On Wed, 28 Jan 2004, Jerry Friedman wrote: > I don't think so, because the smallest North American hawk, the > sharp-shinned hawk (which a Dragaeran wouldn't even consider a hawk) > has at least as much size dimorphism as the goshawk. Uhh, do they really have sharp shins? > Funny, I've discussed this one on the Nabokov list too. There's > a very rough trend that bigger birds fly slightly faster, but the > fastest birds are swifts, which are pretty small. For stamina, > there's really no correlation. To a first approximation, size > doesn't matter. I doubt you heard it here first. Huh, heard the opposite last night... Ok, anyway, jhereg are intelligent. Somehow that has to majorly affect their evolution. I'm thinking questions about their dimorphism and venomousness/eating habits can't be simply related to familiar animal models. Actually I'm thinking they should probably be either smarter or dumber than the J made them, and should have grown a great deal on an intelligently-harvested diet, and should be a leading species, assuming the Dragaerans haven't launched a program to eliminate them (e.g. by destroying their habitat or developing the Overcast).