Animorphs

It doesn't even matter if venomous snakes have unlimited bites or not—they're not viable in combat because while you might kill the first Hork-Bajir you bite, if you can't retreat you'll be kicked to pieces by the next one.

To be a viable combat morph you need to be able to do three things. 1) Take out a Hork-Bajir in a couple of blows. 2) Survive a couple of return blows from that Hork-Bajir in the process. 3) Evade or tank a few bullets.

All the kids' battle morphs pass these tests, some just barely (Cassie's wolf), some with flying colours (Rachel's elephant). There's plenty of other animals that can—but none of them are liable to be snakes.

That's why the best use of snake morphs in the books were about sneaking up on people and being very intimidating. Like when the animorphs were talking with those Andalites that showed up and tried to kill everyone with Science.

The best use of a snake was Marco's assassination of the Inspector. That's how you use a cobra.

Thinking of animals that would make for good combat morphs, went through a list of the largest land mammals in the world. If sources are to be believed, the order is along the lines of:

1) African bush elephant*, 2) Asian elephant (aka Indian elephant), 3) African forest elephant, 4) white rhinoceros* 5) common hippopotamus, 6) Indian rhinoceros, 7) black rhinoceros, 8) gaur, 9) American bison, 10) African cape buffalo*

The ones with asterisks next to them are those the kids actually morphed at one point or another in the series. I've mentioned before that I think it's too bad Cassie only ever used the Cape buffalo in the one book, since she was far more badass in it then she ever would be again. On a similar note, I think it's too bad that none of the other animals on the list ever found their ways into anybody's arsenal, particularly in view of the fact that Book #22 required the Animorphs other than Jake and Rachel to acquire morphs for "bash jobs", as Rachel likes to describe them, anyway. Since the book was being narrated by Rachel, who already had an African elephant, I get why the writer just had Tobias, Cassie, and Ax copy Rachel by acquiring the same elephant, and had Marco copy Jake by acquiring the same rhino that he had, but it still feels like a bit of a missed opportunity to have the others pick a more character specific heavy morph, that they could have used again if necessary (I'll note that Tobias, Cassie, and Ax never go elephant again, and Marco never goes rhino again, while Rachel and Jake continue to use the elephant and rhino morphs throughout the later books).

This also leads me to a thought I've had a few times. On several occasions in this thread, the subject of adapting the books again has come up. In the books, there are a number of times in which the kids all morph the same animal. There's a number of times, for instance, they all morph dolphin while swimming. Or there's the above mentioned Book #22 when four identical elephants and two identical rhinos trash the G8 summit. In a film or television show, I can't help but think that this would be confusing. In the books thought speak and narration lets us differentiate characters from one another, but in a show that's not going to work. Do you think an adaptation would have to change things up a bit, and have each kid have more unique morphs so as to prevent confusion as to who is doing what in a given scene?

edited 12th Nov '17 9:20:56 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Snakes are good for single-target encounters, not large-scale brawls. As noted, Marco's assassination of the Inspector worked because he only needed to strike a single target, not sustain a prolonged combat encounter. It's the same reason why Ax's attempted assassination of Visser Three went so well, also performed as a snake.

Snakes are very capable assassins. But they aren't warriors. They're built for striking one adversary, killing it, and then being left alone. They cannot handle multiple assailants, whether simultaneous or sequential.

And honestly, they're really easy to kill if you're willing to sacrifice a host body to do it. Squeeze a snake by the sides of its head and you can force it to release its jaw. At that point, your Hork-Bajir might be poisoned, but you have the snake's head in your claws. You can double-kill this shit easily.

edited 12th Nov '17 9:24:08 PM by TobiasDrake

Honestly a kick from the Hork-Bajir it's biting would do in most venomous snakes in. The only snakes that might be able to withstand that are the really big ones, like the pythons and anacondas...who of course lack venom, and therefore could not put the Hork-Bajir down in the first place.

The only reptiles that could belong in a brawl are the large crocodilians (saltwater crocodile, Nile crocodile, American crocodile, American alligator, black caiman) and perhaps the Komodo monitor. They're all big, mean, well-armed, and capable of taking a few hits—something the series certainly understood with its portrayal of the saltwater crocodile* in Book #12.

• The book doesn't say what kind of crocodile it is, but given that it has absolutely no trouble in the ocean, and is said to be twenty feet long and coming up on a tonne I'm going to assume saltie.

edited 12th Nov '17 9:41:47 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

They could go the Harry Potter route and have each morph has some unique leftover characteristic from the original person.

