| Spoiler warning! This article contains plot details that people who haven't experienced the source material yet might wish to avoid. |
| Tapa | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| |||
| Naming | |||
| Others | Andrias Anthroposaurus Newt Salamander | ||
| Binomen | Andrias scheuchzeri Cryptobranchus tinckeri erectus Megatriton moluccanus Cryptobranchus salamandroides Pelagotriton spencei Pelagobatrachus hookeri Salamandrops maritimus Abranchus giganteus Amphiuma gigas | ||
| Morphology | |||
| Body type | Salamandrine biped | ||
| Average height | 1.2 meters | ||
| Average weight | 35 - 55 kg | ||
| Intelligence | |||
| Sentience | Sentient | ||
| Sapience | Sapient | ||
| Aggressivity | Very Low (initially) | ||
| Language | May speak numerous human languages | ||
| Ecology | |||
| Place of origin | Sunda Islands | ||
| Habitat | Shallow seas | ||
| Diet | Omnivorous | ||
| Locomotion | Bipedal | ||
| Status | LC | ||
| Behind the Scenes | |||
| Universe | War with the Newts | ||
| Created by | Karel Čapek | ||
- Not to be confused with Tappa
The Tapas (as they were originally known by the Batak), a.k.a. "Newts" (Andrias scheuchzeri) are a sapient species of bipedal marine salamanders, originally native to the equatorial island of Tana Masa, off the southern coast of Sumatra. Their scientific name comes from representing the same species as Scheuchzer's prehistoric salamander fossil, which was mistaken for an ancestral man in the early 18th century. As it turns out, the Tapas are just as intelligent as humans.
Biology[]
The average Tapa stands about 1.2 meters tall. They have smooth black skin, clawless hands with four fingers, five-toed feet and a long tail which helps give them support while walking bipedally. Their heads are almost spherical, only a bit flattened horizontally, and they possess external gills and inner eyelids.
They mostly feed on clams and other marine invertebrates, although, having no claws, they aren't naturally equipped to open clam shells and therefore need to use tools for that purpose. They may also consume food such as potatoes, corn and biscuits when offered. Their bodies produce a strong toxin which can cause severe burns, and their flesh is likewise poisonous and (under normal conditions) completely inedible for humans, although sharks (their natural predators) consume it without problem.
The Tapas are agile swimmers, but very clumsy on land. They have both gills and lungs, and usually spend the days underwater, venturing on land only at night. They habitually walk on two legs, even on the ocean floor. Being adapted to shallow seas, however, they cannot operate in very deep water. Like most amphibians, they lay eggs, and build underwater dams on the shores to keep their eggs and young safe from sharks and other threats of the open seas.
Tapas are capable of learning human speech, although they usually have difficulty with polysyllabic words and cannot properly pronounce the letter "r". Due to their collectivist way of thinking, they also have difficulties with understanding the difference between first-person singular ("I") and first-person plural ("we"), and, in languages which have feminine and masculine nouns, the Tapas likewise appear remarkably indifferent to which is which (this is likely a reflex of their overall indifference to sex outside the breeding season).
Strengths and weaknesses[]
A physically resilient species, Tapas can withstand pain and exhaustion better than the average human. They can return to life after being frozen or entering in coma due to starvation. They're also capable of regenerating lost limbs, eyes and tail. They can survive in a wide range of temperatures, even though sudden drastic changes will kill them. Although native to saltwater, they may operate on rivers as long as the freshwater isn't polluted.
On the other hand, they require a lot of humidity and will die of dehydration if left on dry land for long periods, especially if under the sun. They're also extremely vulnerable to chemical pollution, which may cause chunks of their skin to rotten and fall off.
For some reason, dogs always act inimically towards the Tapas and will usually chase, attack and maul them, even though it invariably results in the dog getting horrible burns from the Tapa's toxicity.
Reproduction[]
Tapas are prodigious breeders and typical r-strategists. Each female produces about 100 to 150 eggs per year, which are carefully placed over algae leaves or benthic rocks. Although the Tapas dedicate themselves to improving the eggs' chances of survival, there is no direct parental care of any kind. The tadpoles hatch after a few weeks, and take about an year to mature into fully adult newts.
The reproduction of the Tapas has been described as a sort of "middle-ground" between sexual reproduction and parthenogenesis, as it has features of both. During the breeding season, the males court the females and release sperm in the water. However, it isn't the sperm which fertilizes the females. In fact, the sperm itself is rather superfluous. Instead, it is the chemical alteration of the seawater which triggers the females' ability to spontaneously produce self-fertilized eggs (essentially, a type of parthenogenesis, even if it still requires the male to induce it).
