Ok so the most recent two Animorphs books I read are #18 where Ax blew up Leera and scored like literally 10,000 Hork Bajir kills trashing Erek's battle-record and most likely everyone else's career records except for Alloran his damn self.
And HBC.
So HBC suggests that by the stardate the Andalites pretty much bail out and quit on, there are 100,000 Hork hosts before virus.
Then virus.
We know because Esplin was born in space, that alien breeding totally takes place in the war- reproduction is a form of reinforcement that is.
But even despite forced breeding of hosts, the Visser book clearly used the word "decimate" and I think it was meant literally- 1 million Horks they could have had cut in ten to 100,000.
The rates of growth and industry throughout HBC are very slow, and this is underscored by #8 with Ax pretty much being scared at how fast humans learn and populate.
In #10, Erek trashes a roomful of Horks, and in #18 Ax annihilates an islandful.
From #13-23 Toby liberates a good sized colony, effectively negating or at least steeply reducing replacements from Earth based Horks.
Elfangor had a "legendary" career which I think we can be sure involved taking out more than one Visser. That would involve quite a few Horks too. More than any besides Alloran, Ax, and maybe Erek.
And then one of the 17-odd pools on Hork Bajir Planet gets a Whale dropped on it.
This all sounds gloom and soon like I'm implying the Hork Bajir just plain to extinct even before the planet finished dying right?
ACTUALLY my thoughts were that Quafijinivon's Clone Army, if it's of any kind of helpful size whatsoever (Andrea and Dak led a grand total of 800 ever, probably no more than 75-100 at a time, going from 48 to 12 in 7 months during the Yeerks' highest morale season.) Even 100 would make a difference of at least a year long 2nd War for Hork Bajir; 500 or 1000 might actually be enough to take a valley and survive until they get reinforcements after the Earth clusterscrew.
Starting from #37 onwards (after the Sea Blade experiments and after yet another 'let's pretend we're going to kill Marco's mom for real this time' plot, there is a real actual chance that # Free Hork Bajir, while not more than or equal to # Yeerk hosts, is *Actually* a significant fraction, like maybe instead 12 out of 100,000 it's more like 500 out of 75,000 or even 750 out of 50,000.
And remember Vissers One and Three not only are good at losing armies, they're criminally careless with executing valuable hosts badly enough to get execution sentences from an Evil Imperial Regime of Brain Stealing Slugs who rule by fear. Basically. Yeah.
Right up to #23 things look awful for the Hork Bajir planet and species but the more and more viable the Free Colony gets and then the mission with the Arn clones and a stash of weapons-- things look more hopeful for the Horks than for, say, the Andalites, whose entire society and culture goes down the toilet with the import of Cinnamon Buns.
Time it takes for an enterprising businessman to open a strip club on the Andalite homeworld and name it "Hot Bunz"? Pretty embarrassing. XD
Think Hooters....only.... with Bunz!
