Category:Sentient

Many native Cyantian wildlife have memories passed through genetics, much as the Cyantian Undersea species do. Only the water species gain the full memory set of their parents. Shivae, Gryphons, and Scythetails only gain a partial one, consisting of language, territory, and clan members. The others species do not retain memory in their genetics.

There are basically two kinds of Cyantian animal, those that are wild, or not far removed, and those that are domesticated and have spent their entire lives in captivity. The latter lose something of what makes them sentient depending on how they are raised. An animal caught in the wild and raised as a sentient reature will generally retain its sentience. Children of animals who have been domesticated, or ones that were raised as domestic animals become little more than highly intelligent animals - they have minimal self awareness, about that of your average dog and are quite willing to live to serve. The first Shivae to be brought in... which was one of Cler's chicks, were just as intelligent as the wild ones, and so were their chicks, but the ensuing generations were treated as nothing more than animals until they became 'dumb' and lost their language due to their owners not believing that they really could communicate and was nothing more than a cheap trick. Similar processes occurred with the gryphons and other captured creatures. They were seperated from their kind and eventually became 'dumb' as generations passed. Shivae, Gryphons and others are just recently being recognized as having their own sentience the first time a technomage attempted to make a wild one into a familiar and it went completely psychotic on him, hence the reason that the ones that are currently used are all essentially 'dumb'.

Even though Scythetails, Whips and Shivae are different species, due to a common ancestor, while they usually don't, they can interbreed and when they interbreed, their end traits tend to carry on.

The majority of hoofers tend to follow the pattern of culture where a male takes a harem of one to four females, with the males competing to impress a female to join his harem (with the approval of the females already in his harem), although the equis tend to accumulate more wives and more likely to severely injure a competitor to take a new mate. Young does will leave their herds and herd together, as will young bucks for a year to two years when they turn two. They will not reach full maturity until they are four, males when they're five. They have a lifespan of up to fifty years, with the elders often living under the protection of their progeny once they pass childbearing/making age as teachers. All speaking (sentient)hoofers move in herds or pairs, while the fools (non-sentient, non-speaking) live on the fringes and walk alone.