It is not explained how the sex differentiation occurs in this species, but one might speculate some possibilities. For instance, it's possible that the females produce two different kinds of eggs - perhaps one haploid, one diploid; with the former developing as male and the latter as female. Another possibility would be that the sex of the offspring is determined by water temperature or other environmental factors.
Some scientists have speculated that the newts' curious reproduction could be the key to understanding their social behavior; specifically the strong communal instinct of the males. Since the males don't actually father the children, but only act as chemical triggers to allow the females to spawn, ultimately, it doesn't really matter which male courts which female. The courting process has even been described as an atavistic behavior, completely useless, but retained by instinct. What really matters for the mating to succeed is to ensure that the biggest number of males release their sperm in the water at the same time, in order to chemically stimulate females over a wider area of the sea. As such, the male Tapas have developed a curiously collectivist instinct and strong social bounds, whereas the females tend to be more individualistic in comparison. Compared to humans, however, even the females do have a very communal mentality.
Culture and society[]
Initially, the Tapas were known for their naturally peaceful disposition. The males would sometimes become aggressive during the breeding season, usually towards uncooperative females, but for the rest of the year, violence was mostly unknown to them, and they would not even defend themselves, as their instincts of self-preservation taught them to escape and go hiding rather than fighting.
This slowly began to change after Tapas had contact with humans, specifically with Captain van Toch, who gave them weapons and taught them how to defend themselves and hunt the sharks before the sharks could hunt them.
During the breeding season, Tapas come to the shores at night and engage in ceremonial dances which have been described as a sort of moon cult. This practice was at first tolerated, but later discouraged by some human activists who sought to teach their own religions and morals to them, which only some newts assimilated.
History[]
The Tapas were originally found only on Devil Bay, in the island of Tana Masa. The natives of Tana Masa believed the Tapas were sea devils, and were even afraid to get near them. However, members of this species were later befriended by Czech sea captain Jan van Toch in the 1930s, who found that they were relatively docile and took pity on them after observing how helpless they were against local sharks.
Van Toch taught the Tapas to defend themselves and gave them knifes and harpoons in exchange for precious pearls. As a result, the Tapa population grew, and the local pearls became scarce. Later, Captain van Toch made an agreement with businessman G. H. Bondy, who allowed him to help the Tapas make settlements in other islands and dive for pearls there. In this way the Tapas were spread through all of Melanesia. However, their existence remained obscure to the general public and they only became well-known after a particular incident in which several newts approached a pair of tourists in a yatch, offering pearls to a young woman and asking for "naif" (knife) in return. Initially, scientists called to examine the photographs declared them to be forged and the existence of the intelligent newts was dismissed, but some individuals were captured and displayed in zoos throughout the world. After the species became public knowledge, a specimen in the London Zoo managed to learn to speak and read the newspaper, but was still classified as unintelligent due to how it seemed to answer questions by repeating exact phrases from the newspapers, rather than forming its own.
After the death of Captain van Toch, Bondy organized the Salamander Syndicate, an union of several trade companies specialized in breeding Tapas in captivity and training them, no longer as simple pearl-divers, but as versatile manual laborers that could be employed in several kinds of undersea building projects. Soon, the salamanders were building not only ports and docks, but entire islands, as well as digging canals and trenches, expanding coastlines and reshaping landmasses. Besides that, while most Tapas were workers, some could also be sold as exotic pets for the rich, who would use them to compete in "newt races", which soon became a popular sport. The international salamander trade became increasingly lucrative, and the Tapas were spread worldwide. Some organizations opposed to this, either for fear that the Tapas would replace human workers or for condemning the Salamander Syndicate's activities as essentially a form of slave trade. In the United Kingdom, the commercial employment of salamanders was entirely banned, although this didn't apply to British overseas territories. Still, in most other parts of the world, the operations continued, and numerous nations joined in the increasingly megalomaniac projects to build new continents and unite islands.
During this period of human history, some activists started to advocate that the newts should be treated more humanely. Chief among them was Madame Louise Zimmerman, who advocated that the newts had the right to culture and education, just like humans, and therefore funded the first school for them, inspiring the creation of other similar institutions. Although most salamanders didn't do well in the artistic fields (they had no concept of music, apparently) many excelled academically and were eventually allowed access to universities. However, a great stigma remained in the academic communities against research conducted by Tapas.
