bit from #25 The Extreme that Ax says in regards to The Venber:
"Just what everyone knows," he said. "I mean, what any Andalite
knows. They were a primitive species with a highly unusual physiology.
Unique, actually. They do not seem to have required radiant energy of
any kind. Obviously they are not carbon-based."
The second example is even more odd. The living asteroids that we see in The Andalite Chronicles seem to be capable of living in the vacuum of space. Now, I'm fairly sure that this is an instance where we fully cross from the plausible to the inplausible in the realm of Science Fiction, but it still interesting to note.
As far as species evolving similarly, we can reasonably assume that many species do based on the evolutionary building blocks that donut already mentioned. However, this is not entirely exclusive to the functions that we recognize within our own human biology and it is important to remember that even Earth has a wide variety of ways to piece together the vital functions and systems that create multi-cellular life.
Within the Aniverse we are able to see that all lifeforms deemed appropriate as hosts meet several requirements:
- They are carbon based
- They have a central nervous system (note: in either HBC of Visser the Yeerks find a species that does not meet this requirement and is deemed uninfestible).
- They must maintain a certain sustainable internal temperature (Ax mentions in #25 that the Yeerks would freeze if they infested the Venber)
- The hosts natural habitat does not seem to be limited (for example, it does not matter to the Yeerks whether the hosts breathe oxygen through the air, or live primarily underwater as is the case with the Leerans)
The Yeerks have their own, extra rules as well. For example, they do not bother with the Skrit Na due to what Edriss refers to as their 'annoying' ability to phase, and the Yeerks are opposed to entering non-intelligent lifeforms as seen when they infest horses in #14; however, this seems to be more of a preferential decision than one based in necessity.
As far as the Yeerk brain is concerned, I had always imagined that the Yeerks themselves do not have a central nervous system, but rather something similar that would look similar to a 'net' of neurons spread throughout the body that is as elastic as the Yeerk body itself. The Yeerk would not have a circulatory system for reasons Myitt already mentioned and really, beyond the net-like neural system, would only need a system designed for absorbing nutrients and Kandrona as well as a reproductive system of some sort. Both of these could be incredibly small. Nutrients could be absorbed directly through the skin/slime and as far as reproduction is concerned they would really only need a means to 'join' with the other two Yeerks. The resulting process I imagine would be one of cellular division with already existing cells, which would result in the parental Yeerks deaths and the creation of so many grubs.
....let me know if I am WAY off on any of this. Like I said, I haven't looked at a bio book in about five years. :P
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No that sounds completely plausible, Jessi! And you provided so many more examples than I could've remembered :D I always imagined Yeerk reproduction to not even need a reproductive system as it were, and just involve fission like you pretty much said (and Ax said :P)
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It seems oddly fitting that as I write this "through the wormhole" is on with an episode on alien life
@myitt
:cheers: To the ubernerds: may we never stop our pursuit of completely useless knowledge for absolutely no reason, or our pointless discussions of irrelevant issues for nothing more than the sake of discussion
I hope that that facepalm isn't meant to imply that you're afraid your post is too long
actually yeah, I was concerned that it was too long, not so much because it's too long, but because I always try to follow the kiss and bluf principles, and a long post is a red flag that I wasn't, although it doesn't necessarily mean I didn't. It's not so much that I think that if it can't be said shortly that it isn't worth saying, it more like whats worth saying should be said as simply and concisely as possible, I think it helps aide (aid?) understanding.
Now it's my turn ;)
OK... I don't normally do much in the way of emoting beyond a basic smiley
I always thought smileys were one of the greatest additions to text, because a significant amount of information is communicated through body language and tone, smilies allow us to have a limited expression of emotions and gestures, although some people certaintly do overdo it
donut, am I correct in my understanding that B. is what you mean when you refer to 'lowest energy' forming of life, that this type of life is assumed in this universe to be the 'easiest' way for life to randomly form, that is to say it has with the greatest probability of forming
Pretty much
they also don't have any mention of needing to replace inorganic molecules in the artificial pools to simulate a natural cycle on their home planet
That's where my guess about the sludge being a catalyst came from, but yeah it might just be that replacing it was so much simpler than replacing the kandrona that it wasn't worth mentioning
Thanks T, there's not much point to this if we don't keep what was said in the books in mind
"Just what everyone knows," he said. "I mean, what any Andalite
knows. They were a primitive species with a highly unusual physiology.
Unique, actually. They do not seem to have required radiant energy of
any kind. Obviously they are not carbon-based."
That seems to confirm that almost all life in the aniverse was carbon based, I forgot about those asteroids, yeah they seem like the least plausible lifeform in the series, but without knowing anything else about them it's really hard to say
I"ve wondered about their reproduction, mostly about needing 3 parents. Does this imply that yeerks are triploid?
@Myitt
Jessi?
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Haha, thanks donut ;D Jessi is Teach, sorry.
Actually I sort of imagined Yeerks were haploid, sort of like fungus or gametes (sperm or egg cells)--their cells each had one half of a set of chromosomes. When the three parents joined, the cells would all start to combine, and gene pairs would hook up and form diploid or triploid masses. These masses would combine their genes, undergo meiosis (not mitosis), then split off into new haploid grubs. If a diploid (or perhaps triploid) mass accidentally split off from the tripartite parent, then twin grubs would grow from the diploid mass (or perhaps rarely, triplets? Or is there simply not enough cell mass for triplets to survive?)...