The potential problem with that as I see it is that, depending on how far you took that, it could screw with the kids keeping their identities secret. Enough of a clue for the audience could also be enough of a clue for Tom, Chapman, or Visser One.

And going onto the list of things I wish we'd seen—I wish Rachel had gotten to the scene of the Jake/David fight in time to stop David from escaping. Because watching her annihilate him and his precious lion morph would have been so, so satisfying.

One of the Alternamorphs had Komodo Dragon as an option for your character to use against Howlers, and the book's interpretation was that it would be borderline useless in a fight because of how slow-acting its venom is. Because it's not like a giant lizard has any other methods of fighting its prey, no sir.

The venom also isn't slow-acting. It's an anti-coagulant. The dragon rips open the victim, then the venom ensures the blood doesn't clot and that they bleed to death on the spot.

At the time the first books were being written, however, we didn't know that. We thought they killed via bacterial infection (a truly ludicrous hypothesis) rather than actual venom, and that they had to wound their victims and then follow them until they died of infection (an assumption based on watching dragons hunt water buffalo which are ten times their weight), thus making the dragon a wildly inefficient predator that would totally be extinct if there was mammalian competition. These assumptions bear no resemblance to reality as we know it, but hey, Science Marches On and all of that.

As it turns out the vast majority of a Komodo dragon's victims are killed on the spot, the venom is, well a venom, the cause of death is massive blood loss, not infection, and dragons are among the most efficient predators on the planet, putting most big cats to shame.

I forgot all about Komodos, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to be the one to try and get it.

You'd probably be safe enough if it's a zoo dragon. They're usually target trained not to get hungry unless they're shown a specific colour, and some of them are friendly enough they just might amble up to you for pats, or at least to see who you are.

Meet Smaug. He's a very chill Komodo dragon.

This. Most of the larger monitor lizards are more intelligent than people give them credit for, and are no more aggressive than some dog breeds. They can also bond well, and are plenty affectionate with long-term handlers. The 'stupid lizard' who would bite you as soon as look at you is generally the result of most people just not liking reptiles; though there are definitely some exceptions, like many snake species and some types of gators/crocs.

Monitors have mammalian like intelligence. They can count, be target trained, remember specific people and show affection for them, etc. They also exhibit play behaviours, have a well-developed sense of curiosity, and will actively seek out new experiences (when they don't get in the way of sun bathing).

How good a battle morph a Komodo dragon would make I don't know for sure. It's a very effective hunter, as I previously noted, and a lot of the myths about it being inefficient or having to kill via infection are exactly that, myths. That said, it does lack the obvious offensive power of say, Rachel's grizzly or Jake's tiger, and some of the utility of Marco's gorilla.

Still, comparing it to Cassie's wolf, I don't think it's a worse choice. It's slower than the wolf, and sits lower to the ground, but it's also notably heavier and better protected (monitor scales contains bits of bone that essentially turn the scales into chain mail), and its potential killing power is similar. Means of attack would probably be to grab a Controller by the leg, rip, leave him crippled and bleeding (with sufficient damage the victim will bleed out in a minute or so) then repeat the process on the next guy.

The anti-coagulation venom sounds perfect for debuff support. The komodo runs around biting as many enemies as possible without worrying about actually inflicting damage, and faster morphs (Cassie's wolf springs to mind) can get some quick attacks in that will end up lethal. Does the komodo have enough poison for that tactic to work? I mean, this whole thing started with a question about a snake's poison reserves.

Anyone the dragon bites is going to be crippled or dead. Komodo dragons aren't snakes; they don't inject venom and leave. They bite, lock their jaw, and then pull back with the muscles in their neck and torso. The serrations on the back of their teeth then rip the wound wide open, while the pressure on the dragon's lower jaw oozes anti-coagulant into the wound. The attack usually severs major muscle groups and tendons, and the victim usually bleeds out in short order.

For a dragon in action see here as he runs down a deer. Once he's able to land an actual crippling hit it's all over in moments.

I watched a Komodo dragon hunt filmed by the BBC, and that did involve the lizards following a buffalo around for a few days as they waited for it to be weakened enough (whether by infection, blood loss, or a mix of both) that they could kill it with less risk of harm to themselves. For smaller prey it may differ.

