This was something that I really never quite understood.
Animals, I believe, are not sentient. They are not aware of their being existent. So why would a Halo firing affect such creatures?
Someone please answer this
The Flood can infect any life, including animals, and have been known to do so in past games and books.
The confusing part is there’s been an emphasis that it effects sentient life and a lot of source specifically say sentient, when this is not the case (to my knowledge).
Maybe the Forerunners had a much broader definition of sentient than we do?
Any species that can think intelligent thoughts or has a nervous system, mind, can be infected and used as a food source, bio-mass, by the Flood I believe.
Animals are more intelligent than you give them credit for, and they are definitely capable of being used by the Flood, and turned into horrible abominations.
The Flood simply has a preferences for more intelligent beings, Humanity, etc, as they provide their memories and knowledge, and allow the Flood to grow stronger and more intelligent. Animals are generally used as a last resort by the Flood, if they need food, and need bio-mass, because they lack the intelligence to become space faring, usable, and such. The Flood seek knowledge and wisdom just as much as food sources.
> The Flood simply has a preferences for more intelligent beings, Humanity, etc, as they provide their memories and knowledge, and allow the Flood to grow stronger and more intelligent. Animals are generally used as a last resort by the Flood, if they need food, and need bio-mass, because they lack the intelligence to become space faring, usable, and such. The Flood seek knowledge and wisdom just as much as food sources.
Animals still make powerful Flood forms though. The Thrasher forms encountered in Halo Wars were quite capable of bashing apart tanks, and infantry squads didn’t stand a chance.
Why wouldn’t they be considered sentient? They have emotions, they have personalities (most people aren’t around them enough to see it personally). They can’t communicate with an efficiency even close to ours, and they don’t make art, but I can assure you, they know they exist and they’re just as alive as we are.
Man, I feel like an SPCA employee.
Anyways, the Halos technically kill anything with an organic nervous system. Look here for more information on it.
To start, what we consider “animals” dogs, cats, fish, horses, etc. are alot smarter than most give the credit for, they have thoughts, though not as connected and intelligent as humans in some cases, but they also feel pain, understand loss, show sadness, anger, joy, etc. A perfect type of host for the flood to feed on.
If the flood were to infect an “animal” like species, at some point that animal species comes into contact with other species, whether they are hunting or being hunted, theoretically, if that species is being hunted, somewhere along this chain, the flood find a sentient species near the top, and the flood finds its new host. This is just a theory.
Also, if the flood are simply looking for an organic host to grow in size, you have to take what you can find on a planet
The sentient life comes into play when forming a gravemind. A gravemind can only be formed from intelligent life. Humans were the first to find the flood. Originally in spore form. The spores were used to infect thier pets. At first the mutantions were harmless. The pets color would change, a harmless mutation. Later the flood became infectious to Humans becoming what we now know as the flood.
There’s different definition of the word “sentience”.
> sentience [ˈsɛnʃəns], sentiency
> n
> 1. the state or quality of being sentient; awareness
> 2. sense perception not involving intelligence or mental perception; feeling
>
> http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sentience
It can mean anything from a complex state of self-awareness to feeling complex forms of sensation or stimuli. When the word sentience is used in relation to the Halo array, I’ve always interpreted it as the latter definition. The Flood can infect many lifeforms, particularly complex, motile organisms like vertebrate animals. They have complex nervous systems susceptible to Flood infestation.
While the flood can infect many organisms, I think they often prefer more intelligent prey. Consuming more intelligent hosts allows them to gain their knowledge, improves the Flood’s overall cognitive capabilities, and allows them to build Graveminds. This increases the flood’s deadliness and ability to reach newer hosts.
I think this confusion stems from the fact that people confuse sentience with sapience (immense wisdom and knowledge). While sentience can mean a lot of things, but it does not mean wisdom. Species like humans, Forerunner and San 'Shyuum; and thus they have built great technology. This can be used to help reach far more ecosystems than they could through other means.
I wanna say that Sentient beings as we know can be made into combat forms while other life is just made into biomass. But don’t quote me on that.
Halo doesn’t just kill sentient life, it kills all life complex enough to support the flood, including just about all animals down to insects.
So did the Forerunners preserve and re-populate all life forms, or just humans?
Or did life forms, aside from humans, re-appear after the firing of the Halo’s through natural forms of evolution?
Also, are the Precursors responsible for generating all life in the galaxy or just the Forerunners and Humans?
> So did the Forerunners preserve and re-populate all life forms, or just humans?
> Or did life forms, aside from humans, re-appear after the firing of the Halo’s through natural forms of evolution?
>
> Also, are the Precursors responsible for generating all life in the galaxy or just the Forerunners and Humans?
The Forerunners reseeded as much life as they could. It can be assumed that all the Covenant races were reseeded as well as the humans, because there is no way that an organism primitive enough to escape Halo could have evolved complex sentience in only 100,000 years. As for the Precursors seeding all life in the Milky way? I don’t know, maybe.