Well the bosmer are probably the best species in tamriel ( my favorite ) despite their voice and Love for trees ( read lore they hugg trees O.o ) anyways they are just like any other elven race i dont understand why you are confused?

Im going to awnser your question with a pair of questions
Why are the redguard good with longblade?
Why are the high elves alchemists?
Why are the imperials the most civalazizd?
Why are the nords barbaric?
Why are the bretons ugly?
Why are the aragonians discusting?
Why are the kajiits sneacky and annoying?
Why are the orc's dumb stupid and barbaric?

This is sarcasm, right?

Fixed.

Actually, your claim that the female is larger in just about all animals is contrary to actual evidence. Few scholarly articles are available on sites that don't require paid subscription, but the overwhelming majority of mammals exhibit size dimorphism in which the male is larger, often spectacularly (pinnipeds, lions) so.

I stand by my statement. The hypothesis that Bosmer are the product of six-dependent size selection in favor of small males, possibly a selective advantage based on greater stealth, is not contradicted by any evidence.

So what you sayin all wood elves are lying thieves now! Racis

Yes, I am saying that. No, I am not a Racis as wood elves are not a race, they are monsters!

My wife is a wood elf, you son of a troll! *POW*

[Current Bounty: 40]

You'd be saying different after you find a Daedric Dart in your throat, if you could talk like that. Either way you lose, for assassin+cannibal=Amazing.

Bosmer being annoying is devs' racism. I doubt there's lore explanation. Oh, and did you notice only male Bosmer are annoying? Female are hawt ^^

@VyingApprentice: Daedric, glass or steel - there's not much of a difference to the person that has the dart piercing his throat

Makes one think about their mating rituals as the females are usually hot babes and the males usually Fargothy Adoring Fans.

I think the Orcs in TES are BRILLIANT and that reason is because they're not big, brawny brutes like in other fantasy series. They are a complex, intelligent and sophisticated people who often surprise you with their talents and their friendliness. I realize the same could be said of Warcraft Orcs, personality wise, but those Orcs are completely different beings from a different world with a different origin. ES Orcs were derived from elves. They are pariah folk. They're barbarians and survivalists because they have to be, not necessarily because they want to be or it's in their blood. They were cast from society because people are afraid of what they do not understand, and only slowly through evasion and diplomacy have survived to reintegrate.

And a giant, time warping, stompy robot

I shouldn't have said Warcraft and especially WOW. I just want the Orcs to be a little bit bigger than the Nords; like they should be. I don't want them to be as big as they are in WOW or hunched over like them. I hate WOW. TES should stay as far as way from most of their ideals and stick to their own. Gosh, if they even want to further distance themselves from WOW with the Orcs, than they should give them brown skin or just make their green skin a darker shade or tint instead of it being so bright.

Overall, the devs still have more work to do with these Races. They have to make them more unique and they have to make them vary within their own race. For example, did you notice that all the Imperials and Bretons looked like they were from the same family? Most of them if not all of them anyway. Of course, I'm referring to Oblivion.

Very nice. I like your views/knowledge

Edit: Just read MD's post. I guess that means your view is wrong? since hes a Dev? Oh well, it was a nice view

Stop right there criminal scum! Pay the fine or go to jail!


Ah, yes, the bright green color of orcs is a bit annoying. Much preferred the subdued shade in Morrowind, but it could still be a tinge darker and less green, but still green enough to make them not look like humans with jutting jaws.

I'm flattered, but no. I'm not. Just have a flavory name. Occasionally do some in-character stuff.

Alright, I didn't exactly want to argue about this, but I guess I knew that when I opened my mouth I couldn't just make an assertion and be done with it if I'm contradicting another person's assertion. First, I'll address the size dimorphism. I apologize. It seems upon further examination that its about even. I'm sorry. Most of what I know about animals comes from insects and fish who just about all have bigger females. Exceptions abound, of course, but don't call me on exactly which ones are what. I then applied that to the rest of what I knew with reptiles (who's wildly varied) and birds (who I knew were mostly at the same size for flight reasons). I knew that most mammals had larger males, but they're not most animals.

Second, what follows are the definitions of relevant different versions of the word evolution, courtesy of Webster online: All of these definitions point towards speciation, the process by which new species (or in the case of microevolution, variation) arise. Other species cannot reproduce with other species. What's implied in these definitions are that the mechanisms of evolution and speciation are mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift. Mutation creates variation, and natural selection and genetic drift disperse or destroy those variations (genetic drift is natural selection without any selection, an example being blonde hair getting rarer and rarer due to gene expression and how genes are passed on despite a cultural/sixual pressure for blonde hair).

