Talk: Avatar (species)

Human-Avatar-Na'vi anatomical differences: The subtle differences between Avatars and true Na'vi are quite interesting. I keep finding that contributions to this page are accurate and informative. The fact that Avatars have eyebrows surprised me, I had to check my stills collection, and sure enough, there they are!

James Cameron's scriptment indicates that an Avatar's hands are "graceful, with three very long fingers, and one opposed thumb. The fingers curve smoothly, bending without joints." We know in the final version of Avatar, the decision to give Avatars five digits like Humans was made at some point to further differentiate Na'vi from Avatars. It looks to me like the Na'vi do indeed have joints in their fingers. Did anyone see that differently? Kxetse a-ean 22:29, December 26, 2009 (UTC)

Avatar[]

Avatars have 4 fingers and a thumb where as na'vi have 3 fingers and a thumb. another difference from avatar-na'vi is the avatar has a slightly more (filled out) kinda more muscular. It has both DNA's so it gives it some traits from human. you can barely notice the difference at all tho :)

oh and sorry forgot to mention above... the fingers of the na'vi have no joints. I'm not too sure about the avatars but i got a feeling they do.

(Actually, the Navi fingers have joints. Look carefully at the stills where Neytiri holds Jake's human body and then cups his hand on her face with her hand. Her fingers have the telltale straight sections of jointed digits) SanDiegoSwamp 21:09, February 27, 2010 (UTC)

It could also be noted that Dr. Augustine's avatar has a more human-like nose than eg. Jake and Norm's avatars which have a Na'vi-like nose. --LuckyMan 01:36, December 27, 2009 (UTC)

that is a great point LuckyMan, i noticed but never thought to bring it up :P -Avatar- 01:42, December 27, 2009 (UTC)

there is so many things that you dont notice when you're emersed in the film Tsmukan

you cant really compare the builds of Avatars to Na'vi just from the film because you only see jakes avatars build Tsmukan

First attempt at Transfer[]

Last section of the text states that Dr Augustine was the first to attempt having the conscious mind transferred to Avatar. However in the Avatar game 'Able' Ryder is transferred successfully and Dr Rene Harper is unsuccessfully transferred (A bit of trivia with this one, both Dr Augustine and Dr Rene Harper attempt the transfer but succumb to their wounds while Jake Sully and Ryder, both marines, are successfully transferred). If anyone wants to change the article they can, but it brings the question that by including this bit of information, will we need to include (game plot spoiler) that Able Ryder rides a Great Leonopteryx, therefore becoming a Toruk Makto??? --IWantheUltimateChange 11:59, January 3, 2010 (UTC)

That's only if the game is canon though, and I'm not sure it is. Eltungawng 05:50, February 27, 2010 (UTC)

Price tag[]

Don't try and change the price tag...I quoted it straight from Rene Harper. Unless other information comes to light that is the price tag. IWantheUltimateChange 12:16, January 28, 2010 (UTC)

Also; I could have sworn they said something of a price tag in the movie... Can't remember if there was a figure attatched to it though. xD

~ImmortalD~ 18:47, May 4, 2010 (UTC)

Capitalization[]

Does anyone know for sure whether "Avatar" should be capitalized when not referring to the program or the film (ex: "Jake Sully is an Avatar" or "Jake Sully is an avatar")? I've seen instances where it isn't capitalized and instances where it is throughout the wiki, and personally, I'm inclined to capitalize them all (in fact, I've changed a few where it's lowercase, including in this article). Thoughts? Eltungawng 19:48, February 26, 2010 (UTC)

I would believe they shouldn't be capitalized. When you're refering to an animal, such as a cat or dog, you don't capitalize it.. So I'm assuming it wouldn't be, although I may be really wrong. :D

Erca 22:05, August 25, 2010 (UTC)

Thumbs[]

Thumbs only have two joints, so the avatars wouldn't have five three-jointed fingers... I would change it, but I don't want to get yelled at or anything. --Erca 22:09, August 25, 2010 (UTC)

Ok, sounds good, go ahead. Also, we don't yell at people, so don't worry :) --((((Matias)))) ~ Talk IRC 22:36, August 25, 2010 (UTC)

Alright, I changed it to "...of five digits on each hand and foot..."

