Interesting article on Non-Human Races

Dolphins capacity for language is pretty fascinating. Through the use of clicks, rather than having words to represent concepts, they can create a kind of "sonar picture" and transmit that to other dolphins.
I read this one sci-fi comic where "Dolphin" was a spoken language (which is terribly unrealistic). The Dolphin word for water was "itikti". Which also means stability, life, time, space and god. Apparently, the difference is in how the speaker moves while saying it - what with sonar and all.
And then there's octopi intelligence which is so inhuman that it's hard to measure.

What I'm getting at is that you don't need to sit around wondering what "non-human" intelligence is or how the Other thinks. There's examples of that stuff already on Earth.

However, if you want other races to have a meaningful relationship with humans (both humans in the story and the readers themselves), two-way, mutual communication is necessary. In this case, I think it'd be okay to have Peter Dinklage in Spock ears.
On one end of the spectrum, you have Spock while on the other end you have Azathoth. Both are good in their respective stories.

 

Read some of Hal Clement's books - such as 'Mission of Gravity' - old school science fiction and he specialized in non-human life forms and their biology. Vastly overlooked nowadays but they are classics.

 

I feel like diving into biology is way too...exhaustive(?) for most books. Nor, do I think, it is all that important as a starting point. I start with a real-world equivalent for culture but, like shrink wrap, it usually conforms to how the race is.

 

It probably depends on how closely related your sentient non-humans are to humans. Conventional elves and orcs share so much of their anatomy in common with humans that I would classify them as fellow hominins in the same sense as Neanderthals, Denisovans, or Homo erectus. In their case, some degree of cognitive and cultural overlap with our species would be expected. As for races that aren't the least bit humanoid at all (say, Velociraptors with Jurassic Park intelligence), those might certainly present some fascinating divergences in culture from humanity as the OP suggested.

 

Ah, I misunderstood. I take that sort of characterization for granted. I didn't think it would take any sort of advice to make it so that things just made sense. It might sound a bit condescending but I don't think a concept like that needs an entire article to express.

 

So very true.

Thanks for the link, OP. Very interesting!

 

I have a race if dog humanoid people and have done extensive research on the nature of pack animals to portray them accurately

 

You just gave me an idea for my race of humanoid cat people... interesting.