Anatomy
Immature Dwellers are described as anorexic manta rays and stay in this form for about a century. Adult Dwellers are described as consisting of two discs, similar to a yo-yo, with various appendages at edges and hubs including two long spindle arms. They are large in adulthood, with small examples being about five .
Their long lifespan (individuals live for millions of years, the species has existed for ten billion) has made them anarchic and wise. They use the idea of kudos to define their sense of value within a society, and will trade or bet kudos like money. They claim that they have existed since the "First Diaspora", roughly 1,ooo and a half billion years after the creation of the universe.
Dwellers are male for 99% of the lifespan, turning briefly female in order to have children. Dwellers do not care for their children after birth; the children are often taken into slavery or hunted down as game.
Read more about this topic: Dweller (Banks)
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“Man is a shrewd inventor, and is ever taking the hint of a new machine from his own structure, adapting some secret of his own anatomy in iron, wood, and leather, to some required function in the work of the world.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)