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[Lyn Farel]

As far as I recall slaver hounds are native from a specific planet and are an alien species, much like the fedo.

The lore also tends to heavily lean towards a more or less clear differentiation between imported terran biosphere and all the other native alien biospheres you can imagine. It is also a clear factor taken into account in the Common Origin and Syncretist theories.

Of course, one could very well imagine that once mixed together, terran lifeforms and alien lifeform will probably conflict at first and adapt, or one of the two will die. Either way, we can expect some blends or all sorts of weird crossovers if both manage to survive together to the resulting biological conflagration.

[Louella Dougans]

I dunno, about native alien species, really, and the abundance of imported Terran biospheres.

I can see the imported Terran biospheres as being fairly common - remember that Caldari Prime was bought by a megacorporation as an unterraformed world. This suggests that terraforming technology was very advanced, and very common - the population pressure on the Earth-side of the EVE Gate would have stimulated that - need to develop every possible world.

There's also the angle of a setting where alien monsters are in fact human creations. Something something, hubris of mankind, something something. That kind of thing. "Truly there were monsters in space, and they were us", and all that.


On the other hand, native xenospecies, such as the Long Limb, or the Fedo, that are biologically compatible with human ecology (can eat long limb eggs, fedos can live in human environments), being very common, just seems a bit unlikely. That's more along sort of Star-Trek or Star Wars lines, where every alien and alien animal is biologically compatible.



Anyway, miniature slavers are much, much easier to train than normal hounds.
https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Miniature_Slaver

[Ché Biko]

Possible hunting tactic:

After spotting a prey, one hound takes an ambush position, then one or more other hounds drive the prey towards the ambush position.

[Morwen Lagann]

On the other hand, native xenospecies, such as the Long Limb, or the Fedo, that are biologically compatible with human ecology (can eat long limb eggs, fedos can live in human environments), being very common, just seems a bit unlikely. That's more along sort of Star-Trek or Star Wars lines, where every alien and alien animal is biologically compatible.

Star Trek did this deliberately and then had a number of episodes in TNG establishing why this is the case within its own little universe. Not sure about Star Wars.

[Lyn Farel]

Star Wars has never really been into deep logic and scientific rationale, that's not its point... Though I suspect that Star Wars holds an example of the Syncretist theory found in Eve and that most humanoids are actually descended from a common ancestor.

Well, that was my own assumption, and that before they tore down the EU anyway.

So, anyway, from the Earth article:

According to Earthologists, the strongest evidence of the existence of a common planet of origin comes from the field of genetics. As with linguistics, and mythology, it is comparative genomics that has seen the most advances in recent years, and it is here the Earthologists have seen their theories gain the most traction. The discovery that the DNA structure of all human beings, regardless of planet of origin, is extremely similar at a base level, set off a firestorm of debate. While leading to vastly different interpretations amongst geneticists, seemingly along political lines, many are coming to agree a shared point of origin does seem likely.[1] Others point out that some animal and plant species also share a percentage of this DNA, and are of the opinion this is simply a further example of dominantly held theory of convergent evolution.

While many dispute genetic similarities indicate a common ancestor, syncretism theorists do accept parts of the notion. They believe there may be many species today that did not originate on the planets they are currently found on. The current confusion geneticists experience in attempting to explain why humans seem to share so little DNA with the majority of the flora and fauna in New Eden, yet do share some with some species, is claimed as further proof of the 'mixing-bowl' ideology of syncretic theory. Syncretics subscribe to the commonly accepted convergent evolution theory, and claim there is nothing in the field of genetics to suggest a common origin.

[Jev North]

Mm. The mineral oil that fills space in the EVE cluster is apparently also causing neonatal hypoxia in the cluster's would-be geneticists, paleontologists, anthropologists, historians..

[Nicoletta Mithra]

I wouldn't argue with in-EVE science about it, because it's merely techno-babble. (For example: If you look at convergent evolution in e.g. moles and the mole cricket, then you will see that covergent evolution is about phenotypes, because the phenotype interacts directly with the environment - not the genotype. Mole crickets don't share more DNA with moles due to 'convergent evolution' than any other cricket does. Convergent evolution explains phenotypical similarities despite genetic differences.)

Even thoug the Fedo 'originated' by PF on Palpis and the slaver hounds on Syrikos and are 'native' to these planets, that doesn't mean they are alien species in the sense of not descendants of life on earth. If you can terraform entire planets, you certainly will be able to modify species to fit niches there - there's no reason against assuming that they are engineered species.

