Why Elfangor Had Morphing Cube With Him

[Tim Bruening]

I'm betting that Elfangor had been plotting to slip humans the ability to morph at the earliest opportunity, in order to hinder the Yeerks.

(I understand that he had secretly spent years on Earth, so knew that humans could handle morphing).

The Invasion: Elfangor and the 5 kids must all touch the cube in order to give the 5 kids the morphing ability.

The Discovery: The Animorphs AND David must touch the cube to give David morphing powers.

However, I have read a book in which a buffalo and an ant got the ability to morph merely by touching the morphing cube, without any action by the Animorphs!  The buffalo proceeded to morph Assistant Principal Chapman and Visser Three!

[Chad32]

I don't really consider the way the buffalo and ant got the power as canon. That was a weird episode, to say the least.

As for Elfangor, I don't think KA had all the details of what she wanted to series to be like planned out ahead when she was writing. You can see this in a few places in the early series. Why did Elfangor have the box? Why couldn't he just morph and escape? How did the box even get back in the ship, since the Anis ran off with Elfangor still holding the cube? How did Jake use thought speech when not in morph? Try not to think about these things too much, since the author just didn't plan ahead too much when writing.

[Tim Bruening]

In "The Andalites Chronicles", Elfangor says that he was too WEAK to morph.  He was therefore telepathing his final statement into his ship's computer.  (I wonder how that statement survived the destruction of his ship?).