Perching

Human beings sit on chairs;
Merseians sit on their tails;
one Merseian sits on a stool;
a Cynthian visiting a Merseian household sits on the table;
Wodenites must lie on the floor, if a room is big enough for them to enter;
Ythrians, incredibly, perch:

"Bouncing from his perch, [Ferune] scuttled across the floor and shook hands Terran style."
-Poul Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2012), p. 455.

I don't think I realized the significance of this before. They perch? Maybe "going bird" is not such an inappropriate slang phrase for human beings joining choths.

I am about to reread "The Problem of Pain," about the early exploration of Avalon before it was named. The point of the story is a clash between a man's Christianity and the Ythrian's New Faith: God the Father or God the Hunter? But I am interested in background details, like what were they looking for on Gray/Avalon? Were they checking it out for colonization that far back?

However, real life intervenes. I must eat and attend a social function so posting will cease for a few hours.