That is as well true for methane breathing species like the Hanging Long-limb, especially as they are eadible. It is quite probable that truely alien life forms wouldn't be eadible, for the sheer number of statistically available amino-acids, which would quickly become problematic for earth-life as they'd interfere with all kinds of metabolic processes. Even if they basically used the same amino acids, there'd be a 50/50 chance of them being mainly based on the D_stereoisomeres instead of the L-stereoisomeres, making one in two alien lifeforms by statistics quite deadly (It's like trying to drive on the right side of the street in the UK.)

So, it would be more reasonable to expect the more exotic life forms of new eden to having been engineered by the first terran settlers, rather then to explain them as 'aliens'.

Anyhow, I think CCP doesn't really mind one way or the other and left it vague if for no other reason than the one that they don't care. So, why should we care too much? It's not that we really need it to decide on this. The only data we have on how living beings work to approximate from are beings on earth any way.

[Nicoletta Mithra]

Star Wars has never really been into deep logic and scientific rationale, that's not its point...

Neither Star Wars, nor Star Trek aim to be anything that is scientifically correct. Both rather are concerned with conveying a message about our world here and now: The aliens, the space etc. is merely a stage that allow us to distance ourselves from the stories told and thus to reflect on them differently. And, oh, then there's the aim to entertain and to make money. Scientific correctness is no more problem to them than it is to EVE and usually solved with Technobabble (TM) - Just modify the deflector phalanx already!

[Mizhara]

Mm. The mineral oil that fills space in the EVE cluster is apparently also causing neonatal hypoxia in the cluster's would-be geneticists, paleontologists, anthropologists, historians..

I believe the submarine physics were actually technobabbled away by our warp drives acting like a drag anchor on space, which would mean we bank and turn like actual ships rather than spaceships something something dork side.

[Louella Dougans]

* Aria's slaver hound is male, and as yet unnamed. That will be changing shortly.

most pet slaver hounds are named "Down from there!" or "Off the furniture!". 

[Aria Jenneth]

... Okay. So-- reasonably or not, do we have consensus on whether they're something xeno or  just dogs on springs? A lot of my suggested characteristics are predicated (of course) on the idea that they are actually something alien, but similar enough to be able to digest chunks of tasty human.

(Thank you for the canon, Lyn. That's exactly why I wanted more voices.)

(Some canon deserves to be given a third "n" and fired. Considering how much of Eve physics is bulldrek to begin with, I'm not prepared to say that this fits that category. We're not dealing in hard sci-fi, here.)

[Louella Dougans]

... Okay. So-- reasonably or not, do we have consensus on whether they're something xeno or  just dogs on springs? A lot of my suggested characteristics are predicated (of course) on the idea that they are actually something alien, but similar enough to be able to digest chunks of tasty human.

I think they're some kind of semi-terran species, descendants of thousands of years worth of pre-Gate gene-engineering, and with 14000 years of wild natural selection on Syrikos.

wording of the "miniature slaver", suggests a litter of slaver pups, so some kind of placental mammal type animal, maybe.

Size and shape seem quite variable, based on breed.

Syrikos V, their home planet is somewhat heavier than 1G surface gravity, so maybe the jumping thing is an artifact of that - they can jump OK on their home world, but on 1G worlds, they have the same muscle mass and leverage, so can jump higher.

[Aria Jenneth]

... Okay. So-- reasonably or not, do we have consensus on whether they're something xeno or  just dogs on springs? A lot of my suggested characteristics are predicated (of course) on the idea that they are actually something alien, but similar enough to be able to digest chunks of tasty human.

I think they're some kind of semi-terran species, descendants of thousands of years worth of pre-Gate gene-engineering, and with 14000 years of wild natural selection on Syrikos.

wording of the "miniature slaver", suggests a litter of slaver pups, so some kind of placental mammal type animal, maybe.

Size and shape seem quite variable, based on breed.

Syrikos V, their home planet is somewhat heavier than 1G surface gravity, so maybe the jumping thing is an artifact of that - they can jump OK on their home world, but on 1G worlds, they have the same muscle mass and leverage, so can jump higher.

Except that they use it as a hunting technique, which would be a little odd if they only had the ability off of their homeworld.

[Lyn Farel]

Slaver is a native animal of Syrikos V and has been bred by the Amarrians from the time they first settled the planet more than a millennium ago.

Seems to hint at a xeno species (even if it doesn't clearly say as such), that has been bred and engineered for eons, and so mixing up more and more with the terran biosphere... Of course it could still be a remnant of terran importation, but I chose to take the term 'native' to its literal meaning...

[Elmund Egivand]

By the way, while something resembling a wolf might exist in Eve Universe, an actual wolf no longer exists.

Instead, wolves are relegated to the realm of Matari mythology, as per the description of the Wolf-class assault frigate.