Gahood:
biped;
visibly male;
very tall;
short legs;
grotesquely long arms;
unhumanly stocky;
incongruously broad;
muscles rippling differently;
padded, three-toed feet;
four-fingered hands;
green-tinted skin and nails;
bronze body hairs;
flat yellow teeth;
no vestigial nipples;
massive, bull-like head;
short, broad snout;
dewlapped throat;
black, wide-set eyes;
heavy brow ridges;
small forehead;
long, mobile ears;
white iridescent mane hanging half way to the hips;
wearing only a jeweled necklace, rings, gold bracelets and a belt supporting knife and machete;
musky scent;
voice like thunder, interpreted by Latimer.
I wouldn't like to meet him on a dark night.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And unlike the covers of many other SF books, the image given here of Gahood is unusually accurate. And one of the things I found interesting about Gahood's race was that it came from an originally herbivorous species which somehow learned to obtain nutrition from eating meat. It was a branch of a species which had successfully adapted to drastically worsening conditions on its home planet.
Sean
I think the Shen learned to use plant juices to process meat, rather than digesting it directly.
Incidentally, almost all herbivores on Earth are descended from carnivores -- all the original dinosaurs were carnivores, for instance. They more or less wiped out the competition, and then their prey species, and then evolved to fill the empty niches The original mammals were all either herbivores or omnivores, IIRC.
We humans are an unusual case of a (nearly) herbivorous species evolving into a largely carnivorous one; humans can live on plant foods, but our digestive system differs from our australopithecine ancestors (or our chimp and gorilla relatives) primarily in being more suited to meat and less to coarse, high-fiber vegetable foods. Chimps will eat meat, and in fact love the taste, but aren't equipped to do so very often without problems.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
And of course humans learned how to PROCESS plants derived foods by turning them into various kinds of flours to be baked into breads or to cook vegetables. The Old Shenn of Dathyna probably lived solely on baked or processed plant derived foods.
And learning how to COOK meats as well as manufacturing tools would be signs of an omnivorous species no longer being animals.
Sean
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