{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3198",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 3198,
    "subject": "Shadow Children in the Lupiverse? (attn. Tony Ellis)",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "2002-04-25T08:14:01+00:00",
    "last": "2002-04-25T17:07:22+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0204-794@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Robert Borski",
        "address": "rborski at charter.net"
      },
      "date": "2002-04-25T08:14:01+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Shadow Children in the Lupiverse? (attn. Tony Ellis)",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Hey, Tony:\n\nHow goes it? I have a question for you relating to the following:\n\n\n\nWhile admitting that almost all of the evidence about the Annese having\nshapeshifting abilities is anecdotal, how do you explain the lack of manual\ndexterity that all the abos seem to possess--from the shovel test, which the\nFrench used to determine who was human and who was faking it, to Victor's\npoor handwriting? (The latter a notion carried over by Wolfe to his other\nshapeshifting race, the inhumi of Green. Or are they non-pleiomorphic too?)\n\n1) The Annese never had the ability to begin with. This, however, seems to\nvitiate your notion that the Annese are human colonists from prehistoric\nEarth;\n\n2) The Annese had the ability, but lost it, and cannot recover it due to\nDollo's Law. Unfortunately, I can think of no evolutionary model which would\nconfer a benefit to any relict population which has lost the ability to use\nits hands effectively, whereas those who still retained this ability would\nalmost certainly be favored by natural selection. It's why evolved simians\nrule the world, not cetaceans or pachyderms (to pick two rather\nlarge-brained mammalian species); or\n\n3) The Annese were able to copy the _form_ of human hands, but not the\n_function_, much as a gifted, if perverse, plastic surgeon could sculpt\ntentacles from human arms or fuse the legs to forge an undine's nether\nparts, although in neither case, because of nonadaptive skeletal\nrestrictions, innervation, and cerebellar pathways, is it likely such limbs\ncould function in the same way as their true biocounterparts.\n\nThe last of these, of course, would be my explanation. But perhaps you have\nan alternate explanation--one more congruent with your theory that the\nAnnese are unable to shapeshift?\n\nJust curious, as always.\n\nRobert Borski"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0204-799@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Tony Ellis",
        "address": "littlesense at necronomicon.co.uk"
      },
      "date": "2002-04-25T17:07:22+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) re: Shadow Children in the Lupiverse? (attn. Tony Ellis)",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0204-794@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Hey Robert, glad to know you're still out there.\n\nI go for explanation 2: the Annese had the ability, but lost it, and cannot\nrecover it due to Dollo's Law. If that doesn't make evolutionary sense,\nblame Wolfe, not me, because I don't think he would have slipped Dollo's Law\nin there unless that was the connection he wanted us to make. Victor may be\nself-taught, but we're given to understand that he is intelligent and a\nquick study, so I think we're supposed to accept his theory.\n\nI don't even have Victor's qualification to talk about Dollo's Law, but it\nseems to me that whatever could cause -some- colonists to lose their\ntool-using ability - harsh living conditions, the drug mentioned in 'A Story\n', a conscious decision to return to primitivism - could also cause -all-\ncolonists to lose that ability, especially if there was only a small number\nof them to begin with. There would be no viable tool-using population to\nlose-out to."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}