Just a theory, of course, but it seemed to make sense to me while I was daydreaming in genetics class XD
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Well, just to clarify, I would point out that they are not actually photosynthetic oranisms; that is to say they do not actually using energy from light to produce organic compounds for their bodies. Though the Anis frequently refer to the process with quips and phrases like "soaking up rays" it is explicitly stated that they are actually absorbing nutrients.
Not to intrude into the rest of the discussion, which is really interesting, however, it is stated that Yeerks need Kandrona rays, from their home sun or something like that. It's also important to note that one does not need to be a photosynthetic organism to have requirements such as this.
Our own body makes Vitamin D from our own sun's rays. We can get Vitamin D from fish or other organisms instead if that is unavailable, but I mean, our body is made to do that work all by itself. We're certainly not creatures that live off of photosynthesis. Since in The Warning we're aware that Yeerks can live in their host 100% of the time with the process of having their host eat Yeerks, we know they don't actually need to be out to acquire nutrients (further theoretically substantiated by The Underground where the oatmeal takes away their need for Kandrona Rays. The only thing consistent in the books is that they need Kandrona rays, and for some reason Kandrona rays only get synthesized properly into... whatever they need... by other Yeerks. So if they need Kandrona rays, they are either going to get out and do it themselves or get their host body to consume other Yeerks to get whatever it is they've needed the Kandrona rays for.)
I always assumed Kandrona rays provided some necessary function nutrient-wise for the Yeerks that they couldn't duplicate, synthesize, or get from other animals on their home planet (like we can with Vitamin D, for instance, by eating fish, or add Vitamin D to our milk), maybe something critical to them but not most other species around since they had a vastly different way of living than most of the organisms on their planet.
Maybe I already missed this part of the conversation, but just adding my 2ยข - I don't think needing Kandrona rays means they really needed nutrients or makes them photosynthetic anymore than our body needs our own sun's rays to turn some things we have in our body into things like vitamin D. It doesn't have to be an either/or matter here.
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Good points, Alex. That's totally plausible, but the way I saw it was that the Yeerks used the inorganic nutrients in the pool plus Kandrona wave/particles to generate food stores (protein) in their cells, much like plants or algae. My rationale for the Yeerks remaining in their hosts from oatmeal addiction was that the oatmeal somehow set the Yeerks' Kandrona receptors into a sort of feedback loop, providing whatever ion it needed to keep a constant food store without the need for energy from their home sun. With Esplin the Lesser and his cannibalism, perhaps consuming processed Yeerks that had stored Kandrona-built protein would provide that same energy for his own body, in its most basic form, transferred through the blood-brain barrier of his host.
Again it's all just conjecture, so either way it's interesting to discuss the possibilities, but you're right--Kandrona is something they definitely need to survive, whether they're photosynthetic or chemosynthetic autotrophs (like some bacteria and protists) or not.
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With Esplin the Lesser and his cannibalism, perhaps consuming processed Yeerks that had stored Kandrona-built protein would provide that same energy for his own body, in its most basic form, transferred through the blood-brain barrier of his host.
Well no, see, that's my point: They make it clear he can absorb whatever is needed through his host (blood brain barrier or otherwise). Additionally, they don't need to leave their hosts (if they've eaten oatmeal) for any known nutrient other than the Kandrona rays. To me that seems to indicate that, for whatever reason, this provides something, the only thing, that they need to leave their hosts for. Everything else it seems they can absorb through their host on a normal basis.
I'm not saying they don't absorb nutrients, only that it seems the Kandrona rays are the only consistent thing they need to leave a host body for - and it has certain ways around those rules.
Why they can't synthesize whatever it is Kandrona rays do for them, I don't know, I'm just saying that seems to be the only thing repeatedly substantiated in the books, so there can be a variety of explanations, none either here or there. I wasn't writing about what a person did or didn't see it as, simply pointing out that really the only thing we have that is rock-solid on Yeerk survival is the need for Kandrona rays. Explanations beyond that are totally up in the air for imagination, simple or as complicated as we want it to be.
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And I totally agree, Kandrona is the one thing they absolutely need, regardless of conjecture on why or how they process it. I'm just giving my point of view on why I think they might have been autotrophs, with, like you say, a few ways around the rules of needing the Kandrona that fuels their (in my opinion) autotrophic cell system.
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We see at least two examples of lifeforms that may not be entirely carbon based.
Yeah, you actually bring up some good points that I failed to consider that prove that my 'possibility A', that within the Ani-verse all life forms are carbon-based, impossible. Not only is 'possibility B' (that carbon-based life is the most likely type of life and all things being equal will form more often than not) strongly suggested in our observing that the majority of lifeforms are encountered are carbon based, but very strongly supported in Tobias' narration in #23, The Pretender:
According to Ax, DNA is a very common thing in the galaxy. The same double-helix of DNA forms the blueprint for all life on Earth and almost all life-forms everywhere.
The only reason I included the 'possibility c' is that Andalite knowledge of life, though more advanced than us is still limited and though our galaxy, as far as is known by them, contains mostly examples of carbon-based life, it is possible given an infinite or sufficiently large universe that the limited example happens to be a statistical anomaly of an unusual percentage of carbon-based life-forms in local proximity; so 'coincidence' is just as possible.
