Ekkridai: Difference between revisions

* '''Pod''':  3 other males in the cetacean tank onboard the [[Eagle]].  One is named Crtaka, and  

Sight:  Like other dolphins, he has  20/20 vision both in and out of the water, but less refined colour vision than humans.  He sees better in dim light than a human, and can adjust very quickly to changes of light level.

Smell:  Ekkridai has no sense of smell whatever.

Taste:  He can distinguish tastes, but his pallate is far less complex than a human's.

Tactile:  Equivalent to most humans.   

Sound:  Imagine perfect vision in 360 degrees, plus x-ray imaging, plus hearing even the tiniest noises, plus hearing in a range far beyond what you know, plus knowing the details of every structure around you for a hundred yards, and you'll begin to have a glimpse of what a dolphin's hearing is like.  A few details:  Their ears are not attatched to their skull, which allows for far greater sound location.  Their normal hearing range is from 1 to 160 kHz (a human's is .02 to 20), and they can hear sounds below 1 kHz if they are loud.  They can recognise even tiny objects at a range of 120 yards.  In short, their sense of sound is so much more advanced than a humanoid race's as to be a different sense altogether.

Ekkridai speaks Delphin, which overlaps somewhat with most other cetacean languages.  Cetacean languages are incomprehensible to humans (and indeed any lifeform that isn't naturally aquatic, sonar-focused, or more realistically, both).  Even if a humanoid could hear or reproduce the necessary range of sounds, the conceptual basis and perspective are more foreign than any humanoid language--including Tamarian.

He also speaks Finglish and its offshoot Finfon, which are essentially a (word and phonic based, respectively) mapping of specific cetacean sounds into English.  Using Finglisn and Finfon a dolphin may whistle inaudibly at a specially designed translator and in so doing 'speak' English.

He can understand English reasonably well (exceptionally well, for a cetacean--cetaceans are able to understand humanoid concepts, but often have trouble with the perspectives), but lacks the ability to speak it directly.