Erdbeest

“GENERAL SUMMARY: The Great Herdbeast is the highest form of life on the planet and apart from its undefended young is proof against predators, for the nomadic herd which is its social unit can intimidate even the so-called T-N “leopard”. Its intelligence is high, maybe at the level of the terrestrial dolphin. It communicates at a sophisticated level by smell, subsonic signals and gesture similar to the terrestrial whale. Like terrestrial herbivores its mating rituals can be violent and its herd politics allow for savage competition between males. PENDING DECISION: the brain size and structure is apparently large; absent of windfall cadavers we cannot answer questions about cognitive function. Capture for analysis under consideration Landing plus One. Ref: COL-1-Directive 00443.” ch XVI

ch XXII: Erdbeesten copulated with humans at Turwald.

'Living with them as we have now, we can see their gentleness and protectiveness, and that they are not evil creatures. We took them for dumb cattle, but though their physical bodies act mechanically as animals act, we did not see that their minds are elsewhere, united in a vast continental gestalt. Once we began taking members of their herds for our experiments we became their world’s problem, and their austere and merciful solution has been to attempt to cure us by making us herd like them: destroying in one brutal act of surprise and murder the males that could resist, then stripping us of our technology and all the trappings of our civilisation, even our clothing. The English and French must have been dealt with in the same fashion; their thousands of women and children being herded the length and breadth of Terre Nouvelle. There’s no sign that ships or vehicles have come here from New London or New Paris. But why nothing from …’ ch XXII.

'When the Allemanic humans began to take erdbeesten forcibly from the herds and run tests on them, probably invasive tests, the individual beasts must have cried silently to their herd brothers for help, and it came dramatically as the entire erdbeesten species was mobilised by the gestalt and combined to destroy the threat from the colonial males and incorporate the surviving women and children into their herds. The gestalt mind dealt with the human colony as an individual prime bull would have dealt with a dangerous and challenging male.’ XXVII 5636.