RE: Incredible Regenerating Elder Races, was Re: Poisoning the Sa vasku

G'day,

> Anyway, not likely for an advanced organism (starfish,
> I believe, are the highest organism that can regrow
> arms, 

They're the highest that can regrow FROM an arm, salamanders and other
amphibians can regrow limbs and lizards regrow tails, though not 100%
like
the real thing it is serviceable. Its hard for laterally symmetrical
bodies
to regrow from a part, but radially symetrical things (like starfish)
can...
so are the SV laterally or radially symmetrical? ;)

> and none can regrow completely from a skin
> scraping). 

Nothing big can, some slimey stuff can. As were discussing an alien race
that can "grow drones" etc I wouldn't underestimate their capabilities
just
yet ;)

> Besides, my cultures are grown in what are
> effectively microwave ovens.	First sign of trouble,
> and they get cooked.	

Unfortunately that doesn't work on 100% of the animal world... my
personal
favourite being the tardigrade (survives microwaves, pure acid, 100s of
years of desiccation....)

> And we'd have surgically implanted self-destruct 
> bombs in the aliens in our labs.  They go boom 
> if they leave the area of their cage.

Well if the self-destruct has.... I can just imagine the look on your
face
when you walk into find a lab full of cages with happy little
self-destruct
bombs sitting in them, but no aliens. Sentient beings may just figure
out
how to get such bombs out, and by the sounds of it SV may also be the
kind
of organism that could parcel off and potentially even eject such a
foreign
body. I think it would be the case of taking a level 4 biohazard and
ramping
up several orders of magnitude!

Cheers

Beth