Erca 22:09, August 29, 2010 (UTC)

Human anatomical differences[]

The Avatar pelvic girdle differs slightly from its human counterpart due to the tail. Although the tail is not fully prehensile, it does allow for improved balance and mobility, exceeding human body limits by a large margin.

Seems kind of out of place since the rest is discussing differences with Na'vi rather than humans. Differences with humans are obvious enough for the most part.

Inanimate?[]

The article states that the Avatars are "neither sentient nor animate". I can't speak for their degree of sentience (well, I could, and at considerable length...but it'd just be speculation delving into deep philosophy *g*)...but we do see them twitching and even turning over in those tanks; and I don't know if anyone else caught this, but after Jake's Avatar is brought out of the tank you can see one of its feet flex on the gurney before first link.

This suggests that they may be capable of some degree of movement without direction from the driver, even if it's just reflexive. But I think what they do in the amnio tanks goes a little further than that. One character mentions the "proprioceptive stims" (or is it "sims"? --unclear) that the Avatars are subjected to so that they will develop proper muscle tone. Proprioception is the body's sense of itself: how big it is, where its limbs are in space and in relation to each other, what position it's in... This is something babies learn as they move about in the womb. And it is something learned, even if it is subconscious; there are people born without it who have to be taught conscious awareness of where their bodies end and the rest of the world begins. (I have small deficits in that area myself; I like to tell people I'm a little fuzzy around the edges... *g* )

So we have the Avatars moving in the tanks the way babies move in the womb, and in developing babies this is part of a learning process that maps the body to the subconscious brain. Personally, I think any movements the Avatars learn in the tanks they should be able to perform afterwards, once they've adjusted to the presence of gravity; it'd sure keep them from mashing their tails if they could turn over in their sleep...but that's just me.

Comments? Should I change anything? Marius the Wanderer (talk) 04:15, October 21, 2012 (UTC)

Avatars and the Amnio Tank[]

I don't think I've ever written an admin before, and I hope the following doesn't come across as arguing or disrespect; it's not meant that way. A few of my edits were reverted for unsourced or otherwise dubious material. Good reasons, and I'm not the type to kick and complain, but I'd like to explain what I did...

I got the info about amnio fluid composition from the article on amnio tanks, and I think I've also seen it on Pandorapedia.

Someone in the movie mentioned the "proprioceptive stims" the Avatars got as they were growing. I'm not sure what form the stimulus took, so I kept that vague. But proprioception is the body's subconscious awareness of where its parts (such as limbs) are in relation to each other and the environment, and a baby attains it by moving inside the womb. Maybe I've read too much into the character's comment, but that's what I was thinking when I wrote that.

If those are good sources, can I put the edits back in? I won't unless you give me the go-ahead.

(Edit, 4 Jan: I've sourced the part about the amnio fluid now.) :-)

I was unsure about the height - the first paragraph that mentions it used to say 8-10 feet, then the next mention gave 9-10. I went with the broader range. Doesn't mean I was right, however, and maybe I should have been a little more conservative about that...especially since 9-10 feet seemed more correct to me. (apologetic smile) -- Marius the Wanderer (talk) 23:07, January 3, 2013 (UTC)

I didn't notice the amnio fluid composition was mentioned somewhere else, but took it for wishful thinking, with the ocean topic of the sequel in mind. So, thanks for pointing out the source.

However, I don't feel well about the stimulus part. You wrote something rather vague based on two words from the film. I don't think this is enough reason to represent something as fact with so little information. I am not saying that what you wrote is totally far fetched, but I'd rather make no statement than a potentially wrong one.

Agreed; I'll leave that out unless/until I find something more solid about it. Is The Science of Avatar considered a good source? The book has JC's imprimatur, and there's quite a bit about the stims/sims there.

It's no official material, just some author wanting to make some bucks on the back of avatar. Faern. 3D-HD-Pics 01:50, January 6, 2013 (UTC)

You sure? Because the cover quotes JC as saying "This is the book I had hoped for", the author mentions Cameron and Jon Landau having shared their work with him, and the book contains eight pages of screenshots and concept art used by permission of Lightstorm Entertainment.