They're very cool animals, but I think a salt water crocodile would be the better reptilian battle morph - more damage per bite. At least if you were fighting alone. As a team, combining the Komodo dragon's anticoagulant with a tiger or bear's ability to inflict damage could be very useful. Stll not nearly as durable as the largest mammals though.

edited 13th Nov '17 7:08:45 PM by Galadriel

Yeah, I already went over this above. The reason we were so dead wrong about Komodo dragon hunting styles is because we over focused on watching them hunt water buffalo. A Komodo dragon weighs, on average, 150 pounds. The largest on record weighed 300 pounds or so. A water buffalo clocks in at 1500 pounds, maybe more. For a dragon to successfully take one on requires that the dragon wound it, then wait for the buffalo to bleed out or die from infection. The infection in question, I will note, comes not from the dragon's mouth (which contains no more bacteria than any other large predator's mouth) but from the water buffalo's habit of retreating into the water when scared—the filth in the water, coupled with the fact that the buffalo defecate into it will ensure infection.

When hunting pigs, monkeys, deer, and all the other normal sized prey that comprises the majority of their diet, the dragon usually dispatches it on the spot. For an example, you can see the video I linked above where the dragon runs down the deer, and after inflicting a serious injury, quickly cripples it with one attack, then kills it with the next. They're actually far more effective at this than most of the big cats are, reliably finishing their prey in less time and with fewer misses.

No it couldn't because that's really not how real life combat works. It's not an RPG, where you have a supporting party member casting debuffs or the like. As I noted above, when a dragon attacks, it doesn't make a puncture mark, like a snake, and inject venom that way. It grabs the victim, locks it jaw, and then pulls back with its neck, tearing the victim open. The result is a usually crippling injury that kills the victim via blood loss. The anticoagulant in the venom is not the lethal weapon; it simply ensures that even if the dragon miscalculates the bleeding will not stop.

Nobody argued either of these points. We argued it would be about as effective as Cassie's wolf, possibly somewhat more so.

edited 13th Nov '17 10:44:54 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

The deer video was pretty impressive- I knew komodos were fast, but I didn't realize they were that fast. And they're low to the ground, too. I think the komodo would be my go-to for indoor fights or heavily wooded or grassy areas. Fighting Taxxons would be terrifying at that height, though.

This conversation has got me thinking: what do you think are the average weights of the main aliens in Animorphs? I'd say that, of the four main aliens, Andalites seem like the heaviest. Hork-Bajir are significantly taller than humans, but they also appear to be pretty lithe in the illustrations so I'd say they're probably less than twice as heavy as the average human. Yeerks are obviously tiny, but how tiny? Taxxon's are big, but how big?

As I understand it, most lizards breathe using some of the same muscles they use to walk which is what limits their speed—they cannot run and take breaths at the same time. Monitors, conversely, have an inflatable sac in their throat which they can then use to pump air into their lungs, allowing them to hit much quicker speeds than other lizards, since they can run and fill their lungs at the same time. They may not be able to hit the same speeds as their mammalian prey, but they move fast enough to keep up, and being cold-blooded grants them greater endurance—in the end they typically run the mammal they're chasing into the ground.

For another example of that in action, this is a perentie, Australia's largest monitor, running down a rabbit.

Hork-Bajir I'd put at about 300 pounds, though that's entirely a guess.

Necro!

So I've been reading this with/to my wife for some time, we just finished book 8 (the first one from Ax's perspective).

I find it interesting that as of the time of that writing, Andalites lived for centuries, and the Hork-Bajir war took place much further in the past than the Chronicles suggest. Lirem (the Andalite general who tells Ax to lie about being the one to give morphing to the humans) states that Seerow was his first prince centuries ago, and also mentions being an advisor to the Hork-Bajir.

I also find it interesting that Ax describes some object as being made up of a dense Earth metal called lead, which implies that there is no lead on the Andalite homeworld. Their periodic table must have been wacky before they realized that the blanks are just elements that hadn't been discovered yet.

Huh, maybe chalk that up as a KASU. Speaking of people reading through the series for the first time, I've been following a podcast called Animorphology in which two fans of the series from childhood read through the books along with a total newbie, and it's really fun to hear their thoughts on the series. Most of the episodes are between 1 and 2 hours long, with the Chronicles getting two-parters. You can listen to all of them on their website and they just got to Visser.

Oh sure, we certainly don't mind these KAS Us, especially when she's churning out one of these books every month (on top of Everworld and Remnants when those series came into being). We also really like "making of" segments for things, so the combination of me picking up on this stuff is entertaining for us.

Debating whether to move on to book 9 or to take this time to do Andalite Chronicles.

Would also like to add that Andalite naming conventions, wherein both children take a hybrid last name of their parents but in the opposite order, implies that they've had population control for an extremely long time.

Yep, they kept their numbers low. The only reason Ax was born is because by that point the war against the Yeerks had depleted Andalite numbers enough that families could now have two children.

Edited by M84 on Jan 11th 2020 at 4:30:16 AM