I can't escape the fact that Tobias has always been my favorite character. I identified with him more strongly than any other of the Animorphs, and I'm sad to say that Pop Arena's analysis of the character only cemented the fact because I was very nearly that kid in more ways than one. I don't know if I would have willingly exterminated the Mercora on a whim, but I digress.
Tobias' first morph is a cat. His second is a hawk.
The Cat is used to symbolize the Egyptian Goddess Bast, who was the goddess of warfare. Her brother is the falcon-headed god Horus. Since the names and appearances of gods have changed over the years, it's not such a huge stretch to think of Horus as a hawk, or a generic bird of pray.
Both gods were the children of Isis and Osirus. Why is that significant?
Isis was already a goddess. In myth, Osirus was a mortal man who was betrayed by his brother and later dismembered. Isis put him back together and Osirus became a god.
With some very loose fitting of the mythology, you basically have Tobias' backstory. His father is from another world, and became human after gathering several pieces of DNA to make one whole being, which allowed him to conceive a child with a woman who was already human. In fact, Tobias very likely would not exist were it not for the intervention of an omniscient alien being that some creatures probably view as a deity similar to Ra.
Again, it's a stretch, and probably completely unintended by KA Applegate.