There's actually not all that much on the Wiki about the newer literature that's come out since, say, 2010. I might have to do something about that... Hmm! 8-) -- Marius the Wanderer (talk) 03:43, January 6, 2013 (UTC)

I suppose nearly noone bothered buying it 2.5 years after the film. I don't have it either. From its description, I suppose that it mainly summarizes scientifically relevant parts like interstellar travel, unobtanium, maglev and the like, puts it into real world science context (which others have done before) and (him being a sci-fi author) adds some own stuff. Maybe you can judge better since you have the book, but I suppose there is not much wiki-relevant stuff in there that isn't already known. I would not give much about JC's blessing for something. This marketing trick has also been used to advertise the film Sanctum as "from the creator of Titanic and Avatar" for JC being the producer. In reality, he was hardly involved at all. Faern. 3D-HD-Pics 22:16, January 6, 2013 (UTC)

Na, I think this book is the real deal. And it isn't just the hard sciences. There's plenty of the earth sciences, life sciences, social sciences and humanities: cultural anthropology, behavioral science, philosophy, ethics...even mythology. It's a great book; it's thick, meaty, and makes me think. The lack of circulation is more likely due to the outrageous publishing delay(s) than anything else; anyone who wanted it in 2010 must've given it up for vaporware by 2012 except me, brave and hardy fool that I am. ;-) -- Marius the Wanderer (talk) 07:28, January 7, 2013 (UTC)

I know what you mean. I had ordered the Neytiri mini bust in early 2010, set for a release in autumn back then. I asked the shop from which I ordered to send me a note when it is available and they agreed. After having been postponed about half a dozen times, it eventually came out in early 2012. Guess who didn't notify me? It took me until April to learn about it. In the end, I am quite glad that they forgot me. The mini bust did not look as good as expected, and I was lucky to get the last one of the larger and more detailed Sideshow busts that I could find. Faern. 3D-HD-Pics 23:10, January 7, 2013 (UTC)

I noticed the trouble about the height. I did some googling and couldn't really find where the 8 might have come from. The 9 to 10, on the other hand, has a lot of mentions. One might, of course, argue that avatars could sometimes be smaller than Na'vi due to the human part in the genome, but I don't remember having seen avatars with differences of two feet / half a meter in height. It doesn't matter too much anyway, as long as the same article doesn't mention two different figures, as it did. :P

As a last note: Don't be afraid to contact an admin if you think he made a mistake or something else is wrong. We are neither perfect nor Pandoran carnivores who bite off people's heads (at least most of the time). ;-) Faern. 3D-HD-Pics 23:20, January 4, 2013 (UTC)

They come at night... mostly. --Cadellin (talk) 04:48, January 5, 2013 (UTC)

I'm mostly on at night! *g*

OK, queston about the Ambient Room: You've got that we don't know for sure if all avatars are decanted there. I confess to a degree of Confuzzlement: It's avatar-sized, attached directly to the BioLab, has ports for the amnio tanks, monitoring equipment and a Pandoran atmosphere... I've put that part of the article back to how I had it for the time being. I did dig up sources and will reference them if I have to, but I can't imagine it being used for anything else except the avatars' routine medical needs. Thoughts?

At any rate, thanks for nudging me towards improving my contributions! I didn't even know how to cite a reference until you, umm, inspired me to look at the Wikicode of the articles that have them. -- Marius the Wanderer (talk) 20:08, January 5, 2013 (UTC)

For the ambient room the same reasoning applies as above. We only ever see those two avatars getting decanted in the film. Iirc, the ambient room appears nowhere else (e.g. in the games). So, we only know that these two particular avatars have been decanted there, not more, not less. Everything else is basically opinion which should better be formed by the reader. They could as well get the tanks outside and decant them there if they feel like it. Faern. 3D-HD-Pics 01:50, January 6, 2013 (UTC)