You certainly are not 'WAY off' on any of your thoughts, the only thing I would see as worth disputing is the idea that having what you refer to as a net of neurons throughout their body means that Yeerks have no central nervous system; rather I would say that the facinating thing about Yeerks is that they are almost nothing but a central nervous system, or as Myitt put it earlier:
maybe Yeerks are just big squishy brains without much else to impede direct contact between their neurons and the host's neurons, and this intellectual development helped aid their evolutionary development of infestation?
Furthermore, one thing that your thoughts, Terenia, brings up is another interesting aspect of evolution, because when evolution brings a specie to intelligent to the point of sapience (the details of how being greatly unknown when we only have ourselves as an example) then almost certainly psychology plays a role that is arguably just as important as physiology. When the Yeerks complain of Gedds being clumsy it makes sense that they are less preferable to other species as hosts, but the comments you bring up from #14 about preferring intelligent hosts causes one to wonder if this preference is merely a current social preference or is the result of evolution too. If the Yeerks are no more agressive than Humans in basic nature, then why would they have pursued the conquest of all intelligent creatures they could find when in the process of learning from Seerow they could have just as easily begun seeking hosts that are physically suitably capable that lack intelligence (Esplin's description of the 5-class classification of species based on suitability for infestation makes no mention of intelligence as being relevant), so it is worth wondering whether there is some evolutionary trait based on something in the Yeerk evolutionary history that makes infesting non-intelligent hosts so distasteful as to be inconsiderable.
(I would hope there is some very strong basis for this 'preference' because the premise that guided Cassie's actions, that Yeerks were at heart opposed to their actions of conquest and only justified it because it was necessary for them to freely experience life, was maintained by her throughout the series and we were assured that this helped bring an end to the war. Without a strong justification for this 'premise' that becomes a large plot-hole that is central to the entire premise and ongoing story. Furthermore, from the Sharks we see in #15, The Escape the Yeerks have rather impressive bioengineering technology (though not necessarily as great as the Arn, though most of it may have been stolen from them) so modifying suitable hosts is just as plausible a 'way out' when it has been asserted that the only reason the Yeerks continue is because they have none.
So yes, some very interesting thoughts, thanks for those reminders Terenia. What does everyone think about the Yeerks psychology, evolutionarily speaking?
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I mentioned this in chat the other day and I'm not sure how plausible it is, but here's my thoughts on the Yeerk tendency to infest sentient beings:
In their earliest evolutionary form, Yeerks likely inhabited other creatures on their planet that were 'aquatic' and eventually moved up the ladder to the semi-sentient Gedds. Now, I do not know how strong the instincts are of creatures on the Yeerk home planet, but based on the bits we do see the planet seems relatively sparse in lifeforms and those that do exist thusly do not necessarily need superbly strong instincts (compared to the incredibly complex abundance of life on Earth).
Now, once Yeerks tended towards infesting primarily Gedds a long period of time may have passed during which the Yeerks only infested Gedds. Over time they would reproduce with the tendency towards Yeerks best suited towards such a host - a semi-sentient host. Over time perhaps it became not impossible, but uncomfortable and unrealistic for Yeerks to infest non-sentient beings.
One of the constant problems Yeerks face is the maintaining of control. Yeerks, in essence, have two things to control within a sentient host: instincts and intelligence. On the flip side, with a non-sentient host they only have instincts to forcibly control. I think that, perhaps, with sentient hosts there is a tendency for base instincts to be milder. For example, we as humans do not experience the extreme predator/prey drive of a hawk/mouse. Similarly, though Andalites were once prey they do not spend all of their time running in fear from every shadow. Something within the Yeerks biology may make it easier for them to control sentient beings because the intelligence has already squashed (for lack of a better term) the strongest instincts. Perhaps the Yeerk body was simply not effectively equipped to handle a bundle of instincts.
An interesting note is that in #15, during the shark incident, they expand the shark's cranial capacity, thusly allowing enough space for a Yeerk to enter. However, they theoretically could have done so without altering the shark's intelligence, yet they do in fact increase the basic brain power of the shark. I can only imagine that by creating the possibility of sentience it helped the Yeerk adapt to the environment and override the basic instincts of the animal.
The only other incidence of a Yeerk infesting a non-sentient animal is seen in #14 with the horses. While horses are far from intelligent, Applegate's portrayal of them in the series shows no overwhelming instincts so long as they are not spooked.
In a nutshell: The Yeerk body has actually evolved to prefer sentience over non-sentience. It is better equipped to take and maintain control over beings capable of intelligent thought, rather than those who run strictly off of instinct, who may be able to break through the Yeerk's control unpredictably.
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I also think brain size is a factor, and with intelligence often comes greater brain size relative to body size, and greater brain complexity. Which makes me wonder--how big are Yeerks, really? I know this has been discussed before and in #6 the Yeerk Temrash is described as "not six inches long"...so a little under six inches in length, but really, how much area could a six-inch slug cover when pressed and flattened out? According to a few science websites, like this one, the human brain when flattened out would be about the size of an average pillowcase:
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/compare2.html
So...would a six inch slug, when flattened out to a paper-thin layer, be more or less than that? I'd say probably more...
As for Yeerk psychology, I think their society involves a whole lot of brainwashing and propaganda, which is fairly obvious throughout the series. Those who are able to dismiss that dogma that's been forced into their minds since they were young might be able to reconcile things like feeling bad about taking unwilling hosts, but overall it seems the Empire has created a very messed up psychological base model for its citizens.
