Omnitaur
"My parents were both omnitaurs, which is how I got interested in recombination," said the normal human.
"My parents were both omnitaurs, which is how I got interested in recombination," said the normal human.
Omnitaur is an anagram of minotaur, a mythical creature that was part man, part bull. "Omni-" is a prefix that means "all" that is, for instance, known from the word omnivore, meaning 'all eating' as compared to carnivore or herbivore — only eating meat or plant respectively. Given the combination of animals used to create the omnitaur, it could be expected that it was also an omnivore. The "-taur" part often means "bull," but it also appears in "centaur" via Latin from Greek kentauros (the name for a Thessalonian tribe of expert horsemen), meaning a different mythical creature which has the upper body of a human and the lower body and legs of a horse. So "-taur" could here be used to mean any creature made up of parts of different animals. An "omnitaur" would suggest that it would encompass all real and mythical creatures, or perhaps some random assortment of such. In this instance, it appears to be a hybrid, or genetic chimera, combined from eleven different creatures: fish, lion, snake, shark, bull, dragon (a mythical and often chimeric creature in its own right), horse, leopard, ram (male sheep), human and bird.
Chimerism is not uncommon at the genetic level; for example, humans have about 145 genes (out of around 30,000) originating from bacteria, other single-celled organisms, and viruses.[1] Mitochondria, the powerhouses of the cell, were originally chimeric bacterial symbionts. But chimeras of larger organisms are rare, usually involving fraternal twins whose zygotes, blastocysts, or embryos combined, as in conjoined twins, but resulting in less distinct phenotypical expression. Artificial human chimeras with viruses, mice, pigs, and monkeys have been the subject of ethics controversies in recent years.[2][3] Interspecies blastocyst complementation, used to create human chimera organs and cell lines in other animals, is usually limited to combining two organisms into one whose offspring are not hybridized if they are even viable, and usually without human germlines or reproductive organs (or human central nervous systems, assuaging a major ethical concern).
The title text is a comment by a human whose parents were both omnitaurs. It would be funny that such parents would not produce offspring that were also omnitaurs. It suggests that this may be the result of genetic recombination, which is the exchange of genetic material between different organisms, most often two parents, leading to offspring with combinations of traits that differ from those found in either parent. In this case, they inherited only the human elements of each parent, apparently sufficient to develop into a whole human with no missing or chimeric elements. Both omnitaur parents likely had human germlines and compatible reproductive organs. Since the example depicted seems to be only 1/11 human, the odds of two parents as mentioned in the title text having fully human offspring would simplistically appear to be (1/11)11, or one chance in 285 billion. In reality, each physical part could not be the result of an equal recombinant genetic contribution, because the eleven animal chromosomes vary widely in number and size. Moreover, chimeras composed of multiple animals do not have chimeric children, because even with multiple sets of reproductive organs, the germlines are not combined.[actual citation needed]
Chimeras in folklore
In addition to the minotaur and centaur, many other potential inspirations can be found in mythology, like the manticore, with a body of a lion and human face; a griffin, with a lion's body and a eagle's head; a mermaid, with a lower body of a fish and upper body of a human; a hippocampus, with the upper body of a horse and a lower body of a fish; a qilin, with a body that resembles both a horse and a dragon; or the mythological chimera, for which the genetic chimera is named, which has lion, snake, and goat body parts. Ultimately, there are lots of hybrid creatures in mythology with phenotypes combined from multiple animals. Usually, genetic hybridization produces much more smoothly blended phenotypes instead of dividing the body into large distinctly chimeric regions, although mosaicism of fur, skin or eyes can produce notable differences of hue or shade.
In C. S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia, the centaurs are described as eating two meals — a huge roast meal "to satisfy the man stomach," and a meal of grass, "to satisfy the horse stomach," making it take quite some time for them to eat every morning. Since the omnitaur also has herbivore, carnivore, and omnivore parts, this could further support the supposition that it is an omnivore, and it may similarly need multiple stomachs for these multiple appetites. It is unclear how compatible the various diets of its components would be (not least because 'fish,' 'snake' and 'bird' are quite unspecific, and it's hard to know what a dragon would eat) but it would likely need several meals, taking even longer to eat than the centaur (plus the bird beak may slow the process down quite a bit). In any case, a chimera of both warm- and cold-blooded organisms seems unlikely to be viable,[citation needed] even at the organ level, let alone with combined surface phenotypes.
Dragons in Chinese folklore are often chimeras, described for example as having, "the head of a camel, the horns of a stag, the eyes of a demon, the ears of a cow, the neck of a snake, the belly of a clam, the scales of a carp, the claws of an eagle and the paws of a tiger." The Chimera monster in Dungeons and Dragons is a "vile combination of goat, lion, and dragon, and features the heads of all three,"[4] with similar depictions being common across fantasy media. The Aztec god Quetzalcoatl ("the feathered serpent") inspired the Discworld god/demon Quezovercoatl ("the feathered boa") ...being an analogue and mish-mash of various South American cultural and wildlife totems and described more fully as "as half-man, half-chicken, half-jaguar, half-serpent, half-scorpion and half-mad (a total of three homicidal maniacs)" with the small disadvantage of manifesting as only six inches high and being stepped on.
While chimeras occur in fantasy fiction, they also occur in science fiction, for example as cyborgs.[citation needed] The The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the sequel to Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, had a large fat meaty bovine dairy quadruped "with large watery eyes, small horns and what might almost have been an ingratiating smile on its lips." This "Ameglian Major Cow" seemingly had the mind and vocal tract of a human, so it could articulate how much it wanted to be eaten.
The omni- prefix was later used in 2738: Omniknot and 3060: Omniroll.