Tree of Souls - An Avatar Community Forum

Tree of Souls - An Avatar Community Forum (https://tree-of-souls.net/index.php)

- General Avatar Discussion (https://tree-of-souls.net/forumdisplay.php?f=2)

- - Why four digits? (https://tree-of-souls.net/showthread.php?t=1436)

I think somewhere in the survival guide it talks about why they have 4 digits. It is a common trait amongst Pandoran life, and was part of their evolutionary process. If you look at the prolemuris at the beginning of the movie, they have 2 arms that split at the elbow into 4 forearms with two fingers on each hand. They also have a single queue unlike most other creatures. So it's possible the prolemuris and na'vi share a common ancestor, much like humans and primates.

On the same note, creatures that would be quadrupeds on Earth are hexapeds on Pandora.

Quote:

Originally Posted by madman (Post 40212)

I bet you could have your pinky finger surgically removed

Maybe Jake will have his pinkies cut, they mark him as alien and they're in the way :P . It would be painful but he's been through worse.

Quote:

Originally Posted by joeylovesgaia (Post 43428)

Maybe Jake will have his pinkies cut, they mark him as alien and they're in the way :P . It would be painful but he's been through worse.

What? Why? No, I don't want that to happen. :P I don't see how they're in the way. Also, when has he been through worse? Yeah, he had a spinal injury in his human body, but no appendage was removed from his body. That's a little different. :P

Quote:

Originally Posted by josie20 (Post 43445)

Yeah, I think he should def keep his pinky fingers lol. I don't think he will have a problem fitting in since he is Taruk Makto.

The Na'vi have feline like features so maybe the four digits follows this just like cats have four toes (plus the fifth one up their legs, but this isn't used to walking so they technically just only use it for skid control when landing from heights, which doesn't apply to Na'vi since they are bipedial).

Because they can is my answer. Better than being jointless!

I'm more concerned about their flat noses and larger vocal chords (longer, bigger necks) NOT affecting their voices (i.e. a high degree of hypo-nasality [talk while holding your nose] and lower timbre). I know it's because no one wants to listen to Neytiri sound like Andre the Giant with a cold, but it still bothers me. Of course, I'm no voice expert, maybe they have really teeny tiny vocal chords for their size and something funky crazy going on in their sinus cavities... sure, why not

Thanks everyone for the replies.

I realise that, at the end of the day, it's probably four in order to create a subtle aesthetic difference so we can thell they're still aliens despite looking so humanoid but I was coming at it from an evolutionary point of view. I have just got the the part in the Survival Guide about the Prolemuris and reading it made things a little more clear.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aoitennyo (Post 43530)

Now ^this is something I have also been wondering myself. It was curious that human Jake and Avatar (Na'vi) Jake had exactly the same voice. It would kind of make sense for Neytiri to have the same voice all the time, as we only hear her in one body (Obviously :P) But surely Jake's avatar would have different shaped vocal chords to human Jake so producing a different sound...?

Again, this is most likely just a continuity issue but it still makes me wonder how to explain it.

Jake does have a slightly different voice to his avatar sometimes, but other times it is very similar.

Just explain it as his DNA :P

Perhaps you should be asking why we have five.