On the flip side, I wonder if a Yeerk would make a good psychologist? ;)
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Interesting thoughts, that line of thinking makes a lot of sense, and actually reminds me a lot of the Anis working to control a new morph and even control the more powerful instincts of one they are experienced with. In many respects it is the same struggle, though the methods of controlling the body of the morphs is different, they do physically create the animal brain as part of the animal body and it is referred to as having its own 'mind' in so much as an animal has a mind; often this is nothing more than a 'hard wired' processing of response to inputs but it can involve interpreting of inputs with enough complexity to be considered conscious thought.
In any case, the Anis working to control the morphed brain's instincts is at least to some degree comparable to a Yeerk's controlling a host brain even though the methods of linking the brains is completely different (furthermore, the Anis control an animal brain with a mind, but that brain/mind has no past experiences, it is just a method of observation/thought processing). It would have been interesting to see a Yeerk's perspectives on the experience of morphing, perhaps by spending time in Esplin's perspective trying out a couple of morphs in The Andalite Chronicles as we later (earlier chronologically, later publishing) got to see from his perspective in The Hork-Bajir Chronicles. Late in the series the Yeerks may have been found to be particularly good morphers, not in the shape-shifting as an estreen is, but in controlling the morph quicker and more completely because it is so closely related to their normal life-style and basic evolutionary training to learn to control another mind/brain.
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While we're on the topic of the Yeerk brain, I have to bring up this question as well: how intelligent/adaptable are the Yeerk brains? Based on what we see in the series they seem to be incredibly adaptable, almost unrealistically so.
When the Yeerks are first discovered they are a sentient but otherwise largely helpless and experience-less species. They had control of Gedds, tools that were along the lines of early civilization (wielding clubs and whatnot) and, according to HBC, had absolutely no knowledge that the stars even existed, let alone life on another planet.
Within only a few years (if that) of the Andalites occupying the Yeerk homeworld the Yeerks are capable of not only using, but understanding energy beam weapons and of stealing and effectively flying spacecraft (as we see in Alloran's holographic recording of the Yeerk escape). We know that they do steal technologies, but they have the mental capacity to not only understand how to use what they steal, but to innovate and invent new technologies based on the old.
So essentially the Gedds went from a pre-historic type of land based culture to a space age culture, practically overnight. Now I'm sure they did have a decent amount of intelligence gathered from the years spent in their pools, studying wave currents and whatnot, but how much practical knowledge did they have of certain aspects of science? Not much, especially in regards to technology.
So how did the Yeerk brain not only accept and use the new technologies, but so quickly become able to fully understand and innovate upon already existing devices? I imagine it would be akin to visiting Mesopotamia and giving the early inhabitants a hypersonic jet to play around with.
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Haha, that is an interesting (and pretty accurate) analogy, Jessi. I've thought about that quite a bit too, and I guess the only evidence we have beyond the Yeerks' later capacity for developing new technology from the old is that "Seerow says they're really smart".
Well, it's like you say, they're almost unrealistically so--unless we assume that they had built their knowledge base up to advanced levels in math and physics, but had no way to apply these rules other than for predicting pool currents or, I dunno, the timing of their day and night.
If they hadn't even seen the stars, it also makes me seriously doubt that they even knew Kandrona was a star itself. So when the Andalites came along, they not only saw bodies and technology that would help them finally advance beyond their otherwise tribal society level, but they also naturally saw a way out of the confines of their homeworld.
If you're entire body is practically made up of your brain, and your capacity for learning is just wildly adaptable, plus the Yeerks' abilities of storing and adapting host memory...I'd say their brains are like our own, but with far more of the usable, conscious parts unlocked. A race of intelligent savants, where even the people who don't have a good scientific mind ("that kind of mind" according to Esplin 9466 in HBC) are still able to devote their attention to completely learning about something else (Andalite culture, for example).
That doesn't mean that there weren't Yeerks who made poor decisions or were, by their standards, not too smart...but they certainly seemed to have a mental capacity well beyond our own.
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I disagree with you two on the point of it being 'unrealistically so'. Assuming that they are sapient but have a primitive culture then they aren't different than humans who spent thousands of years being just as intelligent as we are today but only made innovative changes over periods of lifetimes rather than months or years because they were caught up in the day-to-day struggles of survival and didn't have time to put that intelligence into progressive works. But then, under Seerow's tutelage over several years, young Yeerks would have no more difficulty becoming 'modern' and 'advanced' by our standards just by growing up with teachings of advanced knowledge. With that and assuming there was plenty of instructive material stored in the spacecrafts that were hijacked explicitly designed for education (the databases seemed to have a large store of general Andalite knowledge as well as very detailed scientific and technological information) then those born on ship in the 1960s (Earth-time) and being adults in 'present day' late 1990s would turn out much as we see them completely adjusted to the technology around them.
Their capacity for absorbing information may be beyond our own, but their creativity and adaptivity doesn't seem to be necessarily greater. The same would be the case if one of us took enough modern technology and stores of knowledge with us and began instructing young people in an ancient human cave-dwelling clan.
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I disagree with you two on the point of it being 'unrealistically so'.
Well, it's like you say, they're almost unrealistically so--unless we assume that they had built their knowledge base up to advanced levels in math and physics, but had no way to apply these rules other than for predicting pool currents or, I dunno, the timing of their day and night.