For that matter we've only ever seen those two avatars in amnio tanks, but we know they weren't the only ones grown that way. *shrugs* But I do have the refs and have added them; and I've seen a screenshot from one of the games (I'm not sure which version, but it had nice graphics and was pre-iPad) with an avatar getting up off the gurney in a room equipped the same way. Shall I post it here, on my Talk page, somewhere in the article or its Talk page, or just upload it to the gallery? (Actually, I'd be surprised if we didn't already have it.) -- Marius the Wanderer (talk) 02:41, January 6, 2013 (UTC)

You are right. I have to correct my statement above. The ambient room actually appears in the PC game. The player wakes up there on the first avatar link. I obviously haven't played the game for too long. :P The reference you added to the Avatar article is good enough, I guess, but it doesn't explicitly say that the Ambient Room is always used. Maybe we should relativize the definite statement "Decantation takes place in the Ambient Room" by adding a "usually". Thoughts? Faern. 3D-HD-Pics 22:16, January 6, 2013 (UTC)

Hmm... Thing is, as they say, lack of evidence is not evidence. If we don't think we can say "Avatars are decanted in the Ambient Room" with any authority unless we know for sure that they all were, then we'll never be able to say it. If every Avatar but the hypothetical "one that got away" was born there, we couldn't make the statement. It makes a lot more sense to me to start at the other end: Every Avatar we've seen come into the world at all did it in the Ambient Room, and someone would have to prove to me that any others did not. Me, I think that we, the movie, the game, and the literature have more than shown beyond any reader's reasonable doubt that that's what happens in the Ambient Room and that, conversely, that's what said facility is for. Any unreasonable doubt should have to be resolved by the readers themselves.

The other thing is a bit of very stubborn logic that probably comes from my military background. I'm retired Air Force (I was an aircraft mechanic -- Yo, Trudy!!! Love ya!!! *g*); and, while I can't say for sure how the RDA runs things, no unit I was ever with in eighteen years would be allowed to build a facility as specialised as the Ambient Room unless there was a real, pressing, recurring need for it that could not be met in any other way. And no bean-counter would appropriate money for it unless s/he were strongly convinced of the same things. (We actually went through this about building a special hangar for fuel systems repairs...talk about a worm-wrestle...) Most corporations are even tighter with their money than most governments. I'm sure they would not have gone to the trouble and expense of constructing, equipping and staffing an Ambient Room if Avatars could be decanted in the lounge on the driver's coffee-break. -- Marius the Wanderer (talk) 07:28, January 7, 2013 (UTC)

..., then we'll never be able to say it.

Why is it a problem if we are unable to make a definite statement due to lack of knowledge?

The point is that this wiki tries to collect facts as accurately as possible. That means to try not to interpret things, but only include what we actually know. We do not know if "Avatars are decanted in the Ambient Room" is a correct statement or not, which makes it an opinion. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but all we know with certainty regarding the Ambient Room is:

The room's name (script)
It has a Pandoran atmosphere (film, script)
It is located in Hell's Gate (film, game)
It is possible to decant avatars there (film, making of book)
We know three instances where this room was used (film, game)

These points combined do not lead me to the evident conclusion that decantation takes place there generally, but only to the assumption. So, if I did not miss something, without further evidence, we can only truly say that avatars have been decanted in that room in three particular instances. Everything more general is personal opinion. If you want to put an interpretation in an article, the right way to do it would be to make it clear from the text that it is an interpretation and not a fact.

The stubborn logic of trying to make correct statements definitely comes from my university background. :) Faern. 3D-HD-Pics 22:07, January 7, 2013 (UTC)

Aaaarrrrggghhh!! *headdesk*headdesk*headdesk* ...just kidding. I am actually very much enjoying this dialogue and this collaboration. We both want the same thing.

OK, here's another one of my finds; how's this?

"This is an unpressurized room directly connected to the Link Room, where Avatars are decanted from the Amnio-Tank. After decant, the artificial placenta and umbilical cord are removed." - Avatar 3D Annual 2011, p39 ("Transfer Chamber")

The pic is of the Ambient Room, so we could even put that "transfer chamber" is another name for it. If that ref won't do, we could say something like that those three Avatars were decanted there, and that the room is "believed to be" used for decantations in general. Better? :-) -- Marius the Wanderer (talk) 03:36, January 8, 2013 (UTC)

I would take "Transfer Chamber" for a mistake. A Google search yields zero results in this context. There are only a few posts by people calling the link bed "transfer chamber" (which makes more sense as a nickname, imo). From the look of the publisher's website, their target audience is kids, so accuracy is not what I would expect from them. Btw, does the link to the publisher's website in our article work for you? I only get an (almost) blank blue page. Are you from the UK or how did you get that book?

