"Eyath chose her prey, aimed and launched herself...
"The reptiloid's neck snapped at the sheer violence of that meeting.
"Vodan, you'd have joyed!"
-Poul Anderson, The People Of the Wind IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 437-662 AT XV, p. 607.
A kzin:
"...he returned, meditatively picking bits of hide and bone from between his teeth with a thumb-claw. His pelt was plastered flat with mud, leaves, and blood, and a thorned branch had cut a bleeding trough across his sloping forehead...
"The human swallowed and averted her eyes from the bits of something that the kzin was flicking from his fangs and muzzle."
-"The Children's Hour," Chapter II, p. 181.
Ythrians and kzinti are intelligent carnivores who must maintain territories where they can hunt live prey.
Two Differences
(i) Kzinti are feline whereas Ythrians do not parallel any Terrestrial animal.
(ii) Ythrians are individualists with very loose social organization. They would never conquer other worlds or say, "Glory to the Race! (Scroll down.)
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
A nicely done characterization of the similarities and differences between Kzinti and Ythrians. One obvious difference, of course is that the former is not a flying race, unlike the latter. And that would greatly shape what kinds of societies and political forms either would find tolerable.
Ad astra! Sean
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