Almost unrealistic. Your points about their adjustment to advanced technology was the point I was trying to make about their huge capacity to learn. :)
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I'm not sure that they didn't have a very long time under seerow to gain working knowledge of the technology. When they attacked the andalites they already had pool ships set up. It takes a long time to design and then build a ship, so they may have had a significant time to learn. Even if the ships were rigged ad hoc, it still would imply a long period of time just to understand and replicate the kandrona, and build computers that could be used by the yeerks.
Once they had the ships they weren't working from scratch, they had a huge database of information to work with.
It still took several years before they had developed the means to design their own versions of the ships and handheld weapons, which falls in the general time frame for reverse engineering technology. Now the means to actually produce them I'm not sure about since they would have to build the industrial infrastructure first.
Also they didn't truly develop anything uniquely their own that we know of, except for the antimorphing ray which may or may not have worked. So all of their technology may have been reverse engineered.
The thing that got me about it though was how effectively they fought the war with the andalites, they had the andalites at a stalemate without much experience at fighting, whereas the andalites had who knows how many years experience fighting.
Now as to the yeerks preference for intelligent species, I've got a few ideas. First we need to consider what the yeerks need in a host. Assuming they're infestable, a species needs 3 things to be suitable as a host, good senses, an ability to move, and an ability to manipulate objects, such as hands or tentacles. Now most species on earth that have a decent ability to manipulate objects are very intelligent, apes, octopuses (octopi?) for instance. There also needs to be a lot of them available, this would also imply an intelligent species since they would have the ability to survive beyond the typical outproduce-the-dangers approach and take ways to reduce or eliminate the dangers. They also need to be fairly well concentrated, they had mentioned one species that could be infested but had spread out so much that they weren't worth taking.
I don't think the yeerks have much more ability to fight the instincts of the host than the host does, the series often mentions times when the yeerks couldn't control their facial expressions ( I believe Jake's yeerk was made by a microexpression), which are instinctive, well some are, or the ANS responses of the body. I also wouldn't discount how strong instincts are in intelligent species, I don't think they aren't just as strong, I just think they don't come up as much. People who have been put in survival situations often had strong urges to do things that have saved their lives without ever knowing why.
I always wondered how much the yeerk was affected by the mind of the host it had taken. Take Taylor for instance, the yeerk that took taylor was supposed to take a much more important human later, but decided she (for simplicity I refer to yeerk's by their hosts gender) liked the feeling of being beautiful so much she stayed in her (or something like that) which was one of the things the host felt. It's hard to say because we don't get much about the yeerk before she infested her. I don't know much about the yeerk peace movement but I'm pretty sure it started with yeerks who had human controllers. There's also V3, who although was always calculating and ruthless, didn't seem to develop his deep bloodlust or extreme arrogance until after he took an andalite, who was extremely arrogant and did have a deep bloodlust. Since the yeerks had only taken a few species en masse it's possible that the yeerks themselves didn't know about this. The Hork Bajir were described as being so simple minded that they didn't really understand what had happened when the yeerk had taken the HB, the taxxons were single minded from their hunger, and the gedds were implied to be less intelligent than the HB. The only species that did have complex psychologies before the yeerks started taking humans were so few that there probably wasn't any notice of it.
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I always wondered how much the yeerk was affected by the mind of the host it had taken.
This, I think, is an interesting speculation.
From our reading we see Yeerks with several kinds of hosts (listed in order of preference: Gedd, Taxxon, Hork-Bajir, Human and Andalite
It's interesting to note that humans and Andalites, on the scale of sentience, seem to be quite a bit above the Gedd, Taxxons and Hork-Bajir. I'm pointing this out because our only examples of 'host sympathy' come from the host bodies that belong to a more individualized race.
In the case of human we have a few examples: Edriss, Tyler, the Yeerk from #8 (forgot his name), Karen/Aftran. In each of these cases you have Yeerks 'go human', or in some way give in to either human instinct, emotion or personality. Tyler is the most extreme example, blurring the line between Yeerk and human so completely that they are almost the same person.
In the case of the Andalite, we have Esplin. I'd like to argue that Esplin too fell victim to 'host sympathy' in a very odd way. In HBC and TAC we see a very different Esplin 9-4-6-6 than in the canonical series and Visser. We see an intelligent, astute Yeerk who knows how to get ahead in the war. He is intelligent about his rise to power, and about obtaining his Andalite host. However, in the canonical series, after many years with Alloran, he seems to become a warmonger. He is more arrogant and more cut-throat, characteristics that Alloran possessed. Though Esplin would never openly sympathize with his host, I think he took on some of Alloran's personality traits subconsciously.
This trend does not seem to be noticeable in the barely sentient Gedds, hunger-driven Taxxons or genetically-created Hork-Bajir.
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OK, so after ending up ranting in a new thread about the distinction between 'sentience' and 'sapience' and how particularly relevant the distinction is with Animorphs in general and particularly when having in-depth conversations like this, I'm ready to respond to some new thoughts here.
...Now the means to actually produce them [their own Yeerk versions of ships, other devices] I'm not sure about since they would have to build the industrial infrastructure first.
This I chuck up to plenty of machine tools and possibly even small factories on board the ships, which were quite large and had to be quite capable of existing away from any habitable planet for quite some time, including making replacement larger ship parts and even smaller ships; this equipment and plenty of existing schematics and engineering information could lead to their creating and building their own small ships within the larger transport ships before they even started seizing things throughout space and the two-ish years before finding the Hork-Bajir planet. While some studied the Andalites (Like Esplin specifically) and the universe around them in general there were those with 'that type of mind' who had plenty of spare time in their day-to-day life to learn all about engineering and start tinkering with whatever materials and existing devices/small ships were at hand.