Your last suggestion sounds good to me. Faern. 3D-HD-Pics 20:18, January 8, 2013 (UTC)

Working through your questions backwards, more or less... (4) - Na, I'm in the southwestern US; I actually scored a used copy on Amazon/US. (3) - I get the Big Blue Page too, but the navigation links on top work nicely.

(2) - Kid's publisher: I'm not gonna stand up on my hindlegs and say that's the best source there could possibly be. I'd be a lot happier if we had a statement like that in something written for grownups. In my own field, however (historical cultural anthropology - yup, I went to school too after I got out), a lot of times we have to make do with an only source, regardless of quality, rather than have no source at all. And the biggest reason for that is that, since our study is about the day-to-day lives of vanished peoples, it deals with things that the people who actually lived back then thought of as such common knowledge that it wouldn't have occurred to them to write it down. (The occurance of the Ambient Room quote only in a children's book of bare-basic info actually underscores that point.) Often we've had to fall back on archaeological or representational evidence, each of which has its limits, sometimes rather severe. ("Did the Roman soldiers on Trajan's Column really all wear the same type of armor, or did the sculptor just carve them that way because it looked pretty?"...stuff like that.) That being the case, folks who do what I do tend to become a little excited when there's any written evidence at all, even if it's just something a retired Legionary scratched out on the back of a terra-cotta roof-tile before it dried.

Again, that's not said in an attempt to elevate a children's book to the level of Gospel Truth, but it might go a little ways to explain my mindset when I'm digging through this stuff. We have different standards, and yours are quite a bit higher than mine, but that's not because I'm a lazy thinker; it's because I've been trained to grasp at straws. *rubesco (blush)*

(1) - Agreed on "transfer chamber".

OK, back to the article...whew! I have actually warmed to your original suggestion of saying that decantation "usually" takes place in the Ambient Room, and will edit the article accordingly. Is good? :-) -- Marius the Wanderer (talk) 23:21, January 8, 2013 (UTC)

That should do. I added a note to the reference that the publisher link no longer works. That book seems to be so rare that there is not even another site that has the page count and is good enough as a reference. *g* Faern. 3D-HD-Pics 19:57, January 9, 2013 (UTC)

Should we move this discussion to the article's Talk page? We've certainly given the issue an airing! ;-) -- Marius the Wanderer (talk) 22:10, January 9, 2013 (UTC)

Yep, I already had the same idea. Faern. 3D-HD-Pics 20:26, January 10, 2013 (UTC)

Sentience?[]

I've just made the following edit under "Creation and Birth":

While the avatars in-vitro wince like dreaming babies, when "born" they are not believed to be sentient, having no thoughts or free will of their own. Their sensorimotor and higher brain functions operate only through a psionic link with a human driver. The avatar body is intended simply as an empty vessel for use as a surrogate body by the human operator.

...with the following comment/rationale:

Sentience? There are all levels of consciousness between raw sentience and self-awareness; while Jake describes them as "remotely-controlled bodies", no character has sounded off on whether they might be conscious at some level below self-awareness.

I'd like to expand on this a little bit here. We don't really know all that much about the avatars in and of themselves, in a framework other than their uses. We see very few of them except for Grace's and Jake's, and no character discusses them at any length. Hey, it's an action movie, not a treatise on the Mind/Body Problem in philosophy. But, to apply the same rigorous standard as was used in the discussion of the ambient room, until I hear it from a character or read it in the script or other reliable source, I don't think any definite statement can be made about an avatar's level of consciousness at all.

Remember that fifty years ago animals were not considered sentient; three hundred years ago, neither were most people (minorities, subjugated peoples, the mentally ill...) Parker's comments about "blue monkeys" tells us that, in-universe, that way of thinking is far from extinct in the 22nd century. -- Random the NaVigator (talk) 18:20, December 22, 2013 (UTC)