Although the Tapas were legally considered property of their owners, the legislation of many countries started to recognize them as sapient and therefore legally responsible for their actions.
In the United States, Tapas were persecuted due to being perceived as a threat. Many women claimed to have been sexually assaulted by them, resulting in the public lynching and executing Tapas. It should be noted that it's physically impossible for a Tapa to sexually assault someone, given that they have a cloaca. Still, this wasn't taken in consideration by the angry mobs. The African-American community mostly stood in defense of the newts, feeling empathy for the unjust persecution they faced, but this wasn't enough to stop the lynchings and in fact only resulted in more African-Americans being lynched along with the newts.
While all of that happened on the surface, the undersea Tapa communities were having to deal with their own internal conflicts, which eventually gave rise to a full-scale civil war between the most conservative (who wanted to preserve their own ways of thinking), and the most radical ones (who wanted to imitate human culture in every possible way). While the outcome of this conflict isn't elaborated upon, it is known that the Tapas started building their own increasingly complex undersea factories and other facilities. They started using tidal energy to power their machines, and mostly adapted human technology to suit them. What they were unable to produce - metals, mostly - they simply acquired from humans by trading.
War against mankind[]
Although armed conflict between humans and newts wasn't actually unheard of, for the first decades since the establishment of the Salamander Syndicate it was extremely rare, and mostly confined to some Polynesian newt colonies taking arms to defend themselves against pirates who intended to capture and smuggle them. Even that, however, was a considerably rare happening.
Major conflicts really started after an incident in Normandy, in which local newts asked for the inclusion of apples in their diet (as they had developed a taste for them). When their employers refused, some newts started to invade neighbor farms and steal apples and chicken eggs, even killing the guard dogs which attacked them. The farmers retaliated and killed numerous newts until one threw a grenade at the human aggressors. From that point, hostilities between newts and humans grew stronger throughout Europe. Meanwhile, some countries such as Italy and Germany were giving their Tapa colonies access to highly advanced military equipment (explosives, submarines, torpedoes, underwater drilling machines and so on), hoping to employ them as a first line of maritime defense in case of international war. It was only a matter of time before other countries such as France and even the United Kingdom (despite their official prohibition of newts) started doing the same.
Eventually, the Tapas' population grew to the point where they needed more coastlines, as they were unable to live on land or in very deep water. They started to mine out large chunks of several continents, including Europe, Asia and North America. The United Kingdom was the first country to declare war on them, and the Tapas immediately started sinking down every British ship everywhere in the world, and preventing other ships to have access to the UK. A diplomatic conference was held in Vaduz where several world leaders tried to reason with the newts, notably offering them the entire China (much to the despair of the Chinese delegation) in exchange for leaving the rest of the world, or at least Europe, intact. The Tapas, however, were determined to change the face of the world, offering only to buy the continents from mankind rather than taking them by force. The war was inevitable, and the Tapas, being much more numerous than humans at this point, were eventually able to do what they intended, reshaping the face of the Earth, sinking enormous chunks of land and becoming the new dominant species of the planet.
At the epilogue, the author claims that mankind shall survive even in small numbers, and speculates that after the Tapa nations destroy each other in war, human civilization will probably emerge again, and the people might retain some vague cultural memories of primordial sunken nations called England, France, Germany, and so on, which will probably be regarded as legends much like Atlantis, Lemuria and Mu.
Appearances[]
- War with the Newts (original: Válka s mloky), by Karel Čapek (1936)
Gallery[]
Notes[]
- In real life, the name Andrias scheuchzeri refers to an extinct species of giant salamanders known from the Oligocene to the Pliocene of Europe. Čapek's inspiration for the novel came from the fact that the fossil's discoverer, Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, described it in 1726 as "Homo diluvii testis", believing it to represent the remains of a human being who died in the biblical Deluge. The fossil was properly reclassified as a salamander by Friedrich Holl in 1831, who named it Salamandra scheuchzeri in Scheuchzer's honor. It was later renamed Andrias scheuchzeri by Johann Jakob von Tschudi in 1837, and thus acknowledged as a close relative of the modern giant salamanders of the Chinese (Andrias davidianus) and Japanese (Andrias japonicus) varieties. Since the name Andrias is etymologically-linked to the Greek term "andros" ("man"), it also refers to Scheuchzer's idea about the fossil's identity.