The thing that got me about it though was how effectively they fought the war with the andalites, they had the andalites at a stalemate without much experience at fighting, whereas the andalites had who knows how many years experience fighting.
Well, part of the reason for the stalemate was that they Yeerks had a strategic advantage: so long as they didn't allow themselves to be drawn into large, crushing battles they could learn bit by bit in small skirmishes and study any data they had on war and space-fighting/piloting while just fleeing anytime a battle got bad while looking for less prepared creatures on other spacecraft and planets to seize more power. The Andalite pursuers, on the other hand, had to count any skirmish as a loss if any of their enemies got away alive to infest and spread another day while the Andalite fleets grew more and more spread in ever expanding directions.
Now as to the yeerks preference for intelligent species, I've got a few ideas...
Now most species on earth that have a decent ability to manipulate objects are very intelligent, apes, octopuses (octopi?) for instance.
I don't know, other primates and in a much more limited sense other vertebrates have hands; humans are the exception that are intelligent and though some primates are 'smarter than your average bear', others aren't. Likewise, octopi are particularly intelligent, but most other invertebrates who have similar extending-manipulating tenticles are not particularly intelligent, even among the cephalopods more closely related to octopi. On the other hand, dolphins are quite intelligent by animal standards but they haven't particularly great organs evolved specifically for manipulating objects and have to settle for nudging with their nose and holding sticks in their mouths to poke thing (a very impressive show of basic intelligence, but by no means impressive ability to use tools physically). I'll grant that having evolved specialized manipulation organs implies a level of brain capacity to use them, but by no means suggests a tenancy toward being 'very intelligent' in general.
They also need to be fairly well concentrated, they had mentioned one species that could be infested but had spread out so much that they weren't worth taking.
To clarify, the Ongachic specie, being decentralized were not worth conquering as a species, meaning it wasn't worth hunting them down to the last and taking everyone of them spread throughout the galaxy, but they were still certainly worth taking in individual ships whenever they were happened to be run across and captured, so though we never saw them they were said to be numbered within Yeerk society.
There also needs to be a lot of them available, this would also imply an intelligent species since they would have the ability to survive beyond the typical outproduce-the-dangers approach and take ways to reduce or eliminate the dangers.
Why not look for a specie that is physically capable but unintelligent hosts that reproduces in high numbers with shorter generations, the 'outproduce-the-dangers' approach, then control them and use Yeerk intelligence to reduce/eliminate dangers, this would be a better solution giving them hosts that can multiply in numbers in very short order to keep up with rapidly growing Yeerk population potential.
Anyways, the issue of needing a lot of them is this, when the Yeerks moved to all out war they pointed out that numbers in the millions were plenty sufficient (They could take great losses and reduce the human population by 90% and still come out with all the hosts to make it worthwhile). If, as you suppose, intelligence-preference is partially due to intelligence leading to sufficient numbers, why is it that every other known sapient race exists in too small of numbers to meet Yeerk population needs?
These are all useful thoughts in consideration for Yeerk attitudes about the species they examined, particularly leading to their five-class system; but I think that much of their present attitude about needing to conquer intelligent species, as Myitt most clearly expresses, is the result of brainwashing from an Empire based on domination and control.
I always wondered how much the yeerk was affected by the mind of the host it had taken.
Me too! Like your examples, as well as Terenia's, I thought it was really cool seeing that blurring of the Yeerks' sense-of-self and identity crisises. It it really interesting to think about it, what really makes your 'self' you in a distinct way? If you, as the Yeerks, are directly connected neurologically to another persons brains, are processing their thoughts and memories as your own, even processing your thoughts in part through their brain, are those thoughts really your own or your host's thoughts streaming through your consciousness?
I suppose Tobias having a physical hawk-brain with an attendant hawk-'mind' and his doing a fair amount of thinking through it gives us a pretty cool view of some thoughts about identity and self, but seeing more time of a long-term relationship between two intelligent entities, directly linked in thought and really beginning to question what about their distinct minds and brains interacting really said about what made them a distinct 'self' is something we didn't get to see through first-hand narration in this series.
I had never considered the possibility of Alloran's personality and subconscious influencing and becoming a part of Esplin, but along with being an interesting thought it certainly explains a lot in ways the author almost certainly never intended, very awesome.
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To clarify, the Ongachic specie, being decentralized were not worth conquering as a species, meaning it wasn't worth hunting them down to the last and taking everyone of them spread throughout the galaxy, but they were still certainly worth taking in individual ships whenever they were happened to be run across and captured, so though we never saw them they were said to be numbered within Yeerk society.
That's sort of what I'm saying, they could take them individually, but it's not really worth hunting them down.
As far as grabbing a species and breeding it until it reached significant numbers, they still have to have a take a good number of them, hence if they're spread out it makes it difficult, and they were already in a war with the andalites since they left their planet they had been in a constant state of war, They were looking for the quickest way to gain numbers, it's possible that if the virus hadn't been released that the yeerks would have defeated the andalites well before earth.
Time would be the biggest factor for the yeerks, they needed bodies right now, not in 5 or 10 years. They were taking earth too slow and it was giving them more hosts than could be bred. If the yeerks had a high preference for taking intelligent species without being in a state of war then that would answer that argument, but they had never been in anything except a state of war.
