Are there any races...?

[STTKFAN]

Are there any humanoid races evolved from rhinos? That would make for a neat race. A lumbering race with brute strength and ferocity when arroused but usuallu solitary and pacifistic.

[Dan Gurden]

Originally posted by STTKFAN
A lumbering race with brute strength and ferocity when arroused,

Nooo.... Mental image. Must. Leave. My. Head...

OK, evolved from Rhino's...

I do know that the Jem'Hadar are very loosly based on that kind of creature, hnce the horns and the thick hide, but that was as far as the similarity really went...

But no direct evolutions, neither however have there been any based on Hippos or Elephants (in Trek). The closest I can think of with your description is the Brikar, a creation of Peter David in the New Frontier books, and several templates have been developed for them in both ICON and CODA, hell, I have written an ICON one...

That would give you a basic idea to work from.

Your biggest stumbling block is explaining how they became humanoid, the large lumbering frame is even more unsuited to bpedal motion with manual dexterity that that of the more graceful creatures (but they have covered Dinosaurs, Snakes, Cats, Dogs and Fish, so its not a huge stretch)

[Balok]

You might do better assuming such a race remained quadripedal, and developed another set of limbs for tool use -- or even that they never did; they possess intelligence without the ability to manipulate their environment. They might be profound philosophers but technically inept.

Not all races need be bipeds, especially in a game, where visual effects are entirely in one's head! Sure, "The Chase" purported to explain why so many races are humanoid, but there are definitely some races that are not, such as the Tholians, the Horta, and a few others -- some races doubtless clawed their way to sapience without help.

[STTKFAN]

I do know that the Jem'Hadar are very loosly based on that kind of creature, hnce the horns and the thick hide, but that was as far as the similarity really went...

I always pegged them as some kind of reptillian derivative.

[truecrimson]

Anyone ever read "FootFall" by Larry Niven, I think? The aliens were elephants, but in addition to primitive hands(really elongated toes on the forelimbs) they mailnly used a multi part prehensile trunk for tool manipulation.

[Tobian]

From the Michael Westmore (makeup artist guy) interview he mentioned that the Jem hadar were heavilly based on Rhino's hide, but not exclusivelly.

The closet I can think of as seen in trek are the grazerites, who are based on a cow like model - hence the name however they are obviously quite bright, as the last Federation president was one! (Jaresh Inyo) - there was a rather nice writeup for them in the old LUG trek books.. so maybe you coud use them and adapt them somehow?

even though this is just Scifi - species do have to have a compelling reason to have become big brained - it's entirelly unneccessary for life, we just happened to go down that path to give us an edge.. If a creature already has a niche and an edge, then it makes it hard to understand why it went off that path and did a U turn from big and strong to super inteligent.. There is one possible way you can look at this though - as a rule of thumb, mammals seem to get (with the exception of our branch of primates, where it's disproportionate) larger brains the larger they get - whales and elephants have large brains - and while not being as smart as us, they are none the less remarkably intelligent. It's not too much of a stretch to take that and accelerate it.. But then you also have the problem of a lack of hands!!

Then there's always the good old fashioned daddy race who genetically manipulated left right and centre if you want to explain it away that way

[Sho-sa Kurita]

Originally posted by truecrimson
Anyone ever read "FootFall" by Larry Niven, I think? The aliens were elephants, but in addition to primitive hands(really elongated toes on the forelimbs) they mailnly used a multi part prehensile trunk for tool manipulation.

And they used octal-based mathematics instead of decimal.