r/Animorphs • u/Comfortable-Plane939 • 1d ago

Discussion How dangerous would an adult Howler be? (Theory/Discussion)

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The howlers were one most dangerous challenges for the Animorphs, if they weren't basically children the Animorphs would have been goners.

51 Upvotes

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u/fgcem13 1d ago

I think the problem with the question is how being an adult would change their behavior. Higher sentience. More aware of the horrors they are creating. That's why they were kept at a child like mentality.

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u/Comfortable-Plane939 1d ago

They probably would have told crayak to bite it.

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u/Comfortable-Plane939 1d ago

But regardless im talking them as adults and how they would evolve.

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u/fgcem13 1d ago

They can't be adults in a human sense. It's been years since I have read but if I'm not mistaken their capacity for sentience is only that of a human child. Like many animals on earth thats the extent of their understanding. Like a dog playing with a kitten and accidentally killing it.

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u/Comfortable-Plane939 1d ago

Imagine if the howlers are the resurrected bodies of the Pemalites modified by the crayak.

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u/fgcem13 1d ago

It's not that I don't get what you are saying but we are not told that. We are specifically told the opposite. That have no maturation phase. They live short lives. The real question is why didn't Jake start using that as a battle morph. That may have been answered but it always felt more effective than a tiger.

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u/PortiaKern Andalite 1d ago

Probably because it was not suited well to the mission or it would have resulted in too much friendly fire.

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u/Yakosaurus 1d ago

I've wondered that too. My thoughts were always that the Howlers fell under the Animorphs "sentience rule". But it's possible that the time travel shenanigans worked like they did with the Leeran homeworld and he lost the Howler morph.

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u/fgcem13 1d ago

I could see the sentience rule coming into play. I never thought of that honestly. To be fair though kid me thought that was a dumb rule. Lol

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u/Yakosaurus 1d ago

A lot of the things they do are pretty dumb haha. They were only kids though. I remember reading a fan fic where they were aged up to high school or college and they made smarter choices but it never got more than a book or 2 done.

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u/Comfortable-Plane939 1d ago

Oh heah the Animorphs reboot?

The guy stopped updating because his wife sued him.

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u/BahamutLithp 3h ago

I don't think it's ever addressed why they don't use certain morphs, I just kind of assume Crayak took the Howler morph away & they also lost their dinosaur morphs due to some side-effect of the Sario rip.

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u/testthrowaway9 21m ago

I assumed Jake found it too unsettling to use it

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u/testthrowaway9 23m ago

Impossible as Howlers were his foot soldiers before destroying the Pemalites

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u/jbeldham 1d ago

I don’t think howlers can reach adulthood. They exist for like three years after being grown in a factory then die of cardiac arrest or something. I don’t think they could be physically improved otherwise why wouldn’t Crayak have done that?

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u/PortiaKern Andalite 1d ago

I'm willing to hand-wave it away as the benefit not being worth the investment. The situation in that book was so extraordinary that Crayak probably didn't ever realize it was a possibility. Crayak and Ellimist are not all-powerful, just more powerful than we could ever be.

In basically any other situation the Howlers would have killed everyone long before someone could acquire it.

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u/TobiasMasonPark 1d ago

I have nothing to contribute other than Monsterman’s art is amazing.

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u/stillnotelf 1d ago

I'm sitting here confused because I am in a lot of book fandom subs and I come up with the Red Rising Howlers first and they are all grown hyperviolent adults. I need to actually check the sub more reliably