Another, maybe less important factor is that the necessary infrastructure would already exist to support the host population, rather than the yeerks having to produce it themselves as would become necessary in a breeding program.
Also with the HB the only question they asked before making the decision to take them was if they could be used to fight. I'm not saying they hadn't considered other factors, but that seemed to be the major one, and the only one we know of for certain.
I don't know, other primates and in a much more limited sense other vertebrates have hands; humans are the exception that are intelligent and though some primates are 'smarter than your average bear', others aren't. Likewise, octopi are particularly intelligent, but most other invertebrates who have similar extending-manipulating tenticles are not particularly intelligent, even among the cephalopods more closely related to octopi. On the other hand, dolphins are quite intelligent by animal standards but they haven't particularly great organs evolved specifically for manipulating objects and have to settle for nudging with their nose and holding sticks in their mouths to poke thing (a very impressive show of basic intelligence, but by no means impressive ability to use tools physically). I'll grant that having evolved specialized manipulation organs implies a level of brain capacity to use them, but by no means suggests a tenancy toward being 'very intelligent' in general.
I'm not sure about that, I'm fairly certain that cephalopods are the most intelligent invertabrets, and I'm comparing intelligence to the majority of of animal species on earth, maybe unfair since the majority are insects :) and yes not every intelligent animal has any easy means of manipulating objects but that's beside the point, I don't think the yeerks had any interest in anything that couldn't manipulate objects intelligent or not, well except for the horses.
This I chuck up to plenty of machine tools and possibly even small factories on board the ships, which were quite large and had to be quite capable of existing away from any habitable planet for quite some time, including making replacement larger ship parts and even smaller ships; this equipment and plenty of existing schematics and engineering information could lead to their creating and building their own small ships within the larger transport ships before they even started seizing things throughout space and the two-ish years before finding the Hork-Bajir planet. While some studied the Andalites (Like Esplin specifically) and the universe around them in general there were those with 'that type of mind' who had plenty of spare time in their day-to-day life to learn all about engineering and start tinkering with whatever materials and existing devices/small ships were at hand.
maybe on smaller things, maybe even fighters, after producing the various mining and refinement tools, large as they are, but they began production of blade ships shortly after arriving on the HBHW a significant feat considering they were fighting a war there at the same time.
Well, part of the reason for the stalemate was that they Yeerks had a strategic advantage: so long as they didn't allow themselves to be drawn into large, crushing battles they could learn bit by bit in small skirmishes and study any data they had on war and space-fighting/piloting while just fleeing anytime a battle got bad while looking for less prepared creatures on other spacecraft and planets to seize more power. The Andalite pursuers, on the other hand, had to count any skirmish as a loss if any of their enemies got away alive to infest and spread another day while the Andalite fleets grew more and more spread in ever expanding directions.
They never really had a significant engagement until fighting the andalites at the HBHW, they had attacked a few ships and taken them, but they weren't well organized or armed. Whereas the andalites were had professional military, fighting them would be completely different. It mentioned at one point that they had learned to attack in formation, but it seemed as though they didn't really understand space battles. They also would still have had no experience with infantry or joint ops except as fighting against a Guerrilla force. It also seemed somewhat implausible that the andalites could not mass effectively to launch a second attack after failing in their first attempt. So this either implies an extraordinary ability to learn on the part of the yeerks, or a massive failure on the andalite's part.
Post Merged: July 25, 2010, 04:32:04 AM
hey myitt, did you save that picture on this site?
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...and yes not every intelligent animal has any easy means of manipulating objects but that's beside the point, I don't think the yeerks had any interest in anything that couldn't manipulate objects intelligent or not, well except for the horses.
I totally agree with you there. Even though "ability to manipulate objects/tools" isn't explicitly mentioned in the Yeerk '5-classes of hosts' classification system it is pretty much implied with their objectives. My only objection to your earlier thoughts on the Yeerk infestation choices was that this ability implies intelligence more as a rule than as an exception; but yes the 'manipulation ability' basically has to be a given for their explicit objectives.
As far as grabbing a species and breeding it until it reached significant numbers, they still have to have a take a good number of them, hence if they're spread out it makes it difficult, and they were already in a war with the andalites since they left their planet they had been in a constant state of war, They were looking for the quickest way to gain numbers, it's possible that if the virus hadn't been released that the yeerks would have defeated the andalites well before earth.
Time would be the biggest factor for the yeerks, they needed bodies right now, not in 5 or 10 years. They were taking earth too slow and it was giving them more hosts than could be bred. If the yeerks had a high preference for taking intelligent species without being in a state of war then that would answer that argument, but they had never been in anything except a state of war.
Another, maybe less important factor is that the necessary infrastructure would already exist to support the host population, rather than the yeerks having to produce it themselves as would become necessary in a breeding program.
I still don't think this and your earlier assertion, that the Yeerks were looking for a specie that defended itself with intelligent means to reach high numbers rather than "outproduce-the-dangers" to reach high numbers. All other things being equal in terms of a physically capable host, 'out-producing' as an evolutionary trait would have been highly preferable to 'intelligently defending' to reach the high numbers you mentioned. Yes, they wanted numbers for a current war, not a distant project, but the way they were spread out in so many directions that the Andalites couldn't ever take them down, postponing a final conflict indefinitely, allowed them to commit to a slow, gradual infestation of Earth's Humans over a period of years; they wanted hosts soon, but were not desperate for them right now, 5 or 10 years was by example an acceptable infestation route.
