Talk:Bandersnatch

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Haha I love the first part of this page. The way it is written completely fits the poem.

No kidding. I can't decide whether to laugh, or mark this for cleanup. --maru (talk) contribs 06:44, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

-- Were Niven's creatures Bandersnatch or Bandersnatchi or is Bandersnatchi the plural of Niven's characters called Bandersnatch? It needs to be clarified. If they were actually called Bandersnatchi then that entry needs to be moved to appropriately named page.

They are called Bandersnatchi, since it's taken from a Latinized species name Frumius Bandersnatchus. However, the Wikipedia standard is to use the singular for the page name, so it ought to stay at "Bandersnatch" unless some actual disambiguation is involved, whether of the earlier Larry Niven/Bandersnatch form or the parenthetical Bandersnatch (Larry Niven) form or some other, similar approach. -- John Owens 20:05 19 May 2003 (UTC)

Then maybe the article could be at Frumius Bandersnatchus? RickK 04:51, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

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Can Tenniel's illustration be considered canonical? If so, that should be mentioned in the description. RickK 04:48, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

In Niven's books, bandersnatch is the English singular and bandersnatchi is plural. "World of Ptavvs" has a thorough description of them.

Also in Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark, Fit the Seventh, an encounter with a bandersnatch is described. It is described as moving swiftly, having a neck it can extend, and having snapping, frumious jaws (which with it tries to grab the Banker).

[edit] Single cell but with a skeleton?

I want to take issue with the description of Niven's Bandersnatchi. I happened to pick up a copy of Ringworld at the Chicago airport this week (having missed it during my high school days), and during the visit to the flying castle the bandersnatch skeleton is discussed, including the skull. The Wikipedia entry says that they are single-celled and reproduce by budding. Having not read all of Niven's books, I cannot speak authoritatively, but this does seem to present a problem.

From World of Ptavvs:

"...The whitefood [bandersnatch] is an artificial animal, created by the tnuctipun as a meat animal. A whitefood is as big as a dinosaur and as smooth and white as a shmoo. They're a lot like shmoos. We can use all of their bodies, except the skeleton, and they eat free food, which is almost as cheap as air. Their shape is like a caterpillar reaching for a leaf. The mouth is at the front of the belly foot...

"They can't mutate. They were designed that way. A whitefood is one big cell, with a chromosome as long as your arm and as thick as your little finger. Radiation could never affect them, and the first thing that would be harmed by any injury would be the budding apparatus."

And later:

"...this animal is one big cell. Nerves are similar to human nerves in structure, but have no cell body, no nuclei, nothing to separate them from other specialized protoplasm. The brain is long and narrow, and is packed into a bone shell at the elevated tapering tip. This skull is one end of a jointless, flexible, very strong internal cage of bone..."

Presumably the skeleton is built by similarly specialized organelles rather than cells as occurs in Earth life forms.

[edit] Additions

I've added a little more insight on the creature from Anna M. Richards book A New Alice in the Old Wonderland, which describes the Bandersnatch a little more. Piecraft 18:22, 28 May 2006 (UTC)