I have repeatedly expressed my admiration for the gracefulness of the Tanzen. They are graceful -- almost painfully so. But that does not mean they are pretty. Not at all.
Like many of the land animals on Sigma 957 (and some fish), the Tanzen are members of the order caudoabdomiea -- meaning "belly-tail." They are quadrupeds, but their abdomens continue past the rear hip joint into a tail-like appendage. On the Tanzen this is a conical tail that juts out and down below their hips, curving slightly down. This can give them the appearance of large insects, looking especially like angry wasps from the waist down.
Functionally the tail contains the fermentation stage of their four-stage digestive system, consisting of a patchwork of spongy compartments holding chyme with a select brood of gut bacteria. As one might imagine, a system like this is susceptible to bouts of infection by unfriendly microbes. When this happens the Tanzen like all caudoabdomiea, who are incapable of vomiting or diarrhea, will void the compromised compartment by sequestering it in a large black boil that eventually bursts. The boil itself is grotesque, and the bursting is disgusting, but the smell -- so my sensors, and others who have been closer, tell me -- is unimaginable.
As four-limbed bipeds, the Tanzen have a superficial similarity to humans. It's relatively easy to picture ourselves taking on the same poses or doing the same motions. But there are some very disquieting differences. Their limbs are longer than ours and have more joints. The Tanzen leg has a pro-coxa, coxa, dorsal and ventral trochanter, tibia, femur, and a long and complex tarsus. The tarsus in particular has a very insect-like appearance due to a row of "barbs" which evoke the serrations on a grasshopper leg. They are actually articulated toes which contribute to the Tanzen ability to move quickly through tangled jungle. Nontheless they only reinforce the angry wasp look. Sometimes angry wasp with hideous boils.
The arms aren't too bad. They have an overall comforting shape despite the too-many joints and the hands that look basically like thick tentacles. They are a bit long though. A standing Tanzen may often rest one hand on the ground for support. Some refer to this as "knuckle walking" which I think is just meant to be insulting. They walk fully bipedally and with greater efficiency than humans.
But their faces. One can certainly argue that their faces are distributed, what with their ears on their forearms and their noses in their chests, but clearly they have a head with two eyes and a mouth. For 2 million years of human instinct that's a face. Unless you see it open or chewing the mouth seems normal, if a bit droopy and unhappy; their normal look of an old man with no teeth gets interrupted rather rudely when the teeth emerge from a huge sideways maw. The eyes, though -- body language is impossible if you can't tell where they are looking.
The eye design of their class is unique. Instead of using pinholes or lenses or collimating devices like compound eyes, eyes on this planet alone among all others evolved based on diffraction gratings. Microscopic structures in the surface of the flat lens focuses light at the same time that they split it into spectra. The photoreceptors a few layers down are exquisitely responsive to nearly all wavelengths, and they perceive color based on the position of the sensor relative to the grating. Tanzen can actually see all the wavelengths of light directly rather than inferring them from a few samples as we do. Their visual acuity, which depends on the size of their black, shiny eye patches, can sometimes be measured in arcseconds.
And yet all this novel physical perfection can't overcome the fact that they look like old men wearing sunglasses. Old men with sour, unhappy mouths and no noses. And bodies that look like an arthritic stick insect collided with a giant wasp.
I say all this to explain that I am not immune to the biases of my perceptions. Every time I look at them all of these impressions and reactions arise, unbidden and unwanted, and try to interpose themselves into my understanding. The power of science is that I don't have to be a slave to these instinctive, cultural, or personal prejudices. I can observe and chart and log what I see, and when all is said and done what I find will not be the result of my failings or foibles or preferences. It will be what is really there. The crucible of science will have burned away the slag and impurities of my emotions -- whether they be inclined to repulse or embrace -- and what will be left will be the truth.
The truth can be exhilarating or it can be sobering, but what it never is, is dull.
Comments