This is the case in humans, and human languages drift and evolve rapidly. However, in kzinti we may conjecture that the telempathic sense has effectively locked in the language centers to its (still poorly understood) demands, which would go far toward explaining both kzin linguistic homogeneity and telepathic prowess. As a side note, hallucinatory experiences are common in human telepathic adepts, which may be due to the telempathic and other senses competing for the same brain processor resources. Kzinti telepaths also suffer from numerous cognitive difficulties, and this may explain why telepathy evolves rarely and is seldom a highly developed sense in any species despite its obvious evolutionary advantages: Its cognitive costs simply outweigh its survival benefits. The largest exceptions to this rule, the now extinct Slavers and the sessile Grogs, both show clearly the cognitive drawbacks of a highly developed telempathic sense.
Kzinti share with humans the ability to form hierarchical mass societies, but they are orders of magnitude less social. Any society can be seen as a series of opportunities to cooperate or compete, and in kzinti the balance falls more heavily on competition than in human society. This fact imposes strict limits on the forms of society that the kzinti can successfully use, and in fact we can see that kzinti culture shows much less variation than human culture does in terms of structure. The reasons for this are complex, but ultimately, for any evolved organism, the final measure of success is the number of offspring injected into future generations in relation to the number of offspring injected by competitors. There are two basic strategies available to achieve this, and we may categorize species as K (named because the population total is characterized by K, the carrying capacity of the environment) and r (named because the population total is characterized by r, the reproductive rate). K species are characterized by a small number of large offspring, long lifetimes with late maturity, and high levels of parental care. Type r species have a large number of small offspring, short lifetimes with early maturity, and low or no parental care.
In species with sexual reproduction we see two strategies, individuals who produce a small number of large gametes (females) and those who produce a large number of small gametes (males). This tendency usually generalizes so that we see females invest a large amount to ensure the success of a small number of offspring, and males invest a small amount in any given offspring in order to maximize the total number of offspring. Since the child-bearing capacity of females is the ultimate limit on the reproductive potential of any given generation, we usually see a situation in which males compete for females. In a species like the Wunderland gagrumpher, males invest no parental care in their offspring, and as a result we see a large sexual dimorphism, with males averaging five times the weight of a female and possessing specialized neck dewlaps, which serve both as an intimidation mechanism in male/male conflicts and as a sexually selected attractant to females. There are exceptions to this rule. In some bird species the male and female form long-term pair bonds and there is very little (although not zero) mate competition. As a result males and females are nearly identical in body plan and require an expert (or a con specific) to differentiate them. In a few fish species the technical details of reproduction dictate that males provide all or the bulk of parental care, and in these cases females compete aggressively for access to males, reversing the normal pattern.
In almost all mammalian species, males compete for females, but humans are an extreme case of the K strategy and this changes the equation. Due to the limitations of the female pelvis and the human specialization of large brain size, human infants are born almost completely helpless and require two decades to reach full maturity. This tremendous reproductive burden requires the dedicated assistance of the male to ensure the survival of the offspring in a primitive environment, and the males best able to provide this assistance then become objects of competition for females. Because of this almost unheard-of female competition, the degree of male competition is reduced. As a result male humans mass only about 50 percent more than females and females possess secondary sexual attractant displays that are almost universally confined to males in other mammals. Under these conditions cooperative, coalitional behaviors in both sexes are cost effective, and it is these behaviors that make human society possible. Through this process intelligence itself has become a sexually selected characteristic as well as a naturally selected characteristic. At this point in human evolutionary history it seems likely that sexual selection has become the dominant driving force behind the development of human intelligence, as witnessed by the tremendous costs involved in bearing large-brained infants (including a significant death-in-labor and infant mortality rate under primitive conditions) and rearing them to adulthood. Such high-cost evolutionary features, like peacock tails and moose antlers, are generally only seen in cases of runaway sexual selection, where a trait evolves until the evolutionary cost of displaying it counterbalances the tremendous reproductive advantage it confers.
The kzinti are even more extreme K strategists than humans. Kzinti kits are normally born as brother/sister twins from a single egg, although there are rare cases of quadruplets or single births, and are typically nursed for eight to twelve (standard) years, during which time the female remains infertile. A fertile female kzin may have only three or four estrus cycles in her lifetime. As a result kzin population growth is extremely slow and kzin males compete strenuously both for females and for the resources to support them. A high proportion of kzin male deaths are due to challenge duels resulting from this competition, and in the adult population females outnumber males in a ratio of between two to one and three to one. In other words, between 50 and 75 percent of male kzin kits can expect to die in combat. Of these, most can expect to die at the hands of older and more established kzin, although among those Great Prides involved directly in the Man/Kzin wars almost 50 percent are killed in combat with humans or other species. Combat death among males begins in late adolescence and rises to a peak in young adulthood, declining steadily thereafter. This single fact dominates the entire kzinti social structure, and in fact the entire Patriarchy is built around the requirement to redirect the aggression of young males outward to prevent them from completely destabilizing the hierarchy. It is this high death rate that allows the extended polygamous mating structure that is the core of kzinti social life. Paradoxically this system has given the kzinti 50,000 years of cultural stability and an interstellar empire unmatched in Known Space. Unfortunately these achievements are little comfort to any particular adolescent kzin who, regardless of station of birth, can only look forward to a lifetime of status-driven combat with a better than even chance of violent death.
Kefan Brasseur
Senior Fellow for Nonhuman Studies
Kardish University
Alpha Plateau
Plateau
THE ANVIL
We are Kzin-ti because we are wild, born of Savannah and Jungle. We are Kzin-ti because we are hunters swift and silent, cunning and strong. We are Kzin-ti because we are warriors, with honor won in battle and proved in blood. We are Kzin-ti, we are the hunters, we are Kzin-ti.