Bove

From Traveller Wiki - Science-Fiction Adventure in the Far future

Bove
Status	Minor Race
Classification
Size	2.5m
Weight	50kg
Homeworld	Arkady
Multi-world	no
Canon	yes
Reference	Aliens Archive

The Bove of Arkady have an elongated, segmented body structure much like caterpillars (about 2.5m long, 20kg/m), but are endoskeletal and warm-blooded. They have fifteen body segments, each of which (except the head) possesses two limbs. The upper three segments’ limbs are equipped with "hands:" simple, bony, curving pincers like those of crabs. Bove have extremely flexible arm joints: their elbows and wrists are capable of nearly 360-degree rotation. Most of their tactile sense, however, lies not in their pincers but in the half-meter long tongue.

The Bove have better depth and peripheral vision than humans. They see mostly in the upper infrared, and are blind to human-visible light. They are as agile in trees as Terran monkeys and have tree-pattern camouflage covering the finely meshed microscales of their skin. Bove tend to be bad at any math beyond simple addition and subtraction, but are quite good at languages. Their technological development is still Stone Age.

Bove have no centralized brain, instead relying on neuron clusters distributed along a central notochord. Many other bodily functions are similarly distributed. They are hermaphroditic: every two years or so after age 30, when the scent of the Hi’ich flower triggers mating, and after several months gestation, their rearmost body segment breaks off and becomes a hard-shelled egg. A Bove can produce four to eight children in this unique fashion. Its consciousness dissipates with childbearing (the results are akin to Alzheimer’s disease), since segments of notochord with their memories and knowledge are thus passed on to the offspring. Bove achieve physical adulthood at age 12 (they are born with full sentience, language, and abstract reasoning), and generally die by age 60 or so. However, only a few thousand or so individuals survive due to over-development of their world by human colonists.

This article was copied or excerpted from the following copyrighted sources and used under license from Far Future Enterprises and by permission of the author.

– Aliens Archive