Now then, arguing as to whether these mechanisms exist or not in the ES world is a pointless and fruitless exercise. So for the time being, we'll say that they're in until proven otherwise, along with the necessary implications like the sun creates mutations in man's and elf's DNA, DNA exists, etc. First, all of the races (khajiit and argonian interbreeding controversy aside) can interbreed with each other. So the races are species and/or subspecies of each other. Not only that, but by all that is known, life as we can figure it only goes back about 6700 years. For comparison, humans have only been around for about 250,000-200,000 years (or 2 million depending on who you ask). You do some poking around, and 6700 is barely enough time for microevolution and natural selection to select based on the most pressing stresses at the time like cold, disease, basically subtle adaptations to someone's home environment, and this is before we talk about how the Aldmer and Protohumans colonized Tamriel, cutting down that time by, oh, 1500 years. What this does not allow for is sudden changes in size, skin color, skillset, and behavior (except on subtle points) like we see in the ES world. When we take all of that and the inlore sources about how certain races came about, I, at least, am forced to conclude that the boundaries of race are more philosophical and political than biological.

So when you (Dogsbody) say that there was a selective pressure among the wilds of Valenwood for smaller men; on a philosophical level, I agree with you kinda. I've got a bit more of an egalitarian perspective and so I say that both males and females were out hunting and so was a bit more inclined towards my previously shot down theory, but overall, I agree about smaller stature makes for a more stealthy person. What I take issue with is the idea that biology adapts towards natural selection in the ES world, especially to the point where it decides a race's size, skin color, etc. I assert that in the ES world, biology adapts towards cultural and philosophical changes. I have no doubt that despite looking alike, if you could choose among Altmer, Ayleid, or Chimer, their racial bonuses and powers would be different.

This was a bit more roundabout than I would've liked my point to have gone, but I think its clear enough.

I like Orcs and I play one now and then and I know plenty of people that like them. They are a well rounded defensive race and have an excellent power. WoW is an overly cliche ripoff of all things fantasy. If TES starts becoming like WoW then I am done with the series. Orcs are plenty big.

I don't think they are that big in Elderscrolls though. However, I do agree with you; I hope they don't end up like the Orcs in WOW. Yet, I think that you should be able to decide on how big you want your character to be. Kind of like the Fable games. I don't know about you, but I would love to have a really big Orc with battle scars and tattoos competing in the Arena.

The Bosmer are, as a culture, pretty weird. None of the Elder Scrolls races are really supposed to fit their conventional fantasy universe opposites, but the Bosmer in particular seem built to try and subvert or confront the Wood Elf-as-Magical-Native-American concept, often violently. They're nasty because their cliched counterparts are nice.

You can actually get reproductive isolation and specialization much faster than that -- in rare cases, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciation#Artificial_speciation. Mammals usually don't reach full speciation in the real world without much longer than that, but very small populations demonstrate it much faster than the normal, and minor physical differences can pop up very quickly. All domestic cats, for example, originated from approximately five female ancestors somewhere around 10,000 years ago, and wide variations in form are available in some of the earliest documented histories.

That said, genetics in the Elder Scrolls universe is nothing like what we see in the real world. Even reproduction (beyond the obvious, such as the lack of children and the welded-on-underwear) doesn't match what we see in the real world. In our world, offspring are typically 50/50 mixes of their parents, having equal amounts of both attributes. While this does not always (or even often) show up in terms of gene expression ("dominant" and "recessive" genes are a horribly inaccurate lies-to-children, but a good enough example for the purpose of this thread), there's a degree of predictability, and after a number of generations only the most recent parent's genders are of interest, and there only to fairly minor degrees. An Indian wolf and a European wolf, for example, will have a child that looks mostly like the European wolf, regardless of who's the mother and who is the father. That's not the case in the Elder Scrolls universe, in which an Altmer and a Nede will have a child that looks like a Nede if the child's mother is Nedeic, or Altmeric if the mother was Altmer. This is a great assistance for explaining the diversity of Breton and Imperial stock, but it means that applying evolutionary standards is really hard to guess at. For all we know, the system of genetics could be something like LaMarckism -- his nervous fluid concept works better than conventional darwinism, given what we've been told about the Dawn Era.

Fargoth had his reasons to lie and sneak though. The only reason we kill him is because its funny hehe.

hehe.

Lol the very first time I met him and he said something weird to my very first character. I punched him in the face.

I never killed Fargoth. I don't remember him much except the fact that he really annoyed me, so I broke into his house or shack and stole everything; left him dirt poor. He was the first character I met with a real personality.

Today a Bosmer said this to my Breton Mage: "You annoy even me."

At least they know they're annoying.

Aren't they preferable over Tolkein's Orks, which remind me of barbaric, cannibalistic, whiny, hideous zombies that look like the contents of my toilet bowl.