In any case, if the Yeerk target was a species that, again meeting the aforementioned physical necessities (both explicit and implied), had a lifespan of less than a dozen months rather than more than a couple dozen years, and reproduced by in several dozens or even hundreds rather than only a few in a given reproductive cycle; then using Yeerk intelligence to remove natural dangers would cause this species that survives via "out-produce-danger" to multiply to far greater numbers in less time than the campaign on Earth; this would be a much more ideal target strategically than an intelligent species that produces in less numbers and has high numbers because it uses intelligence to defend itself (which is what made the infestation of Humans a subtle and gradual thing). This is why I agree with the earlier supposition of Myitt's that the preference for humans was not because intelligence is implied in their needs for a species, but that it was entirely a social desire brought about by an Empire geared for domination.
maybe on smaller things, maybe even fighters, after producing the various mining and refinement tools, large as they are, but they began production of blade ships shortly after arriving on the HBHW a significant feat considering they were fighting a war there at the same time.
See, again I don't think "mining and refinement tools" would be something they would even have to make from scratch; I would think that larger ships like the transport ship would come with everything necessary to make it completely independent of the Andalite home-world, equipped to utilize resources from whatever planet they happened to be exploring in order to be a docking place and 'home away from home' to any small fighter or larger command ship in need of resupplying.
As far as beginning to produce these new things shortly after arriving on the HBHW 'considering they were fighting a war' I would say that the war is what makes the rapid rate of production to be expected as a matter of course, war has been shown to be a great motivator for innovation both in new ideas and in learning how to rapidly produce implementations of those new ideas; as the saying goes "necessity is the mother of innovation."
I think seeing it as it did is also a good view of the evolutionary trait of "highly adaptable intelligence" that we have begun to discuss on this thread. They may have seen basic Andalite design methods that have been commonplace for decades, but in combination with some piece of technology they took from another race, say the Skrit Na, they found a clever and innovative way to use an old idea in a brilliant new application. After spending a couple years puzzling through technology from a few different races that think in different ways, from their own unique perspective, I see the Yeerks getting out of their ships on the HBHW eager to begin trying to produce all these new things as not only plausible but a very cool image.
They never really had a significant engagement until fighting the andalites at the HBHW, they had attacked a few ships and taken them, but they weren't well organized or armed. Whereas the andalites were had professional military, fighting them would be completely different... They also would still have had no experience with infantry or joint ops except as fighting against a Guerrilla force.
The point I made before is that they wouldn't have to be; they could pause long enough to send out handfuls of troops and even purely robotic drones into space, let the majority of them get crushed while the surviving limp back to their main ships (like the originally stolen transport ships and other major vessels seized from the unexpected along the way), then leap on through Z-space to a new location. Even if the Andalites took no losses, they would get spread thinner and the Yeerks will have gained more knowledge of space combat through observing them.
As long as the Yeerks still have plenty of numbers to infest new bodies picked up along the way while seizing new victim ships that aren't prepared to put up a fight then they are spreading and multiplying in all directions like an uncontainable virus while the Andalite fleet is merely spreading thinner. It was this operation, as a parasite of the galaxy, that gave them a strategic advantage in conquest that didn't require an actual superiority in battle for some time; and I think it was really clever the way that KA referred to this operating as a parasite due to their own nature rather than as a predator conqueror that we are used to thinking in terms of when we think of alien conquerors.
It also seemed somewhat implausible that the andalites could not mass effectively to launch a second attack after failing in their first attempt. So this either implies an extraordinary ability to learn on the part of the yeerks, or a massive failure on the andalite's part.
I would say that it is a combination of both, the Yeerks proved very intellectually adaptable, but the Analites did fail. However, I think that it wasn't so much that they could not mass a sufficient attack; but that they strategically chose not to (whether this was a good strategic decision or not). Both with Aldrea on the HBHW and the Anis/Ax planning to follow Elfangor's urging to "hold them off until the Andalite fleet can arrive" there seems to be the belief on the part of the Andalite individuals that if those in command of the fleet chose to they could muster enough numbers to wipe out the Yeerks at the present location.
But if you assume that the Yeerks were spreading in different directions and mounting these infestations on various small but useful targets (planets with Class Three targets by Yeerk terminology); then from the Andalite commanders' perspective, there may have been any number of people with pleas exactly like Aldrea or Ax saying "Show up here in greater numbers then you already have or all is lost," they might have decided that showing up in a few places would have allowed them to win more of these individual battles, but that it would have allowed the Yeerks to multiply unopposed elsewhere into many truly unstoppable targets; while allowing themselves to be spread thing and never winning anything decisively allowed enough grassroot resistance that the Yeerks never become completely unstoppable anywhere (like the token resistance at the HBHW allowed the command to know that there would be enough resitance among the natives that the Yeerks would be tied up there for a while in skirmishes and even when the Hork-Bajir were completely conquered it would gain the Yeerks too few of numbers of Hork-Bajir hosts to be completely unstoppable).
So yes, though the Yeerks were particularly adaptable in their fighting, I agree that the Andalites failed to win battles that they could have, but I contest that the losses may have been willing partial-concessions rather than concentrating in sufficient numbers to gain all out victories but allow the Yeerks to multiply and spread unchecked elsewhere, in the way that was implied in Ax's communications with the Andalites in 'present day' earlier in the series.