deathclaw phsyiology

My mind may be messing with me rosh, but wasn't the food dispencer in the vault that the DC's were in voice activated? And there were humans that were friendly to the DC's right? I think a human sympathizer that may have been kidnapped by them taught them to speak so they wouldn't have to kill cattle and people for food. Thats just my idea though.
 
The Dude said:
Somehow it does not seem reptilian..more like a mammal. Though it does lay eggs. (Wouldn't want one of those baby deathclaws tear up my utero..)
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  • Deathclaws have crocodile teeth. This suggests they have a slow metabolism and can also digest things in large hunks. That's not mammalian in nature. (Re: Fallout Manual)
  • Deathclaws don't move around at night. Mammals will, but reptiles tend not to since they rely on the heat from the sun to keep their temperature up. (Re: Fallout, Boneyards)
  • Deathclaws don't have vocal cords. Mammals have vocal cords, reptiles don't - in general. (Re: Fallout 2, Vault 13)
  • Deathclaws are low to the ground, simian style. This allows them to gather heat better. They're also fairly wide when moving, which gives them more surface area on top for radiant heat as well as convection from the ground. (Re: Fallout, Fallout 2)
 
A lot of animals have vocal cords. It's just a matter of how well they are developed. Humans are unique in their ability to speak because of where the windpipe is located in the throat. I rememeber learning in my archaeology class about how it used to be lower, but then it rose up in the throat after a few measly thousands of years. This allows us to talk without struggling to breathe for air somehow.

Django, what part of Wisconsin do you hail from? I'm from the Lake Superior region myself.
 
Maybe they don't use vocal chords. Maybe they use an elaborate system of skin flaps. Or maybe they all swallowed a Speak-N-Spell.
 
Django said:
Don't geckoes have vocal chords?
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Which is why I added in general there. Find a mammal without vocal cords now, there's only one I know about and that's the giraffe. Therefore, lacking vocal cords is mostly a trait of reptiles than it is mammals.
 
hello briosafreak

Hello Briosafreak,

Congrats on the recent involvement with this site.
And yes, I did toss out this question more for a "ok, lets get the story right" type of discussion (expecting that Rosh would pop in for enlightenment).

However, I do have a couple of questions and thoughts. As I recall the info on deathclaws was retreived from the Glow through the research on the computer found there. And other good sources of info?

Secondly, in Fallout 1 we did get to meet the deathclaws in the boneyard and as random monsters outside the boneyard. But might the physiology be different as two of the major encounters with deathclaws were both underground- the deathclaw at the Hub and Momma Deathclaw in the Boneyard. What gives? Is this just lizards going underground and the reason players were able to get close before the deathclaws attacked because is, as Saint Proverbius suggests, that lizards get slow in dark places?

While the possibility of such mutations seems unlikely to be due from radiation (Godzilla in Japan), it does fit into the 1950s Pulp feel that Fallout aspires towards. I recall two films, Them and another title (I think) Attack of the Crab Monsters, both dealing with animals mutated by radiation, that had become giant and threatened mankind. So regardless of the reality, it would seem to fit the imagination that the Fallout universe aspires towards.

On the otherhand, it seems the deathclaw in FOT were more inspired by Where the Wild Things Are than 1950s Sci-Fi pulps.
 
The Dude said:
And besides that, my life is so interesting that I was watching a national geographic, and guess, there is a sheep-sized guinni pig that could easily mutate into a rat-god after a nuclear war! (so could Ratty and Ozrat, I won't forget you guys, at your chambers in the Toxic Cave secret entrance)
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Wow, I feel honored knowing that the mini Rat war has been immortalized. No, really, I do. As I haven't seen him reply to this yet, I think I speak for Ratty as well.

Now back to those lovable deathclaws. How did that chicken coop ever contain one? Isn't that an exageration?
 
I once had a crocidille in my backyard and I fed him rats and made him do neat little trick and I even got him to say words.
 
Re: hello briosafreak

welsh said:
On the otherhand, it seems the deathclaw in FOT were more inspired by Where the Wild Things Are than 1950s Sci-Fi pulps.
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I think we can all agree on throwing out all FoT info on this topic. Hair growing out of scales just don't fly.
 
Yeah, Fallout Tactics messes about with the Deathclaws too much for that particular incarnation to remain relevant to this discussion.
 
Re: hello briosafreak

welsh said:
On the otherhand, it seems the deathclaw in FOT were more inspired by Where the Wild Things Are than 1950s Sci-Fi pulps.
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FOT kind of screwed up deathclaws in a number of ways. They stood and moved on two legs. They have horns that angle backwards which is more of defensive horn growth. They shouldn't have been intelligent. I didn't notice any eggs, just babies.
 
The biggest problem I found with the intelligent Deathclaws, was not the fact that they spoke; it was the fact that it changed the general view of them. They lost their mystery, and more importantly, they became less evil and frightening. The deathclaws in vault 13 were essentially "good".

And as far whether they're mammalian or reptilian - being that they're genetically enginered to the point that they're radically different from anything else on earth, they may very well be neither, possessing a variety of different traits from both, and/or other types of animals.
 
welsh wrote:
On the otherhand, it seems the deathclaw in FOT were more inspired by Where the Wild Things Are than 1950s Sci-Fi pulps.

No way. They were inspired by the evil characters in the Power Rangers series (yeah the one in which guys with motorcycle helmets and gayish outfits beat the living crap out of 6 feet stuffed animals)
 
May I just present my limited knowledge? Ok.

Now, as I understand it, Grunther and his pack and all the intelligent deathclaws that can speak, are different from the ones in Fallout 1.
As I seem to recall, the enclave caught a bunch of Deathclaws, or maybe it was just Grunthar? Anyway, didn't the enclave, more specifically, that scientist guy that mutilated the poor robot doggy, experiment on grunthar, in an unnamed enclave base, enhancing his intelligence and getting him to speak? And then some escaped, but that guy and another dc was transfered to Navarro, where the white coat man found the deathclaws were playing dumb, and were alot smarter than they let on to be? And then you go to either kill that one dc or let him free.

So the inteligent deathclaws make sense, and are a breed apart, so to speak, from the deathclaws in fallout 1, and the wild dc's that you encounter in randomn encounters.

I hope I did not bore anyone. Feed-back would be nice.
 
One could, for example, imply the use of linguistic enancer technology (since it DOES exist), and the Enclave experiments were in fact what triggered the speech factor of the deathclaws.

Why all the sudden they turned from mean vicious monsters to flowerpot-reptile hippies, I have noooo Idea :D
 
Welsh said:
However, I do have a couple of questions and thoughts. As I recall the info on deathclaws was retreived from the Glow through the research on the computer found there. And other good sources of info?
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Deathclaws aren't the things that escaped from West Tech if that's what you're saying. Those were raccoons.
 
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