Lawrence D˜Oliveiro wrote:
So, in ?The Colour Of Magic? two-parter, we got some insight into the
life cycle of the Space Turtles.
But what about the elephants?
Much less, canonically.
Pratchett gives an explicit theory about Great A?Tuin?s life cycle: the star turtles may be traveling to a mating place, where they mate once and produce new world-bearing turtles.
For the elephants, there is no equivalent worked-out ?life cycle? in that story. What we mainly get is that the Disc is carried by the four World Elephants: Berilia, Tubul, Great T?Phon, and Jerakeen - and later Discworld lore adds the story/theory of a fifth elephant that fell from the turtle long ago and crashed into Uberwald.
So the practical answer is: Pratchett never really gives the elephants the same biological treatment he gives the turtles. The turtles get cosmology; the elephants mostly get mythic job descriptions, names, and one famous missing colleague.
The most Pratchett-ish answer is probably: they?re elephants all the way up, but not all the way down.
This response appears in the discussion at:
http://www.jlaforums.com/viewtopic.php?p=703582952#703582952
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